My life (and pApa's) after 8pm is just like other married couples without child / children. And why is that so? Cause the babies are nicely tuck to bed. It has been a month or so that my babies been sticking to their bedtime. It took me about 2 weeks to train them.
Wondering what's their bedtime routine like? Basically, their bedtime starts at about 6:15pm, well sometimes 6:30pm. They will have their nice warm bath. After their bath, it will be their feeding time. They will have their milk in a night setting bedroom. I'll turn off the lights and only turn on the night dim light and also the aircond. So they will have their milk in the dark room. During feeding, I'll say good nite to them and for the first few minutes of feeding i'll keep on telling them that it is already dark (night), it's time to go to sleep. Once their milk finish, i'll burp them and even if they are not yet asleep i'll place them in their cot and pat their back to sleep. Even if they were to cry as loud as a plane takes off, i will never pick them up to carry them. I'll just continue to pat their back.
During those training week, i even had to pat hArith for an hour long. He cried (loudly!) non-stop. There are times, it was soooo loud that I almost lost my patience and wanted to carry him. But I choose not to, and be very firm. Cause I felt that, if I were to carry him, next time he would do the same, cry his lung out in order for me to carry him. So what I did was to make dua' to Allah
"Ya Allah ya tuhanku, permudahkanlah utk anak2ku tidur, dan sekiranya nangis ini adalah untuk kebaikannya, maka berikanlah kesabaran kpd diriku.Ameen"Now al-hamdulillah, bedtime is sooo much easier. After feeding, I only need to pat their back the most for 10 minutes. And in case you are wondering what time will they wake up? Well, it really depends how tired they are. If they had a long tiring day, they will sleep longer up till 2 or 3am. On usual days they will wake up at about midnite. Just before I go to bed. And their next feeding time will be subuh. So now I have 2 subuh alarm clocks (which I definately can't press the snooze button).
This bedtime routine is sooo great, coz after 8pm...i'm free to go out. I'll just leave the baby monitor on for either my maid or my mom to listen. (in case they wakes up...which hardly happens). So I can still say YES to One Utama and Uptown, and be back before midnite for their feeding time.
