I’ve never been one for wanting a strict routine for myself. The idea of putting my newborn baby on a routine seemed odd and constricting. Shouldn’t I just let things happen as they happen. Put the baby to sleep when the baby is tired, feed the baby when he’s hungry, play with him when he’s happy? While he was a newborn, this worked well enough, but as my son grew older I discovered that he actually craved routine. Not only craved it, but life was just so much easier when he had it.
When Cooper was eight months old, I remember holding him in my arms, rocking back and forth in a dark room, the clock flashing three am and I was counting. 38…39…40…41…
The counting was all I could do to focus myself on keeping at task, to just wait until five hundred seconds because if I put him down any sooner, he would wake up and cry. Just rock him for ten minutes and he will stay asleep. These were the nights when we skipped a part of the routine, or he went to bed too late.
I am certainly not saying that I regret the nights that life happened and we kept him up too late, although maybe at three am, I might have regretted it just a little bit.
Cooper loves routine, I suppose he might take after his father in that aspect. His bedtime routine is simple, we start eating dinner at 6pm, once he’s finished we run a nice bath, Daddy plays with him while I run around getting all of his things ready, and the he starts drinking his bottle while we put a fresh nappy on him and getting him in his pyjamas and sleeping bag.
He finishes his bottle in bed, then snuggles up with his blanket and dummy and falls asleep by 7.
Tonight I caught a few moments amongst the chaos of getting him ready for bed. I hope you enjoy. 🙂
