Our Newborn Nighttime Sleep Routine & Bedroom Setup

I’ve received quite a few questions about how our sleep has been with Flora, what she’s sleeping in and our routine. We definietly don’t have a daytime routine down and I feel extremely lucky with how good Flora has been but thought I’d share what we are doing. I think most of our luck has to do with the baby and some if it has to do with our routine! The first week I felt pretty sleep deprived but now I’m feeling quite normal! My husband is also home with us for 8 weeks of paternity leave. It’s really helped make the transition to a family of 4 go smoothly and we’ve both been able to give Piper a ton of attention. But back to sleep…..This is what we’ve been doing since our first night at home.

Right now we are still exclusively breastfeeding and haven’t introduced a bottle yet, I also haven’t started pumping. I’m loosely following the Babywise method and really trying to feed Flora every 2-3 hours throughout the day. Sometimes its less than 2 hours but for the most part, I track our feedings in the Sprout app and gently wake her if it’s been 2-2.5hrs and she hasn’t woke up on her own. If she’s rooting around before the 2-3 hour mark, I will feed her! My goal is to keep her up after her feeding for a little bit but sometimes she just zonks right out and starts her nap. She still sleeps a ton throughout the day but I’m really trying to be sure she stays full all day so she’ll sleep more at night and not be up wanting to eat every 2 hours, and so far it’s really working.

With Piper we learned that she was much more likely to sleep if we started trying to get her down later in the evening — and we’ve found the same to be true with Flora. Most nights she’ll give me a 3-4 hour stretch (sometimes 5!!) but not until 12:30/1:00am. I’ve tried napping with her around 9pm just to get a little more sleep but find it more exhausting to keep getting up, so I try to stay up as late as I can. Most nights our schedule looks a little like below — and it’s about to change when I do bassinet & nap training starting today! Up until this point I’ve been rotating what she sleeps in based on my tiredness and her reflux/spit up situation for that given time.

• I prep the bedroom and get myself ready for bed by 10pm most nights, up until then Flora and I (and usually Austin) will be out in our living room watching TV/reading/attempting tummy time etc. At 10:30 or 11:00 I’ll start my “bedtime” routine with Flora.
• If she’s sleeping I’ll gently wake her up and sometimes try to do tummy time to really get her up — then I’ll bring her to the nursery and change her diaper and put her into a clean sleeper and put her in her SwaddleMe swaddle. If we are doing a bath we do it much earlier in the evening right after we put Piper to bed. Right now she’s ONLY wearing her swaddle to sleep, but that will change when I start nap training (she naps on us or in the Rock & Play right now).
• Then we’ll go into the bedroom and I’ll nurse her in bed and then let her lay on me upright for a good 15-20 minutes while I read on my Kindle and then I’ll lay her to bed! I’ve tried to make our bedroom a place she associates with sleep (and darkness!!).  My goal is always to get her into the Halo bassinet. If she needs soothing she loves to me to rock the Halo or RNP and lullabies too. She won’t really take a pacifier yet, some nights it helps her but most of the time it doesn’t work. We do use the newborn insert for the Halo!
• If we go to bed around 11:30, she’s usually up by 1/1:30 for her first feeding, then by the time she goes back to sleep its usually around 2 and then she’ll just wake up once more between 4/5am. If we get to bed later, and she doesn’t end up getting transferred to her bassinet until midnight – sometimes she’ll do a long stretch right away. Most nights I’m only doing 2 feedings once we go to bed and one is that 4/5am one. I usually put her in the Dock-A-Tot or Halo after her last feeding and I’ll doze off for another 2 hours with her depending on the time or the day (if Piper has school etc.) and Austin will get up with Piper (between 6-7am).
• We keep the bathroom light on and the door cracked so I can see Flora while she’s sleeping and I don’t have to turn on any lights for diaper changes.
• I set up a station at the end of our bed for diaper changes (we have a King so there’s plenty of room) – in our old house with Piper we had a changing table set up on our dresser but decided that wasn’t necessary this time since her room is literally feet away. I have a basket on our bench with diapers, diaper cream & wipes and just change her on a towel and have the swaddle next to her ready to go.
• We haven’t started using the sound machine yet, but we have an air purifier that kind of sounds like one and you can hear Piper’s through her monitor pretty clearly!
• I obsessively use the Sprout app to track feedings & sleep so I always know how much sleep we both got. I feel lost if I forget to track a feed or hit “asleep” before I pass out!

Here’s a peek at our little set up. I have a very regimented routine of items I like to have and where I like them to be placed so everything is easy for me to access in the night -tomorrow I’ll be sharing everything in my nightstand right now.

This routine is working SO well for us. I’m usually not tired at all during the day because collectively I’m getting at least 5 hours of sleep – usually closer to 6 because Flora will consistently sleep in the morning hours so if I really feel tired I can always sleep then, but I’m an early riser and typically like to start my day!