Why a good sleep routine is so important - Parenting

AD - Emma's Diary got in touch to ask me to share my personal experience of sleep routine with my children.  Please note - Until your baby is six months old, the safest place for your baby to sleep is in their own cot, in the same room as you, whether it’s during the night or at nap time in the day. Becoming a parent is an incredible experience and while you are in the bubble of newborn baby love you slowly start to realise that life will never be the same again. Immediately you are thrust into sleepless nights, feeding routines, navigating so many new situations and often this ends in exhaustion.  While pregnant we prepare ourselves for the lack of sleep, everyone we bump into will tell you that and offload some advice whether you asked for it or not. We know going into family life that sleep will be sparse in the first few weeks and months but unless you develop some kind of sleep routine that can be extended into years and I know, I've been there myself. Now......

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Let's talk about sleep (or lack of)

Can we just be honest for a moment and talk about sleep and how much it changes when you become a parent. Before kids, you didn't even have a second thought about going out on a Saturday and coming home in the early hours because your bed was yours and you can stay as long as you like. That is certainly not the case now, in fact, each day I have a small sense of dread as we head into the evening because it often doesn't go how I planned with two young children one of which seems to avoid sleep like the plague. My youngest who is nearly 2.5yrs has never slept solidly through the night, meaning from 8pm-8am, on good nights we have 1-2 wake ups on bad nights we have multiple wake ups or waking and not settling, we had a faze where he would wake up from 3am-6am and lately with the lighter nights despite blackout curtains he is often up much later than his bedtime, not due to lack of trying on our part - its hard! When he was under 1 he was waking around 6 times a nigh......

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