bedtime

i've been meaning to post about bedtime for awhile now but wanted to have the time to sit and elaborate. at 7 weeks, i began attempting a "bedtime routine" for ben. sure, he may not clue in that having a bath means bedtime but it's setting the stage for later, i guess. so the bedtime routine is a bath, a clean sleeper, and a bottle. simple.

sure, it sounds simple but what i've discovered in the last 2 weeks is this. you don't necessarily know when the last bottle is and then he's fast asleep in his sweatpants instead of a sleeper. after some no routine before bed nights due to surprise sleepiness, i've figured out that his last bottle is going to be any bottle he has after 7pm. so if the 2-3 hour bottle schedule means his bottle is at 8pm, that's the last. and if it's at 7:15pm, that's also the last. by the end of the day, ben can get a little cranky because he wants to go to sleep but can't keep his limbs still. this makes for some funny baths but i try to do it anyways and just don't always soap up. and so far we haven't had any crying baths.

on the last bottle of the night, ben often can't even stay awake to eat the whole bottle. we lay him down in his crib and sometimes he hits the mattress sleeping and other times he lays in there thrashing for awhile. hasn't had to cry himself to sleep yet though. and then he sleeps until between 5 - 7am. every night. it's crazy awesome. i haven't blogged about it until now because i wanted to wait and see if it was for real or not.

a couple times near the beginning of routine building, we thought we should wake him up 2 hours after his 7pm bottle, thinking that he wouldn't sleep til morning if we didn't. (now we know that he will sleep til morning on a 7pm bottle) as it turns out, you can't wake ben from night-sleep mode. here i am burping him. and when i gave up on the bottle, i decided to cut his nails while he lay across my lap.