Cooper’s New Bedtime Routine!

Cooper started a new bedtime routine on his 5 month birthday – so he’s been doing this for about 2 weeks… and getting a little bit better at it every day.

He used to go to bed when we did at around 11pm, and if he got tired he would sleep in mommy’s lap on the couch. But now that he’s getting bigger we decided we needed to start a bedtime routine, and also give us some time in the evenings together.

So for now, we have set 9:30 as the time we start getting ready for bed.

At 8pm, we start to tone the playtime. The saucer goes away and the lights get dim and he can still play on the floor, but it’s a quieter play.

Then by 8:30 or 9:00pm, he snuggles up with us on the couch with his blanket and stuffed lamb and soother, and reads some books. He loves looking at the pages and really starts to wind down and settle into sleep mode.

Mommy and daddy takes turns reading and snuggling with him as he either fights sleep or eases into it.

Then at 9:30 – it’s time to go to bed. So we all go up to the nursery and start the bedtime routine. We change his diaper, get him into his pajamas, and Daddy reads him a book in the rocking chair (usually goodnight moon) as mommy gets ready to take over.

When the book is all finished we turn off the lights and turn on the stars we got for his room. This little stuffed turtle projects stars onto the ceiling and a nice soft glow to the room.

The stars glow amber, green, and blue. Here’s Cooper checking out the glowing turtle shell. You can just make out his face from the glowing light.

We turn on his soothing sounds and fish night light in the crib so the room is peaceful for bedtime.

Next mommy feeds Cooper and sings him a few lullaby’s, and when he is nice and sleepy, she transfers him into the crib.

Then mommy and daddy head downstairs – usually around 10:00 and spend an hour to themselves before heading to bed. At this point he has usually cried once or twice and we have to go up and put the soother back in and sooth him down, but we never take him out of the crib, we just silently put the soother back in, rub his back, and then leave the room.

When mommy and daddy finally climb into bed, they carry the sleeping Cooper into bed with them, so that when we wakes up at 4am, mommy is right there to sooth him down. We spend about a half an hour soothing him back to sleep, because my new rule is that I won’t feed him before 5am. So the first time he wakes after 5am, I feed him, and we go back to sleep until 7 or 8.

We plan to do this for a while until he gets the hang of falling asleep by himself in his crib. And once he can make it through the night without waking up to eat – we will try him in the crib over night. But not yet! Neither mommy or Cooper are ready for that. We’ll see what another month brings…..