Cade's Schedule

So...last night my kid slept through the night!
As in 9:30 pm to 6:40 am.
Can you tell I'm excited?!
Of course I woke up at 1, and he was asleep. I woke up at 4 (the longest he's ever gone) and he was still asleep. At that point I slapped Cody awake to share my joy =)
Thank goodness for video monitors...so I didn't have to go in the nursery to make sure he was breathing.
Although Cody did have to go in at 6 and roll him over because his face was next to the side of the crib.
Hooray again for mesh crib liners!
At 6:40 I heard grunting from the monitor so I went in to check on him. There he was, my sweet boy, just laying in the crib wide-eyed and waiting on a bottle.

My hope is that sometime in the next 4 weeks Cade decides he loves sleep as much as I do and continues sleeping through the night. Occasionally he decides to be nice and sleep 6 hours straight, but for the most part he still likes the 4 hour stretches. He's predictable though, we always get up at 1 and 5-ish, and with changing and a bottle I can be back in bed in about 30-40 minutes. He doesn't take much rocking, and I usually lay him down partially awake and let him put himself to sleep.

A few people have asked about Cade's daily schedule. He normally wakes around 7 and is ready for a diaper change and bottle. After he's eaten, most mornings he will nap for another hour (which is when I try to get myself together!) before waking around 9. A lot of times he wants to eat again at that time. He runs on a 3 hour rotation during the day. What I mean by that is he eats every 3 hours. After eating and changing, we play for a little while, either in the nursery or on his playmat. Playing is hard because he's still so young. It's basically me trying to keep him occupied between feeding and napping. I try to do that for about an hour, and then he's usually ready for a nap. Sometimes he skips naps, or only naps 30 minutes. Usually at least once a day he sleeps for 2-2.5 hours. I don't let him sleep more than 3 hours at a time, but he rarely sleeps that long anyway. I give Cade a bath in the afternoons, because it seems to wake him up if we do it close to bedtime. He's generally fussiest in the evening, between 5 and 7. He takes another nap around 7:30, and we start getting ready for bed around 8:30. He takes another bottle then, gets in him 'jams, and we either swaddle or put him in his sleep sack. One of us usually holds him until he's drowsy but we lay him down before he's totally asleep. He usually puts himself to sleep in his crib and rarely cries where we have to pick him back up. Like I said, at that point he normally wakes once or twice in the night.
We keep things very boring at night. As it gets close to bedtime we try to keep the house a little quieter, hoping to "signal" bedtime. When Cade wakes at night, Cody changes his diaper while I get a bottle ready. I leave the lights off in his nursery (except the nightlight) and his sound machine on while I feed him. He usually stays drowsy through his bottle, which makes it easier for him to go back to sleep. We don't really talk during this night time routine, so we won't stimulate him too much and wake him up.

Phew!
It sounds like a lot, but there really isn't a whole lot of structure. I initially tried to get Cade on a schedule, but he kind of just fell into his own so we work with it. He's still a good baby, really only crying when he's hungry or wet. Although lately he pitches a pretty good fit in the evenings. This is typical of babies to be fussy late in the day. Think of how you feel after a long day at work! He gets overstimulated and it's like he doesn't know how to stop crying even when the stimulation is removed. I mentioned before that I'm reading The Happiest Baby on the Block, and it has made such a difference in how we calm Cade. I swear last night you could have heard him crying at the end of our street, and when I initiated "The 5 S's" the book recommends, he stopped crying in less than 2 minutes. It works every time. Cody looked at me like I was silly when I started reading it, so I'm sure I looked smug last night when he stared at Cade in amazement and said "How did that work?"
So again, I highly recommend the book if you are expecting (first time mom or not). It just has good overall advice. Understanding why babies cry in the first place is the key to calming them, and this book does an excellent job!

Here's to more good nights ahead!