7 Things I Thought I Had To Do At Bedtime, But Really Didn't
bySabrina Joy Stevens
Once my newborn son tossed my original sleeping plan out the window, bedtime actually became relatively easy for us: sometime after dinnertime, I'd nurse him to sleep, and then we’d sleep and dreamfeed all night. After a few months, though, we started wanting him to spend at least part of the night in his own bed, so I started investigating the vast world of "expert opinions" on building proper baby and toddler sleep habits. Trying and disliking many of those sleep solutions was how I discovered that there were a few things I thought I had to do at bedtime, that I really didn't. A big chunk of that "expert advice" I dispensed with pretty quickly, because I knew it didn't feel right to me or for more my family. But many of the gentler sleep solutions sounded reasonable and legitimate, so I decided to give them a try.
Now, I'm not saying that any of the following are bad things to do, by any means. Clearly, they're working for a lot of families, which is why they've become such popular things to do at bedtime. But, like many things with parenting, I find that success at bedtime is more a matter of finding the specific routines and habits that work for our specific family, rather than following “expert” advice that doesn’t jive with our values or needs. Once I reminded myself of that undeniable fact, I was able to pick the sleepy-time suggestions that made sense to us, and ditch the ones that didn't.
The most important thing when it comes to bedtime, aside from providing a safe, comfortable place to sleep, is to pick something that works for everyone, stick with it for as long as it works for everybody, and adjust as soon as something isn't working. There's no need to feel like you have to do any of the following (or avoid any of the following, or do anything else that's not working for you and/or your child) just because "that's what it says in the book" or because you think it's what all the other parents do. If "you do you" is good enough during the day, it's good enough at night, too.