Elijah’s Routine

Now that Elijah is consistently eating every three hours, it’s time to work on the next part of the routine: what he does for the rest of the day. We’ve decided on a cycle of Eat-Awake-Sleep, repeat for daytime. Eat-Sleep, repeat for nighttime. My pediatrician and the two books I’ve read (Babywise and Baby Whisper) all recommend this order of activity. This is different from what we’ve been doing: eat-sleep-eat-sleep-eat-sleep for 16 hours and then about 8 hours of awake fussiness. I figure they only way he has the energy to be awake for 8 hours in a row is because he spend so much of the rest of the day asleep. We’re going to try and break that up.

One of the main reasons behind eat-awake-sleep rather than eat-sleep-awake is developing good sleep habits. If you always let a baby sleep right after he eats, he learns that the way to fall asleep is to eat first, and you’ve created a baby who NEEDS a boob or a bottle to fall asleep. This is a problem when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night before it’s time to eat again. It’s an even bigger problem when the child outgrows a bottle and hasn’t had a chance to learn how to go to sleep on his own.

If you keep the baby awake after he eats, have some playtime, and then put him to sleep, you have the chance to create good sleep habits. In our household we’ve decided a good sleep routine is reading a book in the rocking chair, a few minutes of cuddle time, and then laying him in the crib. The key is to put him in the crib while he’s still awake. If I were to rock him to sleep then he would NEED to be rocked to go to sleep. If I put him in the crib while he’s still awake he learns how to soothe himself and go to sleep on his own.

Really good plan, right?

I implemented the eat-awake-sleep routine a week ago Wednesday. Elijah hated it. For his entire life I let him sleep after nursing and now I was trying to keep him awake. It was really hard. I took his clothes off. I tickled his toes. I touched my glass of ice water so my hands were cold and I ran them over his back. I took him outside. I tried everything I could to keep him awake … and I was only aiming for 15 minutes past the feeding!!! Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of torturing my kid, he wasn’t interested in sleeping and only wanted to cry at me. 3 hours later I fed him again and he wanted to go to sleep even more this time after being awake for 3 hours. Once again I kept him awake. Once again his gave up and just cried. We did this all day long. It was a very hard day. Andy and I spent a lot of time that night debating if we were doing the right thing. We both feel like we have good instincts and it went against our instincts to keep him awake when he wanted to sleep. I had no idea if I was going to continue this the next day.

I have completely lucked out in having a baby who knows the difference between night and day and is willing to sleep at night. I was worried that the new schedule would mess this up, but around 10pm I fed him, rocked him, gave him some kisses to wake him up just a bit and put him in his crib. He slept for four hours. I repeated the feeding, rocking, kissing, crib and he repeated sleeping for four hours. Bless his heart.

As I was giving him his morning feeding I had no idea what I was going to do. Do I keep him awake? The pediatrician said this was a good plan. I REALLY want a child with good sleep habits. Kids who sleep better do better in school and are more emotionally stable. Or do I let him sleep? He’s tired! Tired babies should sleep.

When I finished feeding him I burped him and looked at him, still not knowing what I was going to do. And he opened his eyes and looked at me. He stayed awake on his own for about an hour, not exactly happy but awake and not crying. When I noticed him yawning I took him to his room, rocked him, and put him in his crib. He slept for nearly 2 hours. I was on my knees thanking God. This was the validation I needed. We HAD made the right choice with this routine!

His second feeding was harder, he was sleepy and his eyes were drooping but he didn’t want to sleep alone. A friend came over to visit and we sat on the deck with Eli in his car seat and he fell asleep to the sound of the cars. The rest of the day was pretty good. There were a few time I had to remind him to stay awake after eating, but it was nothing like yesterday. There were a few times he wouldn’t go to sleep on his own … but I’m willing to be flexible on this during the day. I’ll carry him in the Moby or let him sleep in the car seat during the day so long as ALL his night sleeps are in the crib.

Friday through Sunday we were all messed up. He was dedicated at church on Sunday so I had family in town. Elijah spent most of the weekend being snuggled.

Monday I got us back in the routine and we did pretty good this week! I feed him and burp him. Then I snuggle him for a little bit while he dozes. This doesn’t last long, maybe 5 minutes. Then he wakes up and we play. He’s great in the morning, he’ll be happy in just about any position I put him in. And he’ll be ready for a nap after about an hour and a half. I’ll rock him and put him in his crib, still awake, and he’ll fall asleep on his own. As the day wears on he wears out. He’ll be less interested in playing and will only want to be held. He’ll usually skip about one nap a day, staying awake for the whole three hours until it’s time to eat again. This is ok, the routine is flexible.

I try to make sure that every time I put him in his crib that he’s awake. If we go for a walk and he falls asleep, I take him out of his car seat and carry him to his crib, which wakes him up. I really want him to be good at going to sleep by himself in his crib. Sometimes I cheat. If I need to make dinner and he’s fallen asleep in his bouncer, I’m likely to let him stay so I can finish dinner. But he’s getting a whole lot of practice in his crib and is really good at night, so I think this is ok.

I’ve noticed his grumpy time is shorter AND he’s less grumpy during that time. Most of the time. Tuesday night around 8 pm he cried for nearly 30 minutes. I have no idea why. This was the longest stretch he’s ever cried and it had both me and Andy close to tears.

Thankfully he continues to sleep well at night! He wakes up to eat and then goes right back to sleep. This is such a blessing!

This weekend we’re spending time with our extended family and I’m not going to enforce a routine. We’ll start up again next week. I’m going to keep trying the “eat-awake-sleep” during the day and I think it’s going to work out for us.