New Baby Memories - Going to Sleep

Are you having trouble getting your newborn baby to sleep? Been there, done that.

When Willow was first born she didn't go to sleep very easily. We would swaddle her (the tighter the better) and lay her down. She wouldn't always fall asleep. She would start crying and get herself so worked up that she couldn't relax and fall asleep.

What to do? Through trial and error we found walking with her against our shoulder and rubbing her back helped to calm her down. This sometimes took quite a while, say 20+ minutes!

I don't know how but I thought of humming to her. It really didn't matter what song I hummed but she seemed to like it. It also gave my wife and I a chance to remember songs we listened to in grade school and college, and try and stump the other person with which song we were humming. This is harder than it sounds. The song always sounded good in my head but I'm not so sure that the sound I hummed was a good representation of the actual song. Oh well. It was fun to think of songs I hadn't heard in 10 or more years. It was also discouraging how I could remember these songs but the things I have to memorize for work seem to slip my mind after only a few months of not regularly studying them.

Sometimes I would try singing out loud to Willow. The good news was that she didn't seem to mind that I am not a very melodious singer, nor that I rarely knew all the words. Heck I usually knew little more than the chorus. I usually stuck to humming.

Now that she is almost a year old she, thankfully, goes to sleep much easier. Now during the day I dance and sing with Willow to music playing on the stereo. She likes being lifted into the air, dipped, etc. Sometimes she really gets into it and will make "Ahh, ahh" noises as I bounce up and down. Not really in tune to the beat but in tune to my bouncing. It's pretty cute.

I can hardly wait until I get to dance with her when she gets a bit older. Hopefully she will be able to overlook the fact that I don't have much rhythm. I've gotten past it. Hey, if your having fun what does it matter?