I wanted to put down our experiences with bed-time before we forget. This currently represents our wisdom with bedtime from about a year and a half of our own experience. I think it might be pretty useful for others to pick up from where we left off and try to improve on the techniques.

1. As always, No Dairy. Dairy gives them gas, congestion, discomfort and has way too many antibiotics, hormones, estrogen, pus, infections… and it’s full of dead bacteria thanks to the homogenization and pasteurization process. It does way more harm than good! Here is one of the best informative talks we’ve encountered about dairy Truth or Diary on YouTube.
2. Contrary to what would seem most obvious, putting them to sleep early actually let’s them sleep longer in the morning. I wrote a little about it here, but with our experience keeping them up late doesn’t always mean they will sleep in longer in the morning… at least not while they are infant-toddler age.
3. Rhythm and Routine are critical in giving the kids a sense of comfort (Liane). Doing the same thing every night helps them to go to sleep and stay asleep. Our current 1-1.5 hour routine consists of  dinner, bath time, story time, bed-time.
4. As part of the bed-time routine, walk with them around the house as you turn off all the lights and close the shades. This sends them the message that everyone is going to sleep, so even if they get up out of bed (once they transition out of their crib) they will go out to a pitch black house and go back into bed.
5. When you put them down, they stay down: Once you put the baby down, DO NOT TAKE THEM OUT OF BED at all costs. Even if it means you have to get in the crib with them, which we did several times. Let’s say the baby cries, you go in, pick them up and rock them to sleep… you’re effectively reinforcing more crying at bedtime the next time because they would much rather you hold them in your arms and rock them to sleep. If you break the rule once, it will take weeks to undo it.
6. Limit the amount of water they drink about 2-3 hours before bedtime. Several times Maya would down a couple bottles before bedtime and then wake up early in the morning because she overflowed her diaper and was soaking wet. If this does happen, it would be good to go in and check on them some time in the middle of the night and change their diaper. It’s way easier for them to fall back asleep after changing their diaper at 3am  compared to 6am. If they wake up at 6am, they probably will not fall back into deep sleep and will likely wake up early in the morning.
7. A pitch black room has helped many times. If they wake up in the middle of the night, they are more likely to go back to sleep. We pull the black out shades down before bed which still let’s some morning sunlight in so they can get up themselves in the morning.
8. Light fan for white noise masks out other noises and helps them to go to sleep.
9. If they cry in the middle of the night, try to comfort them as quickly as possible because they will go back to sleep faster if they don’t get all worked up from crying. Sometimes this happens when they have a nightmare (about what, I don’t know? 🙂 ).
10. We don’t do this very often, but we really try to give them a full body rub down, like a light massage before bedtime. I think this helps stimulate their brain and get’s them out of their head in a sense.
11. more tips to come… got to go make lunch for tomorrow…

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