Conquering the Evening

It seems to be generally accepted that babies have kind of witching hour. A period of time in the evening in which they are fussy.

My boy has recently moved in his routine as he approached six months. So the evening has moulded from a mess toward a nice, new routine.

I have been thinking about the things that make the evening nicer…

Change in scene – we have begun going to my bedroom for a while, the late afternoon sun streams in there and he loves practising his rolls on the softer surface. We do lots of laughs and peek-a-boos.

Figure out the milk/food situation – I don’t know about others, but we have been trying to figure out when and how to spread his food and milk so that he is sufficiently full and can sleep from 10-7. Currently, he is having a small bottle at 6 and another at 7, just before bedtime. And a dream feed about 10.

Make the bath a ritual – instead of thinking of the bath as another chore to do, I savour it, as it tends to be his happiest time of the day. We talk and sing our way through the drying and dressing.

Create a nice bedtime routine – we were floating for a while after he cancelled the old system. Now we count about 6.30pm on as wind down time. We do his bath, quietly listen to music, have a bottle, have cuddles. I sing, swaddle him and leave him in bed awake but sleepy.

These have made our evenings infinitely nicer for the last week. I hope he doesn’t change again too soon!