Follow up to "Weird" post

I had a question about what happened to Evan's early waking situation I wrote about in THIS post. I ended up cutting out the dream feed and the late afternoon nap (for the most part). Cutting out that late afternoon nap has helped significantly with getting him to sleep all the way through the night. For awhile he'd wake up and we'd go put his pacifier in and he'd go right back to sleep. Since cutting out that nap he sleeps the entire night without waking or making any noise.

However, he's still waking earlier than I'd like. Last week I read that putting babies to bed earlier actually makes them sleep later. Yeah, WEIRD! So I've been trying to get him to bed around 7:00 instead of 8:00. It seems like it's working!! He's been sleeping until around 7:30 every morning. I want to make his bedtime more consistent. That's the one sleepy time that I'm bad about making consistent and it's really the most important one. I also want to make our bedtime routine different than our naptime routines. So I'm hoping that will get him to sleep till 7:30 EVERY morning or maybe even until 8:00.

Right now our bedtime routine is: nurse, quietly talk for a little while (if I fed him a little early, otherwise it's straight to bed), Matt takes him and i kiss him goodnight. Matt reads him a book, sings him a song while rocking him, jiggles him and "sshhh"s him (that's an Evan thing, it helps him wind down), and then puts him to bed. However, I read to him before his morning nap as well as sing and jiggle him. So at night I think we are going to start adding a prayer time. That's a good habit to start anyway.

I've also discovered that the nights we give him a bath just before bed he sleeps later in the mornings. I only wish we could give him a bath every night, but it's too much to do at that time of day at this point. It'll be a little better when he's older and can help out a little. I remember giving the toddler who lived with my family a bath every night before bed. I loved it so much. Of course, he needed a bath before bed because it was summer when that was my "job" and he played outside before dinner every night.

Oh well, what has helped your baby sleep longer and better during the night? I will make sure to update once we become more consistent too!