Some babies have melt downs when they are tired. Ours powers through, getting more and more hyper until he crashes. He has gone an entire day without napping and was still in good spirits by bedtime. Because of this, and since we both work and don't get to see him all day, it was a while before we were motivated to put him to bed at an early as part of a fixed routine.
We had a nighttime routine when our son was a newborn, but we never updated it as his needs and our schedules changed. After a few months, there was very little routine at all. We would wait until he was obviously tired before I tried to nurse him to sleep. This meant that we often had a giddy baby on our hands who would crack himself up and not get settled down until 10pm. It was fun but exhausting. We needed a routine!
This is what a typical evening looks like, give or take a half hour start time:
6:30 dinner
6:50 bath/clean up after dinner
7:00 pajamas on and read some books with a very dim lamp
7:10 nurse while playing music--we listen to Peter and the Wolf or the Carnival des Animaux
7:30 sleeping baby
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| The day of this photo, he didn't even take a nap. |
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We do keep flexible, but this is a framework. If we are out later than usual as a family, we might skip bath or books when we get back. If I cannot get dinner ready by 6:30, I'll give him a separate dinner while I'm cooking. Sooner rather than later we'll have to replace the nursing with cuddling, but this is much more functional than what we were doing. The trick is to start the routine before he goes beyond sleepy and into silly hilarity.
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