Building a special nighttime routine helps calm you down, relaxes you, and prepares you for a good night’s sleep. These nightly rituals can include moisturizing, a long hot shower, reading your book, and even meditating to clear your mind. It is proven that taking the time to perform this personal care not only readies your body and mind for bed but overall increases the effectiveness of your deep sleep.
Why not help provide these same rituals for your little one? Building a routine for your baby can be a challenge with how unpredictable life is with your baby, but they catch on to routine more than you might realize. Once you have worked to establish this nighttime ritual, your child will be looking forward to their nightly parent one-on-one time. You will immediately see how effective your routine can be as your baby sleeps through the night, gets deep, restful sleep, and has more energy throughout their busy days.
Follow this guide to set up the perfect nightly sleep time ritual for you and your little one. Start easy with one habit and slowly build up to your full routine. Remember to only use what works and that not every suggestion needs to make your final routine, it is all about finding your family’s balance.
NIGHTTIME BATH
Start off your nighttime ritual with a soothing warm baby bath. The warm water will calm your baby’s body and you can use the opportunity to massage them with body wash to promote deep relaxation, that is, of course if you can get them to stay still. The sensation of running water is a similar sensation to being in the womb, which relaxes a baby’s nerves and helps them feel comfortable. Try using a calendula shampoo & body wash to calm and cleanse your baby. Look for ingredients such as Calendula extract and chamomile that will be easy on your baby’s sensitive skin, while also easing your baby into an environment that promotes deep and healthy sleep. You will know your baby is ready for sleep when their body temperature decreases after their bath, this signifies their body completely relaxing.
READING
Reading is great to calm down your eyes and brain after a day full of screens. One of the most effective sleep-inducing habits, reading also provides an educational purpose. Even if your child is too young to fully understand, hearing you read and being able to see the pictures helps their cognitive function as they start to connect different sounds with pictures. The more familiar a baby is with something, the more likely they are to learn the word and start speaking. Reading is also the perfect opportunity to broaden your child’s horizons. By reading books about feelings, cultures, family, and adventures, your little ones are bound to grow their creativity and emotional depth. Hearing your parents read also begins to increase your long-term cognition, such as memory and comprehension skills.
CUDDLES
Skin-to-skin contact is a formative experience for both the baby and the parents. An action performed after giving birth, experiencing skin-to-skin contact, often called kangaroo care, helps bond you and your baby as you become familiar with each other. Skin-to-skin contact releases relaxing hormones such as oxytocin and endorphins. This connection helps your baby feel safe and can ease crying right after birth, and revisiting this in your nighttime routine will ease your baby into sleep as they are reminded of that feeling of being completely safe. Slowing down and cuddling brings families closer together as you focus on breathing together and just being present with your baby. As they grow older this can turn into breathing practice as well. Or if they’re old enough, try making it into a fun game by drawing on your little one’s back and having them try to guess what you drew.
AROMATHERAPY
Soothing smells are a sure-fire way to bring around feelings of sleepiness. Make your room feel like your favorite yoga studio by combining your favorite smells that promote drowsiness. Proven scents guaranteed to make your eyes droop include lavender, eucalyptus, sandalwood, cedarwood, bergamot, and jasmine. Adding in your favorite of these scents to your nighttime ritual will help relax your body and mind, as you focus on deep breaths inhaling the smells. You can use essential oils, room diffusers, or even room sprays to achieve these desired results. These sleepy scents will increase the deep-wave sleep by easing stress and anxiety levels for both you and your baby, and you will wake up feeling more refreshed and ready to go.
BEDTIME SOUNDS
Finish off your baby’s ritual by putting on soothing white noise to help lull them to sleep. Many machines have differing sounds ranging from babbling brooks, to a cricket filled meadow, to calming rainfall. White noise helps promote deep sleep as it blocks out extraneous outside noises that might cause disturbances causing your little one to stir and wake up. Playing white noise every single night can actually train the brain to fall asleep. The ritual of playing it at bedtime lets your brain know that it is time to rest when the sound comes on, and helps you reach levels of deep relaxation quickly. This can also work by playing relaxing audiobooks, running a fan, or something else you are familiar with. Especially for your child try to find a machine or app that has a timer, so that the machine doesn’t run all the way through the night.
Now that you have found your favorite parts of your baby’s nighttime ritual, see if you can build it into a consistent habit. Not only does consistency help with your child’s actual sleep habits, but they will look forward to their sleep ritual and getting that quality time with their parents. You will build a better bond with your baby, improve their sleep habits, and maybe even help your own sleep schedule in the process.
