Goodbye Swaddle

Ashton is officially swaddle free! He started to squirm a lot while in it so I had him nap with one arm out. That worked well so I took the swaddle away all together and he's been sleeping great. He looks much more comfortable too! Aiden needed to be swaddled until he was about 6 1/2 months old so I was surprised we outgrew this baby stage already.

I've been sleep training Ashton for about the past 4-6 weeks. I'm not "cry it out" sleep training him, I'm just trying to train him to fall asleep on his own. I'm not a professional, but this worked for us. Moms out there, if you have any other suggestions for getting a baby to fall asleep on their own, I'm all ears!

Here's what I do. I watch for sleep signs and watch the clock. He's always ready to sleep an hour after being awake, at the most an hour and 20 minutes. So, once he starts to pull his hair, yawn, fuss, rub his eyes, etc. I know it's time and I swiftly get him upstairs to his room. I make sure the room is dark, turn on his white noise CD (I keep it pretty loud) and lay him down. Recently I've been turning on his Ocean Wonder Aquarium. He loves this and it kind of lulls him to sleep. The white noise drowns out the house noise...like a screaming 3 year old :) I'm lying him down when he is awake but very drowsy. Now, this doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's getting better.

Speaking of sleep. He's kind of put himself into a new routine, which is working out nicely for all of us. His last feeding is around 7PM and then he goes to sleep around 8PM (an hour after the feeding). Once he's down at 8PM he sleeps until 3AM! I think that 7 hours of sleep qualifies as sleeping through the night even though I'm not sleeping through the night because I'm up at 3AM feeding him. The timing is great though because it allows Ron and I to spend some time with Aiden before he goes to bed.