Four Month Baby Schedule: W1 D1

Teaching Babies has to be one of the most difficult responsibilities of being a parent of very young children. Sleeping and eating habits in particular are some of the hardest to break and re-establish. There are so many articles online these days: co-sleeping, crib sleeping, sleeping through the night, the cry it out method, no tears method, sleep time associations ... and the list goes ever on! Those are great, don't get me wrong they can even be very helpful! But not all babies are the same, and thus we must all find our own solutions.

My little Guin turned 4 months this Monday and it is now time for her to get a proper schedule. We ( I say we, because like it or not it is mostly my fault) have this very bad habit that desperately needs breaking, it started when she was very little and ate all the time. Back in those days (all of three months ago) I would allow her to eat herself to sleep. Unfortunately, she is now 4 month and can't sleep without eating.

She is also unfortunately not the kind of girl who the cry it out method works for and she will not be "comforted" by anything less then what she wants. I had tried several things over the past week, none successful, all disheartening. My mom said, don't ask me ... Ask God, you know he knows best! So I'm going on a hunch of how to make this work and I've decided to share our progress here. Partially to keep myself focused and on target, but hopefully to also encourage others and perhaps help someone else with a similar problem.

So what's the plan? Well, it's a mix of things I've heard elsewhere and then adjusted. The idea is the first day at nap time I get the room dimly lit, lay her on the bed turn on some white noise and let her lay there alone for 5 minutes. I stay in the room doing something quietly but don't pay attention to any of her fussy noises, after 5 minutes I lay down and let her eat to sleep. Tomorrow it will be 10 minutes and the next 15, the idea is eventually she will simply fall asleep. Also when she is eating I do not allow her to dose off, thus making her more tired at nap time.

This is the plan, this is week 1, day 1. I'll be letting you all know how it goes, pray for us that this is the answer and this way will work.