Bedtimes

Upon becoming a mom I discovered that I have hippie tendencies - no offense to the hippies out there at all, because i am becoming one of you. I tried to have an unmedicated birth (made it 18/21 hours), i have only breastfed Mason and hope to continue with that for a year, i prefer a baby sling instead of a baby carrier, i chose only the most important vaccines and excluded most of them, and i like to co-sleep with Mason. However, Mason and i are alike in many ways. We are not morning people, we are cranky when we wake up, and we stretch out while we sleep (and keep in mind there are often 6 of us in the bed). I know he is only 17 pounds but he stretches to take up a HUGE amount of space, and when he is next to me he wants to eat about every 2 hours. We both sleep better when he isn't in the bed. However...... it was a bit of a fight, ok a lot of a fight, to convince Mason that falling asleep in a crib is better than a bed cuddeled up to mom. (it sounds silly but i learned with dogs that what you start at a young age gets continued into adulthood where it is much harder to undo trainings aka, i decided to fight the fight now because it would only get worse when he was more mobile and had more of an opinion)

So I did what I do best, and I took to the internet to reasearch baby sleep. And i decided that i needed a routine for Mason. He needed a bedtime, a bathtime before that, and to read a book, then get fed and be put to sleep drowsy(it took three weeks of hour long bedtimes to get him ok with that). The book just got re-introduced. the first time we tried he had no attention to the book. Last night we started with the books again and he is so into it! he looks at the pictures, reaches for the pages, even turns the pages! He is a book reader!

And he now goes to sleep with little help - if you don't count the sleep sheep, twilight turtle, and rainforest music thingy. But sometimes it takes none of that.