If you have a day time nap routine, share it with me!
I think I need one so that DD knows when sleep is coming and quits trying to fight it so much! lol. Right now I notice she's tired then all of a sudden she's being wrapped up and put to sleep. So I think a little bit of a routine/ritual would be better.
I'm thinking the last thing we do should be a bit of quiet time in her cot in the hope that some day maybe she'll just self-settle there (yeah right! lol).
I used a lot of verbal cues for DD when she was a baby. So I gave her plenty of warning with "oooh, it's nearly sleepy time now sweetie," for a couple of minutes then I'd pick her up and give her a cuddle and keep saying, "sleepy time now, oooh yes, it's definitely sleepy time now" then I'd walk her up the hallway saying it over and over again, then wrap her and rock her until she was calm, then put her in her cot. I also sang her the same song over and over again too. Gradually (and I mean very gradually over months and months), I cut down on the amount of time I was rocking her for and she eventually self-settled. She made it pretty clear to me as well which was her favourite wrap as she'd go nutso smiling and kicking her legs when I wrapped her in a fluffy blanket and she still goes to sleep with that blanket now (though not wrapped obviously as she's nearly two).
For a long time when DS when younger, we followed the MCHN recommendation of sleep-eat-play. But then sometime in the last 4 or 5 months, we decided that we would switch this around and feed him before sleep, so that he wouldn't wake up because he was hungry. We made the switch one day and its been great! So we play away, then when he is getting tired, we sit down and give him a bottle- try to keep this time kind of quiet, which is his cue to relax. Then we go into his room and put him in bed and do up the sleeping bag and pull down the blinds, give him a pat and a kiss and leave him to it. He still needs to self settle, but he's nice and relaxed and sleepy from a belly full of warm milk. It all seems very natural to me!
for all sleeps after wrapping and putting down i tell DD2 that its sleepy time, i tell her quiet a few times, ived done this from birth! we also eskimo kiss while i tell her its sleepytime, if she startes to crack it when whilst im wrapping her i tell her she ok and she figets less
Yeah, we do eat - play - sleep. Only because of DD though, she generally likes a feed as soon as she wakes up. But I was also thinking of changing it around and seeing if that helps b/c then it would be the same as night time. She feeds to sleep at night and when she wakes in the night she just feeds back to sleep straight away.
I usually wind DD right down about 10 mins before a nap by carrying her around and talking soflty to her (like fionas) then when she sarts rubbing her eyes, I put her in her sleeping bag and sing Twinkle Twinkle to her a couple of times, then its straight into the cot. 70% of the time she just turns her head and is straight off to sleep. If I have missed the wind down though i generally rock/feed to sleep.
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Nap routine
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