What is/was your routine for your small baby, and how/when did you start?

[bananabump]

Before loads of people leap on me for uttering the word routine in the same sentence as small baby, I'm just looking into the best way of going about things, not planning on shoehorning my lo into a strict regime of four hourly feeds and flashcards!

He's 6 1/2 wks old, and so far I have fed him on demand, let him sleep when he's tired and bathed him when he needs it (or every couple of days) So the only natural fragments of routine that have established themselves is that he gets tired around 8pm ish, sleeps for approx 12 hours with two or three feeds between so we get up some time between 7.30 and 9.30am.

But because dp and I are such long established night owls, we're never in bed before midnight. So, so far we've had baby asleep in the living room with us, on our laps or snuggled on the sofa. I don't like the thought of putting him upstairs by himself because we might not hear him if he's sick or whatever (he was explosively sick the other day and it came out of his nose and he choked, I'm frightened of it happening when he's alone)

So how does everyone else do it? When did you start trying to get your baby into a routine, and how did you start? With a few small changes or did you start as you mean to go on? How does your day or night time routine with baby go?

[MadLabOwner]

hi bananabump
Sounds like you already have a routine going, and are doing really well for a 6 week old baby. You could carry on as you are, and just fall into his routine, which would be stress free for your little one. Maybe putting him to bed when he is tired at 8pm.....do you have a monitor so you can hear him in case he is sick or cries? At some stage he will have to be upstairs by himself, unless you all start going to bed at 8pm every night.

From my own experience, I found that a routine gradually emerged around 8 weeks in any event and she became much more predictable with feeding and sleeping, so you may find that things get much simpler in the next few weeks anyway

Best of luck, and go with the flow! Easiest way

[speak2deb]

I didn't start putting my daughter upstairs to bed before we went until she dropped her 9pm-ish feed. Once she started sleeping right through from 7pm until around midnight, we started putting her to bed. I think she was about 10 weeks old when this started. She next dropped her 4am feed so just slept from 7-midnight then 1am-7am. When she got to about 14 weeks she dropped her midnight feed and now sleeps from 7.30/8pm- 7am.

I used to wonder how you got babies into a routine and questioned everyone about how they did it all the time, but dd really did just do it on her own in the end.

[LadyTophamHatt]

ds4 is 8 months old and still stay down starirs with us until we go to bed.

TBH I've never tried to start a routine, they'be just evolved over time naturally.


Just do what you doing now, if you're happy wth it, why change anything?

[miniegg]

hi there
my DS is now eight weeks old and I started trying to get into a routine two weeks ago. We are all so much happier for doing it! I really recommend giving it a go, to see if it suits your baby and you.
We went with the flow for the first few weeks, as i really felt it would be too stressful to try and follow a routine so early, and in any case, I wouldn't have known where to begin.
I started by trying to follow the routine for a four to six week old baby in the Gina Ford book, (I don't think we're allowed to discuss her in too much detail on this website, for legal reasons...[hmmm]) The downside is it means starting the day at 7am (I HATE getting up early!). The major upside is that baby is in bed, fast asleep, by 7pm. Which is worth the sacrifice in the morning! It means you and your DP have a quiet, relaxing evening to yourselves, which is important for your relationship!
Before we started doing the routine, my husband was coming home from work frazzled at 8pm, to find me and the baby both exhausted, and me shoving the baby at him because I was so desperate for a break! And half the time the baby would start crying just as we sat down for supper and tried to have five minutes conversation with each other, which was really difficult to deal with.
Basically I am not following the routine very rigidly - I'm just applying the general principles, of getting enough feeds in during the day, and neither too much or too little sleep during the day, to maximise the chances of the baby sleeping well at night. I am not letting it get in the way of my life, and more importantly, i'm not forcing the baby to fit with the recommended timings, if he doesn't want to. So if he cries for a feed when he's not "supposed" to, of course I'll feed him. And if I wanted to go out for lunch, and he's "supposed" to be having a lunch time rest, i'll take him with me, and he rests in the pram, if he feels like it, and if he doesn't, he doesn't. But he seems very happy, and I'd say it's really working for us.

[Hattie05]

Hi there, I don't 'do' daytime routines, but i can help on the bedtime routine which is really what you're asking anyway!

Is this your first child? My first was as yours is currently, sleeping in living room and we took her up with us when we went to bed. I think things probably stayed that way until she was 10 weeks or so. Then i started a bedtime routine of bath, feed and bed early evening. She breastfed regularly throughout the night, and i would normally bring her back down with us to feed her. We ended up co-sleeping for convenience and it stayed that way for 2years with her still breastfeeding during the night.

Second baby - due to more confidence in parenting and more 'need' for us to have a rest of an evening i started putting her to bed around 7ish after bath, feed etc. and if she woke for a feed i fed her in her room and straight back into cot. She is a very contented baby so always went back down easily (dd1 didn't) and by 3mths dd2 was sleeping 7-7 without waking for feeds.

I'd say both my babies fell into their own daytime routines at around 6mths of the usual morning feed, breakfast. Mid morning feed, lunch. mid afternoon feed, dinner. Bedtime feed.

You can see i had two very different experiences with my children and i'm happy with both. I loved all the cuddles etc i got with dd1 which i obviously don't get as much with dd2. But on the otherhand i love the peaceful nights with dd2!

The only thing with dd2 is that she actually lost weight between 3 and 6mths and i put this down to no feeds at night. My milk supply was also very low as i returned to work at 6mths and just didn't have energy to express like i did with dd1. I do still breastfeed dd2 but only once in a day (shes now 10mths) because i just didn't have the opportunity to constantly feed her -which is necessary for building supply.

Phew!- i've waffled but hope its helped! Just trying to give you the picture of two different experiences and to show that there is no right or wrong way - mothers instinct must be trusted!

[emkana]

I totally agree with LadyTophamHatt. Things will fall into place as you go on, why change anything atm if you're happy? You're doing great, and I'm sure your baby is very happy the way things are.

[BroccoliSpears]

Yes, we just fell into dd's routine gradually. The first thing to become a routine for us was bath time - dd would get sleepy at about the same time every day so we started to bath her, then jammies then BF to sleep and put her down. With a couple of tweaks, that's still her routine at 16 mths. I'm pretty sure we weren't doing it at 6.5 weeks though, so you're doing well. It was from this start that things gradually fell into place: same bedtime every day = roughly the same night feeds = more or less the same morning waking = a vague pattern emerging for daytime naps and feeds.

(In fact, now I'm thinking about it, I think at 6.5 weeks dd used to go to sleep on dp's chest each evening and sleep there while he watched telly and I slept / recovered from the evening's marathon cluster feed - then he'd bring her up for a feed when she woke and she'd then spend the night in bed with me or in her crib by my bed, so we weren't leaving her alone at that point either.)

[bananabump]

Thanks for all your replies, to be honest I didn't really think we had any kind of routine established til I wrote it down concisely, but I suppose it is starting to follow more of a pattern. Feeding isn't, but I'm not bothered as long as he's happy!

I spose I'll just gradually impose more of a bedtime routine and try to get him to feed lots in the evening so his feeds will space out more at night. I think whoever said that daytime routines work better after 6 months with the introduction of solids is probably right.


Yes, he is my first baby, all the kids in the family are teenagers so I'm winging it a bit, mumsnet is a godsend!