Hi all, I'm new to this board and having sleep issues with my 8 month old. (why else would I be here? LOL ) I've got the NCSS book and am having difficulty coming up with an hour's worth of routine. If we can include dinner as part of the routine then maybe we're good, but our nights usually go something like this:

-dinner ~15-20 minutes
-bath ~5 minutes
-diaper & pjs ~5 minutes
-try to a massage but baby won't have any of it ~2 minutes
-try to read a book but baby tries to eat book ~2 minutes
-breastfeed ~5-10 minutes
-carry & rock until falls asleep but this can sometimes be a long, drawn-out battle

Any suggestions to lengthening the routine? Is it bad to let baby play quietly somewhere in the routine until he really shows he's tired, or is that too late? ARGHH, I hate not knowing what to do!

Thanks in advance,
Margaret
Mommy to Gilbert, 8 months

hi rasberryswirl,
given my situation i am not really in a position to give advice, but i don't have too much trouble getting my 11mnth ds to sleep, it's keeping him that way!!!). so, for what it's worth...

my understanding is that the hour routine is less about 'what' you do (or whether it works or not, like your baby eating the book) and more about a period of winding down & beginning sleep cues - the routine itself becomes a cue for sleep (including bath, music, stories, quiet cot time) lights lower, less action/ stimulation/ distraction/ noise etc etc etc.

zennifer & board elders, please correct me if i'm wrong!

my ds tries to rip the pages out and eat books too, but i make sure i include it in our routine and now he expects it. sometimes it's very short, but it's in there. sometimes he grizzles at the end of the story because he knows that next comes the light off.

sorry, i'm not writing very well tonight (he's teething and very very wakeful... i don't have the strength to write about it, but i'm sure you know where i'm coming from!)


our routine usually goes something like this

5:30pm bath (yes, he has a 45min+ bath)
6:30pm dinner + quiet play
7:00pm good night to daddy& quiet cot time with dad
7:10pm 2 or 3 stories with me
7:20pm goodnight to the light routine & teething drops
7:25pm breast to drowsy (hopefully)
usually he'll be tucked up asleep by 7:35/ 7:45pm
sometimes it can take longer, but not too often.

my ds can't stand massage either, so unlike the book chewing, i don't push the matter

ummmm... i hope that helps a little.
good luck!!!

love&light

Well, what's weird is that b/f we started really following a routine, we just let him play until he got tired and then he would fall asleep fairly quickly if we held and rocked him (but with some "fighting" cries involved). Now, that we're trying to follow more of a routine and the same bedtime, he has begun to fight going to sleep tooth-n-nail.

I dunno, it's a mystery to me.

Hi Raspberry Swirl,

My dd is nearly 2 now, so I'm struggling a bit to think about our routine when she was 8 months, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't an hour long. I agree with Love and Light that it's a general quiet time that makes up the time at that age - I think. As far as I can remember we did dinner at about 5 - that used to take quite a while! - then dd had quiet play with me and dh downstairs. At about 6 she would go up for her bath and we had quite a routine going where dh ran the bath and dd and I got her room ready, she used to sit and watch me. By the time the bath was ready, she had a bout 10-15 mins in the bath, then dh did her nappy, pj's etc. ready for bed. Then I'd take her into her room, and bf her with some soft lullaby music on until she was finished, and hopefully full and drowsy. Then I used to rock and sing to her. The singing always makes her sleepy and I still sing her to sleep now. She'd usually fall asleep by about 7, so, actually, as you can see, the whole thing did take about an hour, but that included the running of the bath right up until she was completely asleep.

I didn't introduce books until dd was about 1. She just founf them too stimulating and would either play with them or eat them or excitedly turn the pages. Once she was a bit older she seemed to appreciate a book and a cuddle. I actually used a book to begin breaking her out of the bfing before bed. We swapped to having a bf, then books, then rock and a sing. That way I could start steering her away from the idea of bfing to drowsy.

HTH

Hi again,

I'm sorry I had to finish that last message quickly so there are a few mistakes. Just thinking about what you said about ds fighting sleep. Have you made bedtime any earlier? Would it be better if you had some play in between dinner and the bath so that he was a bit more tired. Maybe it just takes him a while to wind down.

Also, one of the reasons we had play in between dinner and bath, was because our daughter has always had a rather sensitive stomach. She would quite often get a bit gassy after dinner and having a bit of play allowed her to get it all out, if you KWIM!! It also let her dinner go down a bit before having a bf. Even now, she still has 15-20 mins play after dinner to make sure it goes down and to settle her stomach. I know you are dealing with sleep issues, could it be that ds is going to bed with a really full stomach and waking up uncomfortable?

I hope some of this has been helpful, although it could be completely irrelevant! I thought I'd mention the tummy thing because a great deal of our daughter's sleep issues have been caused by stomach probs of one type or another - either being too full, eating the wrong thing, milk allergies etc. Even now, she still wakes up with tummy ache or gas sometimes. I'll go back and read your other posts too and see if I can think of anything else to help.

Good luck!

Suzey,
Thanks for all your thoughts/comments. Before we read the NCSS, our little angel was eating dinner between 7 & 8 pm, then getting a bath immediately after wards, then playing until he was whiny and tired....which was usually between 9 & 10pm! The reason we were putting him to sleep so late is b/c my DH doesn't get home until 6:30. A lot of times I was never able to cook dinner b/c Gilbert was too clingy and whiny and so I'd start cooking once my DH was home. Sometimes Gilbert would catnap at this time, but most times not. It's obvious he was tired but it never occurred to me to actually put him to bed so early. It seems whenever we had tried to put him to bed early before, he would always wake up an hour later as if it were a nap. I realize now that I should've been getting in bed with him and bfing him back to sleep! So, the short answer to your question is "yes, we have been trying an earlier bedtime". And no, it hasn't been working. Now when exhibits those classic signs of tiredness I whisk him away but he still fights it tooth-n-nail. I really don't know what time we should be putting him to bed. I hate feeling so clueless!

BTW Suzey, I forgot to mention that my husband also thinks that it's a bad idea to feed him right b/f bedtime so I guess we'll change that around. Ugh, I can't wait to get to a place where we can do the routine and have him fall asleep without a hitch.

Margaret