We’ve written about sleep in the past, but being in the baby industry, it’s a topic we could go on about forever. Everyone does it a little bit different but we all fall into three camps – a. my baby’s a dream, sleeps all night long since they came out of the womb, b. my baby doesn’t even know what sleep is, he/she has been awake since they came out of the womb and c. eh, we have good nights and we have bad nights. Where ever you fall, you’ll need a little bit of help with sleep because as veteran parents know as soon as you have your kid figured out, they go ahead and flip things on you.

Babies and young children need sleep. It’s essential to their growth and development. Did we mention it’s also essential to everyone’s sanity? It is.

I’ll share with you how we do it in my house. A 3.5 year old and an almost 21 month old. We co-sleep. I nurse them to sleep. Bedtime routine starts at 6:30pm-ish: bath, books, blow out our bedtime candle, goodnight, asleep by 7:30pm on a good night, 8pm on an okay night and 9pm on a not so good night (I’d say a regular week is divided 70%/25%/5% respectively). We wake up between 6:30am and 7am, randomly a 6am morning will sneak in there. Kids are normal, growing fine (they’re in some kind of healthy percentile I can’t remember but I know their heads are in the 95th percentile though they look normal sized to me). It’s been the same since they were infants except back then there was lots of extra time for swaddling and extra hold time to make sure they were in deep sleep and what seemed like hours for me to quietly slip out of the bed without moving anything.

Ask another parent and you’re sure to get a very different bedtime routine – dad does it all, 5 books, a song, some yoga, earlier/later times, swaddle, bedtime snack – you do what you have to do.

There have been bumps in the program. With some kind of pattern I’m unaware of, my children will decide they won’t fall asleep until almost 10pm for a week straight. One will decide she’s exhausted at 5pm and then wake up at 5am once a week for a month. They’ll both become incredibly hungry right after their bedtime for a few days in a row. Because they’re such good sleepers, little bumps can, dare I say this, get on my nerves. It throws me off but, and here’s the best part, they’re just bumps and just as soon as these bedtime disturbances arrived, they’re gone and we’re back to our usual.

I’ll tell you what I think has worked for us in getting our daughters to sleep well:

• They nap for at least an hour everyday. When they were younger it could be two naps in one day or one giant nap.
• We stick to routine. It’s what we know how to do. We aren’t fly by the seat of your pants type parents so no flying pants here.
• The bedroom, the bed are for sleeping – no toys or playtime. No play, no confusion at bedtime.
• White noise, lots of it. Maybe this is because I can’t sleep in silence but it seems to have helped greatly.
• Serious darkness. We have those make it dark like a cave blinds and it makes a huge difference.

But you can’t just take one parent’s experience and make it your own. We listened to the needs of our kids and tried to respond accordingly. We lucked out and they sleep well most of the time. Plenty of parents come into Bellani looking for guidance, tricks and tips on how to get their child to sleep. There’s no one answer. The resources out there are endless. Below are a few handy websites with information on sleep topics:

• Dr. Greene’s All About Sleep section on his website covers an array of sleep related topics.
• Ditto for Dr. Sears.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics thinks sleep is pretty important, too.

Alright, now let’s get down to the good stuff. We want to know from real parents, what’s your bedtime routine? What’s your secret to getting your child to bed?