My No Cry Sleep Plan

Sleeping on his knees. Must be comfortable?

So almost 9 months later, I've figured out a sleep system that I am happy with. I'm pretty much making this post so that I can remember these tips for our next child. (Just watch, it probably won't work with him/her) But after enduring many days of heart wrenching crying to sleep and celebrating more nights of Nathan just falling asleep on his own quietly, I think I've got a pretty good system down. Now, this means that he is not going down at the exact same time every night, but at least it's within a window of 1 hour. Right now it's between 8:00 and 9:00. He usually wakes up ready for the day 11 hours later.

Crying it out is necessary if the baby can't fall asleep by themselves. It didn't take long, maybe a couple of days of just letting him cry it out for him to figure out that he can fall asleep on his own. Other moms can attest to how letting their babies cry it out has greatly improved their baby's sleep. This is good to do when they are about 4-6 months. I now know that if if Nathan is crying for a long time, he is either super overtired, or not sleepy. In the latter case, I won't let him cry it out.

Have a bedtime routine and follow it. The bedtime routine takes about 1 hour to 1.5 hours. It starts with a bath, then short baby massage, play time, story, lullaby, and put down. A shortened bed time routine which consists of story, lullaby and put down takes about 7 minutes. I just do lullaby and put down for naps, which takes only 3 minutes.

Wait for tired signals. One of the reasons that the bedtime routine takes so long is the play time that comes before story time. During that time, while we are playing quietly, I am waiting for Nathan to show the signs. I look for eye rubbing and clumsiness. If he starts to get fussy, that's when I start the story. If I put him down before he shows signs of being tired, he will just cry and cry in the crib. If I wait for him to show me that he's tired, he will usually yawn while I'm singing the lullaby and a few minutes after I put him down, he will fall asleep quietly.

If has fallen asleep and for some reason wakes up crying, wait a bit. Usually he will settle down and fall asleep. But if his crying escalates and he's rolling around vigorously in bed, I will go up and try to

• pat him until he falls asleep. If he still is restless, and it is before 10 pm, I will
• take him out of the crib and let him play until he shows tired signs. And then do the routine again. But if it's later than 10:30, I will 
• nurse him until he falls asleep and then put him back into his crib. This really only happens if he is sick or teething. 

I used to stress myself out by sticking to a strict bedtime of 7:30. Most of the time he would fall asleep on his own within 15 minutes, but on the days that he didn't, I felt super stressed. Not that I had anything important to do after he went to bed, but it was just stressfull, listening to him cry, and then having to soothe him. So this method leaves a slightly unpredictable bedtime, but our baby is happy and calm when he falls asleep. And I have a feeling that his bedtime will only become more predictable as I follow these guidelines. 

So at almost 9 months old, this is what I'm finding works. It will probably change in a few weeks, or even a few days. But I guess that's just what babies do. Change.