Is it time for bed yet?

Many baby books stress the importance of a bedtime routine – and with that I have to agree. I have my own bedtime routine (considerably altered post-babies) and it seems only fair that the children should have one too – it signals to them that the day is over and nighttime has begun.

For us, the bedtime routine is bath, milk, story, bed.

When you bring a newborn home a bedtime routine doesn’t seem terribly important – you’re up at all hours anyway, there is no real difference between night and day. But (hopefully) there will soon be a difference as baby sleeps for longer stretches at night (and eventually really long 10 – 12 hour stretches) and at that point you need to consider – when does nighttime begin?

It might seem a daft question, but if you have a parent(s) who works late, you might be tempted to have a later ‘bedtime’ so that a parent who has not been around during the day can have some special time with baby at night – in our case, this would mean starting bath around 9pm, and nighttime effectively beginning at 10pm.

Well, we tried it. It was ok. Multidaddy was thrilled to see BabyBoy and BabyGirl. But the day was very long, and the babies were cranky and had very disturbed evening sleep. Starting the night at 10pm didn’t mean BabyBoy and BabyGirl slept later in the mornings – it just meant their night was shorter. 

Loopy Links

Loopy links (Photo credit: hddod)

Playgro and ELC call them ‘Loopy Links’. Bright Starts calls them ‘Lots of Links’. Whatever they’re called by different manufacturers (and there any many), these colourful, plastic, textured links which can be strung together are another extremely useful, inexpensive toy. We have about 40 distributed throughout the house, car and strollers.

Why? Because they are so versatile.

Bath Seat Solutions

Bath seats. Useful for singleton babies. A veritable essential for twins.

When babies are very young, it is pretty much a given that you have to bathe them one at a time. For that, I highly recommend a baby bath on a stand. We did put the baby bath on the floor for a while (I was very scared of dropping a slippery baby) but that really hurts your back after a while.

Of course, a sink is also an option for very young babies.

But once baby(ies) gets a bit bigger, it’s time to graduate to the big bath. Holding one baby in a big bath (when they can’t sit in water on their own) is yet another way to absolutely strain your back. If you’re on your own with twins, not only will your back hurt twice as much, but you won’t be able to bathe them together. And twin babies are loads of fun when they’re bathed together.

The solution we have found is to utilize bath seats. I’d never heard of these before I had children but they are plastic seats with suction pads that stick to the floor of the bath. Stick seats down, fill bath with water (BabyBoy and BabyGirl are big enough for a pretty deep bath now), pop baby(ies) in and let the splashy fun begin!