I recently celebrated my 39th birthday, my first birthday as a mom. It felt really different this year – good different.
Usually, I am so excited about my nearing birthday that I start counting the days from the 1st of June. Silly right? I plan ways to celebrate the day with friends and family, I think about the gifts I would love to receive, and the bubbling of excitement just grows inside my belly with each passing day. I would thrive on the attention I got on my birthday. It was a day all about ME and celebrating ME with all the delightful Facebook birthday posts and the non-stop pinging of my phone reminding me that more well-wishes await. L O L!
This year though, that fact that my birthday was days away kept slipping my mind. I was constantly caught off guard by the realisation that we were already in the month of June. My mind was focussed on Kresten’s turning 10 months old, his next visit to the baby clinic, the ‘date afternoon’ that my hubby and I arranging, it was on writing blogs and creating a new website, it was on celebrating Father’s Day with Anton and my dad.
You see my life and my existence was no longer about me. Now I know for most this could sound alarming, but for me it brought lightness, a joy…. a fullness and a freedom that I did not expect. Yet I marvelled in it.
My birthday was here and my darling husband was so excited that he was up before the sun. During the early hours of the morning every time I would stir in my sleep, I would hear his voice “Happy Birthday Honey”. To which I would reply “No, I am not waking up yet”. The memory of it makes me giggle. We continued this sing song about THREE TIMES before I finally gave in and accepted my good morning kiss. He offered to make me coffee and quickly hopped out of bed only to return serving up a steaming cuppa, along with my FAVOURITE perfume. WOOHOO! With our little boy tucked in with us, we enjoyed some sweet birthday morning snuggles. It was just the best.
So it seems my birthday surprise this year was not only wrapped up in the sweet scent of Bvlgari Omnia Coral. It was years of wishing and of prayers and dreams – all wonderfully realised.
It was understanding contentment like never before.
It was the revelation of my greatest treasure, my husband and my baby boy.
I wanted to take a quick moment and share our sleep schedule journey with all you mamas and papas. Let me start by clarifying that we are not doing sleep training – where baby learns to self soothe and go down unassisted, we are doing sleep scheduling – where we are shaping our baby’s sleeping habits by enforcing naps times and bedtimes in order to ensure that 1) most of the sleep happens at night and 2) our baby is getting enough sleep in a 24hr cycle. Once we have nailed this we hope to move onto the self-soothing, but for now I still really enjoy holding my boy close and rocking him to sleep. It is our special time and it is made that much more special now that he drifts off without much of a fight.
What triggered our desire to start a sleep schedule?
Before our baby would nap any time of day he wanted. He would nap two to three times a day and easily have a nice long nap in the afternoon. The afternoon nap often happened around 3/3.30pm (and he would wake around 4.30/5pm) which we soon realised was not best. We would also have our night time routine – which in hindsight wasn’t much of a routine at all – and then I would put him down to bed around 08.30pm. The problem was that he would fight and kick and scream and wave his arms around, all while I was trying to rock him to sleep. The battle of bedtime was torturous, and often left me feeling so frustrated and angry – with him! Then by the time my baby eventually went to sleep I was super irritated, miserable and tired which meant my poor husband didn’t much get to enjoy the evening with me – he got “snappy-moody-bitchy wife” instead.
Where I started?
I decided to google sleep schedules and read articles on the subject. I also chatted to friends, which I believe are some of the best resources we as parents have. Some were going through the same phase I was and we could swap notes, others had older kids and could give insight on what worked for them and what didn’t. Also, my friends know me and my personality, so I can trust that their advice would take all of that into account.
Militant mama!
I like routine and I love a plan of action, so it was good to work off a suggested schedule that I found online. A great friend also suggested books by Gina Ford – which I have not yet purchased, but I have looked into. She has a few good books on the market and this one, in particular, is on my Amazon wishlist: “The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers”.
One important thing to note is that although I enjoy the
more militant approach, I also know that there MUST be flexibility (to a
degree). You are after all dealing with
a human being, not a robot. So as I share my schedule and newly implemented routine
– bear in mind that I am always flexible. I always read my baby’s cues. If he is really not wanting to go down for a
day nap, I remove him from his room and we try again in 15 minutes; I move his
naps earlier if I can see he is sleepy; I start his evening routine earlier if
he hasn’t had an afternoon nap – BUT NO MATTER WHAT he MUST be asleep by
7pm. That is the goal. That is the
non-negotiable.
This kind of gives you an example of what I looked like after trying to get my son to sleep before we had the schedule in place..
The schedule
We decided our goal was that our boy sleeps for 11-12hours at night and that he be asleep by 7pm at night. In order to achieve this, we worked back from 7pm sleep time. Considering that babies his age are generally awake around 3-4 hours between naps we ascertained that the last nap he had in the day would have to end by 3.30pm. This would also mean that if he had not gone down for a nap by 3pm, that there would be no afternoon nap. This is hard-core and also where it gets very difficult. Here is where you really need to stick to your resolve. The days when he doesn’t nap in the afternoon can get very tiring for mom and dad, but read on and push through.. there is hope.
Naps in our home are generally to be between 30min to 1h30min in length, so that would mean that we would try to get him down for a nap just after lunch – between 1h30pm and 2pm. We also reasoned that considering his morning nap would come off the stretch of a long 12hr night, he, therefore, most likely have a shorter nap in the morning. We would aim for his morning nap to be between 9am and 10am (depending on what time he woke up from his nighttime sleep).
Let him sleep… for when he wakes mama will have to get up too
Our current schedule looks like this:
06am – 07am – baby wakes 7h30am – breakfast 9am-10am – nap time for approx. 30min (or longer if baby decides but no longer than 1hr) 12:30/1pm – lunch 01:30pm onwards – we watch baby’s cues for naptime and aim to have him down for a nap by 2pm. If he has not gone down by 3pm then we accept that there will be no afternoon nap 5/5.30pm – dinner 6pm – bath
After bath time we head to the baby’s room. He does not leave his room after bath time – socialising is over. He can play a bit; have his bottle; we read a book or three; then its lights out and I rock him to sleep. Dad can join us in the room, or have someone on one time before bed, but it’s very low key and chilled. The same routine every night – even as far as playing the same song as we settle him to sleep and then the same white noise sound when he has fallen asleep. (We play twinkle-twinkle till he sleeps and the sound of easy night rain thereafter. Every nap starts with twinkle-twinkle. I am hoping that when we go to self-soothing, the song will trigger in his mind that it’s time to sleep and he will settle himself).
Implementation
Let me start by saying,
consistency and perseverance bring reward. Every day we attempt nap time in the morning
and for us, getting the morning routine going was the easiest. Most days it is only a 30 min nap, but that
is OK. The afternoon naps were, as I
mentioned earlier, the struggle. HOWEVER HERE IS THE KICKER – if he missed his
afternoon nap, he would be OUT by 6.30pm which means more chill time in the
evening.
The first few nights he would wake about 90min after going to bed. This is tough because you feel duped into thinking the night was yours. Don’t fret. I would go into his room, keep the lights off and start again with the soothing rock and shushing till he fell asleep again. It took longer in the beginning – easily 30 minutes (that felt like hours), but eventually, it was only a few minutes. Now if he does stir he usually puts his dummy back into his mouth and falls asleep himself.
Good night, sleep tight
Yes, afternoons can be a bit tiring, but look to what awaits you…. It just took us one week and we have a baby who is in bed and asleep by 7pm and who sleeps pretty well for about 11hrs. So once baby is down, put your feet up and enjoy some quiet time… or get to whatever else is on your to-do list x
