growing baby

For about a week, Ilya and I have instituted a bedtime ritual for Mateo where we read him 1-3 stories, wash his face or bathe him, put him in pajamas, swaddle him, feed him and put him to bed. We might revise the ritual, but that’s what we have for now. Anyway, today Mateo was screaming his head off about an hour before the usual bedtime ritual (7 pm instead of 8 pm), so I decided to experiment and see what happened if I just put him to bed. I did all the bedtime ritual steps except the stories–I didn’t think he’d have the patience for stories given that he was bawling his head off. All was well and he was seemingly contentedly asleep in the crib at 7:30 pm on the dot.

That only lasted 15 minutes. At 7:45 I was holding a crying Mateo in my arms and walking him around his room to calm down. After he was quiet, I decided that it must have been too early to put him to sleep, turned on the light and decided to start the bedtime ritual again since it was heading towards 8 pm anyway. This time I started with the stories since he was quiet and calm. Well, by the third story, Mateo’s eyes were drooping and on the last line of the last story, he smiled sleepily and closed his eyes even more. I swaddled him and he fell directly to sleep–no rocking, no feeding needed. I guess those stories are really important! Of course, it’s only been about 10 minutes…I could be writing an addendum in another 5 about how he woke up again. But hopefully all is well for the next several hours! Maybe he’ll even hit his one-time record of 7 straight hours of sleep again! Though even four straight hours would be just fine. 🙂