Our Bedtime Routine and Favorite Jammies

Oh, the bedtime routine. Does your family have one? We have been through some ups and downs with our bedtime situation over here. Today I’m sharing when we discovered Fitz needed a bedtime routine and what we do in the evening with Fitz and Coco.

When Fitz was a baby, all he needed was a tight swaddle and a pacifier and he would sleep anywhere, anytime. If we were at home, he would literally find a pacifier and start crawling up the stairs to his bed when he was tired. If we were out, we just wrapped him up and found a safe place for him to lay. Around the time Fitz turned 2, it became not so easy!

We took away his pacifier at night and that was tough for him (Ok, for us all!). Shortly after that, we moved homes and also moved him from his crib to a toddler bed. Just like that, our perfect little sleeper all of a sudden gave us many sleepless nights. He hated going to bed and woke up often throughout the night, and many times with sleep terrors.

I quickly realized that just telling him to go to sleep wasn’t going to cut it. We slowly started building a routine to give him some consistency and prepare himself to go to bed. He’s now back to being the best sleeper!

Fitz’s Bedtime Routine

While we often do have bath time at night, there are days where it works better in the morning or some other time so that’s not actually part of our every night situation. His typical bedtime routine looks like this:

• Pajamas
• Brush Teeth and Floss
• Mom or Dad reads a book to him
• A prayer, and sometimes a song together
• He takes three books up to his bed and has quiet reading time alone
• Lights out

I’ve always loved reading before bed as a kid, so I wanted to build regular reading into his schedule. I love how much he enjoys reading by himself and that he does it nightly – oh how I’m praying he will have a love of reading always!

I also work on teaching him to be flexible. Some nights if we are out late, he may only get one book to take up, or we have to skip the song or something and he is okay with that. Our schedule is just so different day to day that I don’t want him to be too rigid with it, but having this typical routine has helped him so much! He never complains about bedtime and sleeps all night long.

Coco’s Routine

Coco has been a way different sleeper then Fitz from day one. She doesn’t love the pacifier as much, but she does need it to calm herself down and fall asleep. It’s the same with the swaddle: she fights it, but she can’t fall asleep or stay asleep without it!

Coco slept in a bassinet by our bed for a couple of months. But she is such a loud sleeper and I think we woke her up a lot also! So I moved her into her bedroom, but she wasn’t super happy in her crib either. I discovered she loves sleeping inside this Moses basket inside her crib. She just feels super cozy in it.

For now her routine is super simple: I just swaddle her up and rock her while singing a quick lullaby. I say a prayer for her and lay her down. We’ve definitely got a ways to go before we’ve got a solid sleeper here. She usually wakes up after 5-6 hours and wants to eat before sleeping more. Sometimes she wakes up earlier and more often than that, so we are working on this. 🙂

What’s your family bedtime routine like? I’m always open for more tips and ideas on this to help give us all a good night’s sleep!

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