Get It Right The First Time...Every Time.

Getting baby to sleep is a very intricate, delicate task. The precision, timing and conditions must be just right. Baby must be tired enough but not overly tired. The room must be cool, dark and quiet. When all of these conditions are met, a short bedtime feed of 10-15 minutes is all it takes to send baby off to dreamland, happy and contented. Otherwise, instead of a happy sleepy baby after a feed, what I get is ......

A happy excited, rested and fully charged baby crawling all over the bed. Baby would climb over mummy to get to his sister, than off he goes again, crawl, crawl, crawl to the edge of the bed to have a look, then crawl, crawl, crawl to the other side of the bed to have a look, than crawl, crawl, crawl to the wall, pulls himself up to standing position and try to do a spiderman crawl. Cannot scale the wall? Nevermind, crawl, crawl, crawl to the bedhead and pulls himself to standing position and try to swing mummy and daddy's wedding photo to and fro.

Then its time to practise his situps and standups. Baby would sit himself up, throw his head back on the pillow and laugh and repeat. Then he would stand up try to balance himself and laugh and repeat. After about an hour of this act, baby is tired now and a little overworked. A feed won't do the trick by now as he will bite instead. So its a walk up and down the room to calm him down.

My of my oh my. Getting baby to sleep, like I said requires perfect timing. Must Get It Right the First Time every time or else.......!

By the way, has anyone noticed that children don't close their eyes when they want to go to bed? They would try to keep their eyes open for as long as they can until they can't stand it anymore and then you see the eyelids slowly drooping as they drift off to sleep. Its lovely to watch. I guess it must be because to them there is so much to see and learn they just refuse to sleep until they are very tired.