Sleep Updates: 6.5 months

(This is kinda more for me than anything else, I realize most people might not be interested in my son's sleep habits. Be sure to scroll down to the next post, though, to see some super unbelievably cute pictures of D and his daddy. =P)

D's bedtime has slowly been moving up over time, which has been nice. I like getting a bit of time in the evening where Zach and I can spend time on the internet talking to each other and eat dinner without constant baby interruptions. However the price for an earlier bedtime is being paid the next morning. He used to sleep in as late as 9am before being up for the day, which slowly moved up to 7/8am, and the past week or so has been at about 5:30am. Yes, really. I can take a 6am wake up time, really I can, but anything before then just seems kind of... cruel.

D's been going to bed by 7pm for the past month or so. I've often read that babies tend to ironically sleep better and longer if they go to bed earlier, but I'm not sure that's quite true for D and I also think 7pm is already on the early side and would rather not move his bedtime much earlier than that unless necessary. So I'm trying an experiment this week, delaying his bedtime till about 7:30-8pm or so and seeing how it goes. Both of the nights in Lyon he went to bed around 8pm and woke up promptly at 5:30am, but then last night he was in bed at 7:30pm and slept in till 6:10am. Progress? Fluke? Who knows. Only time will tell.

Sleep has otherwise been going pretty well. Every once in a while he'll have trouble falling asleep for a nap, but the vast majority of the time he falls asleep easily. I think a lot of it is me catching him at the right time and knowing when to put him down (naps are still about 30mins in length, sometimes 45min, and happen every 1.5 hrs or so). Bedtime's been super easy lately, he almost never has trouble falling asleep at night. I'll lay him down and his thumb goes in his mouth and he rolls onto his side and I won't hear a peep from him again (for at least a few hours, anyway...). I think adding a bath to his bedtime routine has helped, mostly b/c it seems that makes the whole bedtime preparations long enough so he has time to switch over to "sleep mode" and is pretty ready for it by the time I lay him down.

One thing that's really sweet that he's started doing lately is that, as I hold him and sing him a lullaby before laying him down in his bed, he puts his thumb in his mouth and lays his head down on my chest. I love it, that feeling of him snuggling up to me like that. It is interesting to note that he's using his thumb more often-- primarily when going to sleep, but every once in a while I see him pop it in his mouth during waking hours though it'll be only for a minute or 2 usually. I think my sister finds this endearing as she herself was a thumb-sucker as a child. ; ) I know many moms would freak about this b/c of the fear of having a 7 yr old still sucking his thumb. I figure it's WAY too early to worry about that, and am more than happy for him to have found a way to self-soothe (not to mention that it's become one nice cue to me of him being tired).

Speaking of bedtimes, I'm also making a concerted effort to get to bed sooner myself, so that when he wakes at 2am to feed (or midnight, or 10:30pm, or 3am, or whenever he decides he wants to wake up on any particular evening as they tend to all be different) I'll have had a better chance of getting a good 4+ hours of sleep.