Teepins

For the last ten years or so, the kids in our family have been calling "Sleep" "Teep" so instead of sleeping, your teepins. Hence the title.

I remember for about the first six weeks with Carson, he would just sleep in our arms, on our chest (wow, we miss that) and just anywhere and everywhere he fell asleep. If we had to get stuff done, we'd put him on his turtle mat after he fell asleep, or in the playpen, sometimes on the couch while we were sitting there... really, just about anywhere. Then at about 7 weeks or so, my mom suggested we put him in the crib for his afternoon nap. I wasn't totally convinced he would fall asleep there. But, he did. Then I just kept on putting him in his crib for every afternoon nap. And he sleeps. Sometimes he still needs some convincing to fall asleep (pats on the bum etc...) and other times he just drifts off to sleep himself. The big key with us was we put him down to sleep while he was awake. Drowsy, but awake. We didn't let him fall asleep in our arms and then put him down, we put him down while his eyes were still open. Now sometimes the little guy is so tired by the time 7pm rolls around that he falls asleep wile I'm nursing him, and then it's not like we wake him up to put him down, we just put him to bed while he's asleep. But that doesn't happen too often.

Now, the age old question is nature vs nurture and I don't if he sleeps so well because of what we have done, or if it's just who he is. I think it's a bit of both. Now, I love my son and I love holding him and cuddling him and entertaining him, but we often just let him be by himself. We'd put him on the floor on his turtle map, in his playpen with the toys hanging over him and now in the exercauser and jumperoo and honestly, he likes being by himself. If he's held for too long (especially playing hot baby at parties and get togethers) but even just by me, he gets cranky and wants to be on his own, stretching his legs and just minding his own business. When I put him down for a nap during the day he's propped up on his elbows and looking around, he is awake for a good 5 minutes and then just drifts off.

At night time, on the advice (and we saw how well it worked) of our friends, we established a routine around 9 weeks. Even though everything I had read said that was too early, we figured it's never too early to start, and why not establish a routine? So every night around 6:30 (earlier if he's tired-cranky early) we bring him upstairs. He gets a bath. Every night. Unless we are out and don't get home till it's really his bed time, but 99% of the time he gets a bath. We don't use soap all the time so he doesn't get dry skin. Then we bring him back into his room, I nurse him and Jeff gets a bottle ready. Once I'm done, I turn on his nightlight and leave the room. Jeff gives him his bottle, gets a burp from him, and puts him right into his crib. We turn on the CD (classical music) and leave the room. And that's it. Sometimes he cries and even though I had prepared myself to be able to listen to him cry, really I can't let it last more then 3 minutes (and Jeff and I are doing whatever we can to NOT go into his room for even just that long) and then we go in and pat his bum, soothe him, and when he's calm (not asleep) we leave the room. The biggest thing is, we never take him out of the crib once we've put him down for the night.

I don't know how much that is going to help anyone, but it's worked for us. Again, Carson is a really good sleeper and he may have been that way no matter what we did. But I'd really like to think we did something right :) Sonya - if you need more, let me know - you know where to find me. Kisses to R.