Lullabies

We have three songs we sing to Oliver at the moment to put him to sleep. Usually it is Hayley who does the singing as she more often than not who puts him to bed. (She has taken the strain much more than me recently, particularly since he started to become a little more tricky to persuade to go to sleep.) Having said that, he does have to listen to his old Dad sing to him too; in the middle of the night when I feed him or on nights when he is so persistent in staying awake that we take it in turns to try to persuade him to enter "the land of nod".

The first lullaby is the one I wrote for him while he was still in the womb. We used to sing it to "Bump" and had to have two versions: one for if the baby was a boy (with his name) and one for if it was a girl (with what would have been her name). It's nice to really be singing it to him now "for real". I say singing, in fact sometimes it is more of a whisper.

The second is a lullaby that my friend Colleen taught me at some point way back in the 1980s. I don't remember why. She had a much younger sister so perhaps she sang it to her. Anyway, I've never forgotten it and we both sing that to him too.

The third lullaby is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This is the first choice if he needs to be calmed down.

I'm not sure they have much effect, but perhaps they are at least part of a routine that he associates with bed-time.