Betime Routine Update - 21 Months

 

Little man is 21 MONTHS OLD.

 

What.  In.  The. World.

 

 

We have a new bedtime routine!

 

 

 

Carter is finally FINALLY going down, by himself, in his crib.  BOOM.

Back story, he nursed till he was almost 18 months old (that's a whole different story).  So he had just ALWAYS been held to go to sleep.  Nurse and he was out.  Naps and betimes, were all on my (the mom's) shoulders.  Till one day, he decided that nursing wasn't good enough anymore.  But he still was wanting to suckle to go to sleep, but didn't want a paci.  Sooooo... we introduced a bottle, yes, we did, at 18 months old. 

That leads us to the part where, now mom is no longer the sole provider, yay!  Dad's turn!  Night time was now daddy/Carter time and I still had him for his 1 nap during the day.  We split it equally.  Steve loved it.  He finally got that time with Carter after all these months.  Then came the trouble.  He was starting to wake up as soon as he'd lay him down in his crib.  It got to the point where he would be in such a panic even after we were well out of his room.

 

Onto the solution.  He's got his bottle, why not lay him IN the crib WITH the bottle.  It eliminated the transfer from lap to crib.  Should work right?  His first day of this was a little rough.  He wanted to be held (of course) to go to sleep.  But I really took it slow and got him comfortable with the idea after a couple days he was running for the crib asking for his "baba" and ready to go to sleep. 

 

The catch here, I was sitting - on a stool - next to his bed - waiting for him to fall asleep.  I did that for a couple weeks, and after the first week I sat on the stool next to the door where he wasn't able to see me, and then by the 3rd week, we were out the door. 

 

So now we are finally, after 21 months, able to put our little guy down and walk away during nap and bedtimes.  Shewww... Long haul there.  Our daughter had no trouble with sleep or us not being in the room.  Carter is very much a momma's boy. 

 

So now onto the next task... weaning from the bottle.

He will be 2 in less then 3 months and I think that will be a good time to kick it out the door.  I mean, he's only had it a total of 3 months period of his entire life.  So yeah, some might think he's too old for a bottle, but he'll be on it much shorter amount of time then the average baby anyhow.  So it is working for us right now, and for that I'm grateful.