Reclaiming Our Nights

Life with a newborn is a crapshoot. You never know when, in a span of 24 hours, they are going to want to eat, sleep, play, poop or just cry for the pure sake of making you crazy trying to figure out what is wrong. Luckily, eventually they settle into a pattern that becomes more and more clear as the days and weeks pass. I didn't realize that this was going to happen with Madi but it did. This time around with Mya I just sat back and waited for it to happen, and eventually it did. Remarkably, their transitions to their cribs are pretty similar, and not by design.

Now that I have figured out that Mya is pretty much crashed out for the night by 9pm, I have begun the process of moving her to her crib. Previously she would fall asleep in her swing and stay there until we tucked in, at which point I would move her into her Rock'n'Play beside our bed. Rather than letting her fall asleep in her swing I have begun a bedtime routine with her in her room. We go down, change her bum, read a story, I nurse her, then rock her for a few seconds then lay her down. It's not totally smooth right now, and there is a little bit of crying involved (though not nearly as much as with Madi!) and she's out. I think the crying right now is just because she's not quite used to going to sleep this way, because she is definitely tired.

The one glitch right now is that I am not quite ready to have her sleep on a totally different floor of the house all night long, so I am still bringing her into our room each night before I go to bed.
Tonight I tried putting her down at the same time that Madi went to bed - around 7pm - in an effort to reclaim a little bit more of our evenings. It wasn't any harder than other nights, which is a great sign that we may get an earlier bedtime from her than I thought!