Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
A lot happened in the life of our little family from the time Rosy was born to when she turned four months old.
First, obviously we welcomed our first born into our family, which is a HUGE and wonderful change. Then, we packed up our entire life and moved into a fixer upper. Clay started a new job and we started building our life in a new town all while renovating our new home.
I was so excited to own our own home and for Clay to be starting a career teaching, but we were also quite overwhelmed. The first week of living in our new house, we slept with our mattress on the floor in what is now our dining room. Our stuff was EVERYWHERE.
I hadn’t really understood the undertaking that moving was going to be. I had moved several times, and it wasn’t every really a big deal. Being quite the nester, I would stay up an get everything unpacked and everything would usually feel like home in a couple of days.
The difference…we had always moved into rentals. Not homes that we were ripping out bathrooms, replacing flooring, and painting from top to bottom. Add in me being a first time mama with a new baby and I was just barely treading water!
The thing that made all of the doable and helped me keep most of my sanity (ha!) is keeping a pretty strict baby schedule when it came to feeding and sleeping.
We have used a lot of the principles from Gary Ezzo’s book Babywise and I think that they really have helped us create a good structure for Rosy’s days and for mine!
Around four months is when I feel like her days became really predictable and it’s also when she started sleeping longer stretches at night consistently.
Being consistent is what really made the difference for us.
I was always super consistent with Rosy’s bedtime routine beginning at four months old.
We always started her routine with a bath where I used all lavender products. I love Aveeno products and have always used the Lavender Baby Calming Comfort Bath and Lotion.
After her bath, she had story time with her daddy where he reads her a couple of books (we LOVE the Dr. Seuss Sleep Softly book) and prays with her.
After her story, we put her into her Halo SleepSack Wearable Blanket and I nursed her and then put her down to sleep for the night in her crib.
I really always tried to not let her fall asleep while nursing so that she went down while she was still awake and put herself to sleep. While it’s impossible as a nursing mama to not have you baby associate nursing with sleep in some way, it was very helpful for her not to have to nurse to fall asleep.
There were a few really big changes that happened around four months.
We used the Halo Bassinest up until this point (and loved it!) But, it was at four months where nobody was sleeping because we had a loud baby that was disturbed easily! Seriously–she would grunt and make noises all night, but if we so much as sneezed it was game over!
So, we knew that the bassinet had served its purpose and it was time to transition into the crib.
Transitioning Rosy into the crib was relatively painless because we used the DockATot over the course of about a week to get her used to the new environment. After a few days she napped in her crib all of the time and then finally, she slept during her nighttime sleep in her nursery.
Another change that happened around 4 months was transitioning out of the swaddle. Rosy girl loved to be swaddled. When she was a newborn, there was nothing she loved more than being wrapped up tightly before sleep.
She started rolling over at 3 months, and was doing it consistently at 4 months so we had to teach her how to sleep with her arms free.
Losing the swaddle was definitely the more challenging of the two transitions we had during this time.
What worked the best for us and had Rosy sleeping with her arms free within a week was using the Halo Sleepsack Swaddle that she was used to, and just wrapping the swaddle part around her belly and not including her arms.
I found that this way, she still felt the security that the swaddle brought but was still safe with her arms out. She definitely did wake herself up several times when she would accidentally hit herself with her little arms, but using this swaddle technique was definitely helpful.
With all of these changes, here is the schedule that I kept with Rosy whenever she was four months old.
- 7AM – Nurse
- 8:30AM – Nap 1
- 10AM – Nurse
- 11AM – Nap 2
- 12:30PM – Nurse
- 1:30PM – Nap 3
- 3:30PM – Nurse
- 4:30PM – Nap 4
- 6PM – Nurse
- 7PM – Bath
- 7:15PM – Nurse
- 7:30PM – Bed
At this point, Rosy would wake at least once but usually twice in the night to nurse and then she went right back to sleep. I also nursed immediately upon her waking up from her nap, so those times were a little less rigid.
The important thing to me was following the eat-wake-sleep cycles. So I always made sure she was awake some amount of time after nursing.
Around four months is such a fun age, and it’s the time where I started to feel more like myself and less in the fog of having a newborn. Being consistent and sticking to a schedule has been incredibly helpful to our family. I hope this was helpful to you!