Routine

[Mena1]

When is the best time to start a routine. I cant remember how young DS1 was but he slept through the night at 3.5 months and hoping to get DS2 in the same routine. I am not a Gina Ford fan so wont even go there!
DS2 is 9 weeks old now and most nights he is awake for about 3-4 hours, sometimes he is screaming the house down (colic) sometimes he is just sitting awake admiring the world. This leaves me shattered and in a zombie state and makes dealing with DS1 hard work. any advice would be appreciated. DS2 is looking like he is slowly coming out of the colic phase (touch wood) so now might be a good time to start a routine. also how would i go about starting one? i swear i have no brain cells left.

[Only1scoop]

I know not everyone would agree but we started establishing a routine more or less from the first few weeks. Bath at same time in eve ....feed and cuddles and down for night.

[NickyEds]

I was just about to ask about this myself!! My DS is 7 weeks and I've had soooo many people ask "is he in a routine" that I'm thinking I've left it late. To date the routine goes something like this; dawn till dusk DS does exactly as he pleases and OH and I fall in! The last couple of nights I've given him a bath at 8.30. Does that count? Sorry for lack of advice- hopefully someone far more experienced willcome along.

[feesh]

At about 8-10 weeks we just started with a bedtime. So upstairs with a bottle at 6pm and then pop in their cots (twins) - we didn't do a bath every night....because twins!

They were very good sleepers/self settlers right from the start, though (we used to have to wake them to feed them for weeks after they were born). And they pretty much dropped straight off to sleep once in their cots, so we didn't have to do controlled crying or anything, then we came up to bed at 11pm and gave them a dream feed. Then we pushed the very early morning bottle later and later until they weren't waking up for the day until 6am, which is when we get up anyway.

During the day, we fed them every three hours and at this age all they ever did was sleep between each feed.

As they got slightly older, maybe 12 weeks or so, I think that was when I started to be a bit more organised with naps, originally 4 naps a day between feeds. This dropped to three naps quite quickly, and then two naps around 6-7 months.

I always fed them every three hours during the day, right up until they started weaning and began to drop feeds naturally. It suited them, but it might not suit all babies.

So, basically, start with bedtime and then the rest of the day tends to naturally sort itself out soon after.