So babies need routine. We know this, doctors and parenting books and relatives of all kinds will tell you the same. This elusive “routine” is important enough that before our baby has even spent his first night at home, in those first critical hours/days/months where really- all you’re worried about it survival- people will ask, “Do you have him on a schedule yet?” And of course your slightly crazy, sleep-deprived, TMI answer goes something like: “Really? I’m still living every moment in antipication of the first poop post-birth, and you’re asking me if I figured out a schedule for my child, who is still eating on demand…which pretty much means when I DO finally go to the bathroom it’ll probably be with him attached to my boob? No, I think it’s safe to say that I do NOT have him on a schedule. No routines around here. Unless you’re talking about the interval with which I pop my pills.” And then, if that person if very very smart, he or she will just walk away, quietly.
The thing is, as they get older, this “routine” thing doesn’t necessarily get easier. When Camper was about 3 months old we started a sleep routine, which I changed about four times before he finally settled in. At that point we went and moved him across the country and promptly started all over again. I think it was around 5 months before we really figured anything out again, and more recently we found the 7:30 bedtime, which has worked pretty well for us. But even with the BEST routine, as your baby gets older all kinds of things change. Sure, they are older and more able to recognize what’s going on, but that means that they’re OLDER AND MORE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE WHAT’S GOING ON. I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked upstairs, and before I even get to Camper’s room he starts to fuss, then he goes all Spastic Jell-O Baby (you know, flinging himself about, hard to hold) when I sit in his chair and sing him his naptime song. He can smell the routine coming from down the hall, and he’s not going to play along. Luckily, he is usually exhausted and he can’t resist my wiles…and after a song I am usually able to set him in his crib and see him smile as he snuggles his blanket and closes his eyes…but the emergence of the Spastic Jell-O Baby has made me really question whether giving our kids these “cues” helps, or if we should keep them guessing. You know. Like military training. I’m sure the Spartan mothers would just walk by their infants all nonchalant, turn, grab them up and stuff them in their cribs, and before they could even decide to fight the Tired they had fallen asleep.
Ok really. Maybe not. But if it’s just going to “warn” our kid of impending naps, etc. what is the worth of a routine, anyway? I think that honestly, the routine is less to make things easy for us, and more to create a calm, loving environment for our kids. Their bodies are constantly changing. They are growing more teeth, getting taller and heavier, their brains are beginning to tell them to crawl and climb and jump and run. And a couple times a day we ask them to turn all of that off and go to sleep. Maybe, just maybe, we do the same thing every time we lay our baby down for a nap not because it really helps them fall asleep more quickly or is parenting magic that keeps them from fussing or being difficult, but rather because it provides something that stays the same. Even on bad days when they are completely melting down, they’d rather it stay the same than be different. They know that even if they lose it this naptime, next time we’ll do the same thing, we’ll keep coming back for them. Maybe it lets them know that we, as their parents, aren’t going anywhere. By extension, when we leave them with other people, maybe the continuance of their routine signals them that everything is ok- Mommy and Daddy must trust these people.
I was thinking about all of this last night as I tried to put my baby to sleep. Most nights he goes right down, but lately he’s been experiencing some issues. After the Fight for Sleep that actually lasted from about 3pm til 7:15pm, he slept all night long. Until 5am. Why on this night when the routine went all kafluey did he sleep all night for the first night in weeks? Well, it’s not because the routine (which I only do once, regardless of how many times he gets up/fights it) finally worked, the routine had been doing it’s job all along. Letting my baby know that I care, that I’m constant and I’ll be there for him. It’s not the routine’s job to get him to sleep all night long, that’s just a biology thing. No, the routine is worth something because it stays the same, even when everything else is different.
