Hi Ladies,
My daughter is 3 1/2 months old, and I am a new reader of Tracy's first book. I wish I had read it before she was born, but who knows if I would have followed her advice...now I know better! But her book and this website have been such a help to me already. I sorta had an EASY routine for the daytime (but it started at a different time every day depending on when baby woke up). I am having much more success on putting her down for full 1 1/2 hour naps with minimal crying. I've established a nap routine and have been really watching her cues, and the past three days I have gone from dreading her naps to looking forward to watching her settle herself to sleep.
Ok, so here is my question. DD has always gone to bed really early (again, not a real set time because before I would let her sleep however ever much she would in the morning and for naps!) I am trying to set a 7 or 8 p.m. bedtime, and I was wondering if I could get some help in establishing a night time routine. I realize this is probably covered in Tracy's newest book, but I can't get my hands on a copy soon enough...
Let's say she wakes up at 7 a.m. and has consistent 3 hour schedule. The "Old" way, she would eat about 4, have some awake time, and then she would be down until 3 a.m. at which point I would feed her because she had gone so long. What I want to do is establish dream feed(s) so that we can eliminate the 3 a.m. waking. I have started a 10 p.m. dream feed before I go to sleep (She is exclusively bf). Should I wake her up at 7 p.m., go through a night time routine with bath and such to put her back to bed, dream feed at 10, and...then what?
My mom's advice when DD was first born was "never wake a sleeping baby." And I was so relieved those first weeks when she would sleep all evening long and only wake up once in the night. I know I am very lucky. But I also want to get her on a more consistent routine and help her skip the middle of the night feed.
I read Jane's post on how to do this with a bottle-fed baby; how does it work for the BF baby?
Thanks SO much for all your help!!!
