Never wake a sleeping baby....

[MissTwister]

I keep reading how important it is to establish a routine from an early age and my daughter is 7 weeks so am going to give it a go. My question is, as I am demand feeding she eats and sleeps at different times each day, so do I wake her for a 7pm bath every night? Sometimes she will be awake at 7pm and sometimes she might sleep 6-9.30pm or variations on this. What do others recommend?

If anyone has a magic wand I am also keen to try and get her to stay asleep later than 5am. Currently she tends to wake for a feed at 8-9ish then 1-2ish then 5am. Should I be trying to do a later feed than 9 so this all moves back (although I tend to go to bed then too!)

thanks!

[Flisspaps]

I really wouldn't bother with a set routine at 7 weeks

[TondelayaDellaVentamiglia]

fit your desired routine about your baby,

so evening time you want her to have a bath, so fit that in when she is awake, then feed, play, sing songs, put her back to sleep or whatever it is you want to fit in

do the routine but don't worry about the time, over her first year it will settle and become more timetabled if that is what you want.

[trilbydoll]

It'll all change probably over the next few weeks, by about 3m babies seem to find their own routine and you can start tweaking it to suit you!

[MissTwister]

If it were up to me I wouldn't have a routine but I keep reading about how essential they are!

[blibblobblub]

I don't know, I can't advise too much as my DD is only 13 weeks.

But... We don't have a routine as such.

She's naturally fallen into going to sleep for the night around 10. She'll then usually sleep until 3ish, wake for a feed, then go back down until 6/7. Some nights she will go to sleep earlier (last night she did, and she's asleep now, for instance - has been since just before 9). We're also battling evening grizzling at the minute as she is so obviously tired around 7 but fights and fights sleep, so will nap a little if we're lucky, but often not!

I'm hoping something gradually just sets itself in place... As a newborn she used to settle around 1am, then midnight, then all of a sudden 10. So it is getting there I think, fingers crossed at least!

(Oh, and we only bath her once a week. She gets a good scrub in between, but it's not like she's rolling in muddy puddles or anything!)

[blibblobblub]

Oh, but I will say - it is up to you! She's your baby, your gut instinct knows best. Someone writing a book about routines has no idea about either of you. Do what you like; as long as your baby is clean, healthy, fed and warm, that's the main thing!

[TravellingToad]

I'm a big advocate of routines, did them with all of mine but it's pointless before 12 weeks. Won't work. After she is 12 weeks you can start gently encouraging the routine and have it firmly in place for 5-6 months.

[ffffffedup]

I started a routine from early on so yes I would've woken her up given a bath and offered another feed before going down to bed. Routine has always worked for my 3 dc they've all slept through the night from around 10 weeks ish and before that would only wake once in the night for a feed. It could be that I've been lucky or that a bedtime routine actually works

[Mintyy]

I found that routines helped me a lot when my children were little. They were loose and absolutely never boiled down to being here or there or doing this or that down to the last minute. But I gently eased both my children into a routine where we had a sort of semi predictable

getting up and getting ready for the day (7.30ish)
breakfast
nap (could be at home or in pushchair or sling)
doing something
lunch
nap (long nap usually in cot at home but also could be out and about in pushchair if I wanted to meet up with people or do something outside of the house)
doing something
dinner
bath
bed (8ish)

However, none of that even started to take shape until they were about 6 months!

7 weeks?? are you nuts?

[Sugarandsalt]

Honestly I don't think routine is essential at that age. We always did a bath in the evenings, then fed/slept on and off until we went to bed at 11ish. At around 4-5 months we started putting her down earlier as she was showing signs of needing to sleep earlier. Then again I never did the cot naps either- I wanted to be out and about so DD generally slept in pushchair/sling. When I went back to work we naturally fell into more of a set routine.

[ffffffedup]

Also what sugar said, I never put them down in the cot for naps I used the pram or swing so he knows when he goes in the cot it's night time and big sleep time. Ds3 is 6mo he's slept through from 9-6 from about 10 weeks and 7pm-8am from around 4mo

[ODog]

A friend of mine and I were talking about this sort of thing over the weekend with wine. Our findings were that you should just do life. If it works to wake her and bath her then do it, if it doesn't then don't. No two babies/families are the same. Works out what works for you. Just do life

[LillyBugg]

I'd say 7 weeks is far too young. Routine established itself here around 4/5 months. Absolutely no chance before. Like others gave said though, each to their own and all babies are different.

[Mummybare]

I agree with 'do life' - good advice, oDog!

If it helps you to have a routine then do it. If you feel like you would like one at some point but that there's no rush, then start making gradual moves towards one. If you're not bothered, then just go with the flow.

With DC1, I implemented a fairly strict routine, with DC2 it was more of a gradual evolution. The latter was less stressful, but that could have been because I knew what I was doing a bit more by then.

[Fluffy24]

We have had a routine since DS was just a couple of weeks old, we didn't do anything extreme, just encouraged the routine we wanted but not fighting him if he really wasn't happy about something.

Because we ideally wanted DS to go to bed between 6 and 7 I therefore wouldn't have woken him for a bath at 7. I did demand feed during the night but before 4 am would always wait before going to him, just for a minute or so - to see if he'd re-settle, especially if he'd been fed recently, sometimes he did. After 4am I didn't want to take the risk of waking him up too much so I'd be out of bed like a greyhound at the first whimper!

We were/are consistent about getting ready for bed by 6pm and having a similar routine and happily he quickly fell in with that and went to bed at 6 pm give or take 30 mins - he still does and is 7 months old.

I personally think a routine can be a very comforting thing when you are reliant on others. After my c-section DH used to bring me a cuppa in bed in the morning, after he'd walked the dogs but before he got in the shower and I flipped on the morning I heard him in the shower and hadn't seen him with the tea I really liked consistency!

[Fluffy24]

We did cot for all sleeping, DS still seemed to differentiate between daytime napping and big nighttime sleeps.

[mikado1]

I was a complete slave to the routine last time and yes, it paid off but I certainly put in the effort and it still had to all go back to square one at times because of teeth or whatever unknown thing that brought early rises, having to sit with him going to sleep etc. This time it is so much more relaxed just going with it and not even looking at the clock. Maybeat 3/4 months I w start to keep an eye on thuthings and try to put some shape on it. I also feel I disrupted ds' natural sleep pattern waking him before he was finished sleeping etc. Who knows! My sister's theory is that nothing, good or bad, will stick till around 6 months and hers are amazing sleepers.

[purplemunkey]

I'd say 7weeks is too young to hope for any kind of routine. IMO they change so quickly at that age that any schedule will stop working within a week and you'll just get stressed out that things aren't going to plan.

We followed the EASY 'routine' in the early days but didn't have set times for anything, it was more sticking to a sequence of events - eat, activity, sleep - when DD woke for the day/for feeds was different every day though. You don't need to bathe them every day at that age so if their eat/sleep pattern doesn't lend itself to a bath that particular day just skip it.

Each to their own though, I'm sure a firmer schedule works well for some!

[purplemunkey]

Oh, and I think the magic wand you're after is just time. Later starts will come with time

[AuditAngel]

I think it depends. DS has never been routine driven. We fed on demand, he had reflux and seemed to never sleep.

DD1, on the other hand drove her routine. It was all down to her.

DD2 was between the two. Even now at 11, 8 and 4 their initial personalities are constant.

[MadGrumblyGnome]

Books schmooks, go with your instinct. You know your DD best. Trust yourself, honestly some random author does not know her personality and what will suit her!

FWIW my DS is 15 weeks. In the last few weeks he's got into his own little routine which we try to follow for consistency. He has an evening bath with DH around 5-7pm and bed after that with me for a feed in his grobag with dimmed lights and white noise so he knows it's sleepy time.

We work it round him though. Some days he's knackered and has a very early bath (or misses it completely), some days he's lively and kicking and it's pushing 7pm. I wouldn't wake a sleeping baby, leave them to their own rhythms.

Sometimes I think routines can actually cause more stress when you try and stick rigidly to them. Babies can't read the day's rota!

[Runningbutnotscared]

Gosh, I started a routine early on and we didn't start till eleven weeks.
I'd give yourself a break for a few weeks then follow some of the above advice....good luck

[MissTwister]

Great thanks all - I can relax. I just kept reading about routines from 6 weeks! Does seem a bit silly....

[purplemunkey]

I know what you mean, I'm a FTM and I kept reading books/internet, logging feeds to try and find a pattern and so on. Eventually I relaxed a bit and just went with the flow. By about 4/5 months DD formed her own routine that has gradually changed, e.g. dropping a feed, napping later etc. She's now 10m and fairly predictable in terms of wake up, feeds, naps and bedtime.

Stop reading books, enjoy and let DD find her own rhythm .

[RabbitSaysWoof]

I did a bedtime routine from very early on, but not at the desired bedtime at first, just as soon as I could predict when the bedtime sleep would be I inserted routine in front of it.
So from 5 weeks my dc was having the longest sleep of the day consistently from the same time every night (after 9pm) so I started to introduce bath, cuddle and last feed before this sleep so after a few nights the bath etc could be a trigger to anticipate sleep time, then it was in my hands to be able to gradually manipulate bedtime forward, ie after a few nights bring bath out 8:30 then after a few nights of that 8:15 and so on until we had our desired 7pm bedtime. I think it would be difficult to associate the bedtime routine with going to bed if she is woken for it I think it's just about the order of things and setting up a trigger to associate with winding down.
If you don't want to do a bath every night I imaging a baby massage/ soothing song would work just as well as long as it's something that only occurs at bedtime.
For us we ended up with ds doing 10 hours at 10 weeks and going 7-7 from 12 weeks, as I brought bedtime in my end he was gradually stiring later and later in the mornings.