A fellow blogger, Erin, started a weekly thing called Mama Mondays.  Every Monday, there is a new topic in which all mommies can share their experience.  Now that I am an official blogger, I thought I’d join in.  This week’s topic is nap and bedtime routines.

For me as a parent, Rory’s sleeping has probably been my biggest stress.  It seems that from the time she was born I have either been worrying about her not getting enough sleep or, on those random days when she takes a really long nap, I worry about why she’s sleeping so long!

For the most part, she is an excellent sleeper.  I will have to admit that we swaddled and rocked her with a bottle to get her to sleep up until she was almost a year old.  We tried many times to stop swaddling her, but it was the only way we could get her settled down, and we were too sleep deprived to care enough to try harder, I guess.  I remember all too well the nights when she’d wake up two or three or four times a night; standing next to her crib for what seemed like hours until she was sound asleep, only to hear her cry again the minute I stepped outside her bedroom door.  There was a point in time when Josey and I thought she was never going to sleep through the night, but boy did she give us a good lesson in parenting when she did.

One evening, shortly after her first birthday, she crawled into her room, and stood at her crib wanting in.  I laid her in there, walked out, and she went to sleep on her own and slept the entire night.  It seemed too good to be true.  That was the moment when I realized…every baby will do things on their own time, in their own way.  Some babies will probably sleep through the night at 3 months old, some may not until they’re a year old.  All those months we had been trying everything possible to get her to sleep like that, and then one day she just decided on her own that it was time.

Now that she’s almost two years old, we have a regular routine for naps and bedtime.  After all hugs and kisses are given, we go back to her room where Hunny Bunny and her sucky (pacifier) are waiting for her in her bed, turn on her futterflies (the mobile), tuck her in, and say good night.  Just recently, we started giving her a pillow to sleep on, too.  It really is time to get rid of the sucky, but with all that has been going on lately, it just hasn’t happened, and if I’m being honest, I’m dreading it because I know she is going to fight it.  (Maybe some of the other Mama Monday posters will have some tips for us with that?)  There were definitely many moments when I never thought it would be this easy, but there is hope for all sleep deprived parents out there!

And some bedtime photos…

Hunny Bunny

Her "futterflies"

There is no way I would ever go in to take a photo of her sleeping now, in fear of waking her up, so an old one of her at three months will have to do!  Besides, there is nothing sweeter than a sleeping baby.