To think there is no way my baby will ever manage a Gina Ford routine?

[Aliveinwanderland]

Someone recommended the Gina Ford book to me. Read it through and just laughed! There is no chance my 9 week old DS would manage that routine!

I am wanting to get him a little more structure after Christmas but according to Gina Ford he should be sleeping through from 10:30-7am by now. DS goes no longer than 3 hours between feeds and only feeds for 5-10 mins at a time. Gina says I should be doing 20 minutes on one breast and then 10 minutes on another- how on earth is someone suppose to force a baby take this much?

Gina Ford has gone back on the bookshelf never to be read again. But if anyone has any sensible advice about how to promote longer sleeping at night, or a good day time routine then please share!

As the mother of 3, long ago, entirely BF babies, I'd advise to just go with the flow at 9 weeks OP.

Baby will eventually emerge into a routine of day and night and when baby is ready the nights will get longer.

One thing you can be pretty sure of is that eventually most healthy children will sleep through most of the night, and by the time they're teenagers they'll have pretty much nailed sleeping.

For now just enjoy your beautiful baby.

rince just kept on doing things at the same time every day. Like groundhog day and quite mundane at times.
It's bizarre when people claim something could never work if they have never tried it. And then get pissed off with people who say "well yes it worked well for me"
The OP said There is no chance my 9 week old DS would manage that routine! and I think that is untrue.
Like every rule there are exceptions, but it is not impossible for a baby that age to be in a routine & sleeping.
Anyway every stage only lasts a short time & so that is worth keeping in mind. These things don't go on forever, even if it feels like it at the time.

rince neither of mine cried & would never have been left to cry themselves to sleep. Because we did things at a set time every day they just got used to being put down at set times and used to settle easily.

I never understand. The my baby never cried brigade, So they came out being able to speak, did they. "Mummy I need my nappy changing'. "Mummy I need you to get my wind" up.
" I need feeding" ect ect. I assume not
Crying is a form of communication.
Every baby cries. Granted some more than others, but To say your baby never cried or cries. Is, quite frankly BS.

My DS feeds in demand. He would be very distressed to be made to wait until the next feeding time if he was hungry earlier. He is also a snack feeder so only does 5-10 mins but does so often. He can't be forced to take more than ten minutes of feeding, nor do I think I have the supply for him to go longer.

Ffs
Ginas routine does not involve making baby wait for a feed🙄. You do feed on demand but you also feed at set times so for example I fed my twins at 6.30am, 10.30am, 2.30pm, 6pm, 10pm but also whatever feeds they need in between.
Gina is very clear always feed a hungry baby.
People saying "my baby wouldn't wait" have not followed the routine. There is no waiting

You do feed on demand but you also feed at set times

She says that any baby that isn't premature or very tiny should be able to go 3 hours between feeds, and that if you're 'demand feeding' more frequently then something's not right.

Prove it. For a 9 week old

2014 - if babies mostly have a natural three hour feeding schedule, then what's the point of GF?

I don't accept that people won't one way or another try to stretch out the waiting time between feeds to fit in with the schedule GF says is at the heart of her 'contented baby' programme. I've witnessed people doing it with tiny babies, offering dummies, ignoring babies who are rooting and showing feeding cues. Sometimes these babies will go on to full on crying, which the mum may eventually deal with by feeding, but sometimes a mum will try to comfort the baby and stop the crying without feeding. Or the baby will go back to sleep. Either way, if you're talking about a newborn, it's not great. Responsive caregiving involves um, responding to a baby's cues, rather than ignoring them while you look at your watch and wonder if the baby will give up or become really hungry and distressed.

2014 - if babies mostly have a natural three hour feeding schedule, then what's the point of GF?

I don't accept that people won't one way or another try to stretch out the waiting time between feeds to fit in with the schedule GF says is at the heart of her 'contented baby' programme. I've witnessed people doing it with tiny babies, offering dummies, ignoring babies who are rooting and showing feeding cues. Sometimes these babies will go on to full on crying, which the mum may eventually deal with by feeding, but sometimes a mum will try to comfort the baby and stop the crying without feeding. Or the baby will go back to sleep. Either way, if you're talking about a newborn, it's not great. Responsive caregiving involves um, responding to a baby's cues, rather than ignoring them while you look at your watch and wonder if the baby will give up or become really hungry and distressed.

From her website: www.contentedbaby.com/FAQ-Routines.htm#demandfeeding

"In the very early days I always advise a mother to assume that, if the baby is crying, then hunger is possibly the main reason why and the baby should be fed. However, I do stress the importance that, if a baby is continually crying and unhappy, then you should also look for reasons why the baby cannot last the three hours between feeds. There are many reasons for this, the main reason being that the baby has not been latched on properly to the breast and, while he may appear to be constantly sucking for up to an hour, much of the time he is not actually drinking well. This is why mothers who are breast feeding and finding that their baby is not going happily for 2-3 hours between feeds should always seek advice from an experienced breast-feeding counsellor. Any healthy baby weighing more than 6lbs at birth should manage to go three hours between feeds, three hours being from the beginning of a feed to the beginning of the next feed."

But she doesn't say to make them wait for three hours to be up before you feed them does she.😂🙄

And that experienced breast feeding counsellor would not advise trying to space them out 3 hourly ;)

She just suggests there could be other reasons such as latch issues.
Nothing wrong with that advice 🙄

But she doesn't say to make them wait for three hours to be up before you feed them does she

I didn't claim she did. But yes, she does actually say that bf babies should be going 3 hours between feeds and that if they don't it's the sign of a problem.

Every baby cries. Granted some more than others, but To say your baby never cried or cries. Is, quite frankly BS.

I said this and what I meant was that once I got the GF routine established the babies didn't cry - unless they were ill or hurt, thought that went without saying - because they slept well and and fed at times I knew when to expect to feed them, so I didn't need to keep them waiting because I was in the middle of something else. When they woke in the night needing a feed they didn't cry, they chuntered, gurgled a bit and I got up and fed them, similarly first thing in the morning. Before the routine they cried a lot because they were tired or hungry and I thought they couldn't be because I had fed them an hour ago (but not for long enough and I didn't realise) and were hungry.

Once they got mobile (quite late in the case of my DCs) there were more tears due to frustration/hurting themselves but routine established and up to the age of 1 year or so they practically never cried, and then only with an obvious reason.

Oh and mine never had much in the way of wind or colic or minded having dirty nappies either really which is luck I would say.

Sometimes he can go 3 hours. Sometimes it's 1 hour. Sometimes he just wants the comfort rather than the food, sometimes he wants a quick top up half an hour after a feed as he decides he hasn't had enough.

I've had his latch checked and it's fine. He feeds effectively and over night does his 3 hours between feeds. But in the day when he grumbles, an easy fix is to put him on the boob. He is in 75th centile for weight abd height but was only born in the 25th so is clearly getting enough food.

Aliveinwanderland you sound like you're doing a great job. My DS (8 weeks) is doing about the same kind of thing as yours. I've been feeding him on demand and sometimes he sleeps well, other times he really doesn't. The one thing I've found that has made a massive difference, today, is bunging him in a sling. He's slept like a proper baby in there, two lots of two hours of solid quiet sleep, rather than sleeping like a little snuffly grunty coughy chatty thing who wakes up and cries at the slightest provocation and only wants to sleep on Daddy or Mummy.

The point has been made upthread but might be worth making again: feeding on demand is how milk production works. The more you feed the more you make. Individual mothers will have faster or slower rates of production, individual babies will have more or fewer demands for longer or shorter feeds. Sometimes production, demand and feed length all align nicely to fit to GF's 3-hourly schedule, sometimes they really don't. Assuming perhaps 50 % of mothers and babies might be able to achieve something like a 3-hourly schedule (and that's probably optimistic given how many biological variables are involved), that means 50 % can't achieve a 3-hourly schedule no matter how hard they try, with all the goodwill in the world. What happens in many of those cases is the milk dries up because there aren't enough demand calls being made for the mother's body to keep up the supply. Mother then "can't breastfeed" but actually probably could have kept going had she not been on a strict schedule. And that's another baby who doesn't get the immunological, gastroenterological, and neurological benefits that breastfeeding confers over formula feeding.

I'm of the old "fed 4 hourly and picked up occasionally whether they needed it or not" generation. I was apparently a demon child who screamed all the time and wanted to feed every time I was picked up. My mother told I was a horrible brat who was spoilt. Actually, I was probably just hungry and incapable of dealing with a 4-hourly schedule, particularly as I was born at 28 weeks in a hospital where even the premature babies were put straight on the 4-hourly schedule and fed water at night. Unsurprisingly I spent my first year in hospital failing to thrive. My mother felt like a failure and resented me for bringing this failure on her and not fitting in with what she was being told to do.

My aunt had 6 kids in the same hospital. All but one managed fine, that one was also branded a spoilt demon and also failed to thrive and also "caused" his mother's milk to dry up. The effect on him has been lifelong.

This has undoubtedly coloured my view, but understanding how the biology of lactation works has also coloured it.

Followed it to the letter ... Loved the structure ... Son slept from 10.30 til 7 from 6 weeks old

Each to their own I say!

Those who do follow it strictly, how do you manage to get out of the house? We do lots of classes or meeting friends and so couldn't be at home for the strict nap times, or to do the naps in a dark room etc that is required.

I will be honest and say the classes are mainly for me. I would go crazy being at home all day with DS. I need some adult conversation and a change of scenery. I find DS sleeps better and is less cranky when out and about.

Alive - I think many of us followed it 'roughly' - it was 16 years ago for me & my DS but bedtime was 7pm and he woke around 7am - we tended to go out in the morning for a long walk (he would sleep in his buggy - dark room not essential) or we went to a baby group, in which case he would have a nap when we got home. In the afternoons we would have another long walk or a nap at home if I wasn't going out .............. and then always bed at 7pm. We lived a very rural lifestyle so nothing much happened in the evenings that you would take a baby to - a few times we would have a meal at friends' houses but he would just sleep in a travel cot or similar.

As I said before, I was probably just lucky in that I had a good sleeper - I can't be sure if it really was the GF routine. The one thing I was always strict about, from the day we got back from hospital, is that bed time was a 'set time - 7pm' and not just as DS drifted off and he slept in his own room from 4 weeks.

Alive - I just planned to go out around nap times. That may not suit you, but with twins who were pretty cranky devil children without having had a nap, it was more of a priority for me that they be rested and content than me going out to classes (couldn't really do classes anyway, as none were set up for twins).

If my 2 napped between 9-10am and 1-3 is (for example) I arranged to meet friends outwith those times.

"Mother then "can't breastfeed" but actually probably could have kept going had she not been on a strict schedule. And that's another baby who doesn't get the immunological, gastroenterological, and neurological benefits that breastfeeding confers over formula feeding."

Not how "can't breastfeed " worked in my case but don't let that ruin your generalisation.

alive most toddler groups are in the morning so we would aim to be out and about by about 9/9.30 and then back home about 11.30/12.00. We would have a quick lunch then 2 hours nap time and then go out again for a couple of hours about 3.30ish. So I would just arrange things around this and it seemed to work.
Used to aim to follow it in the week and be more flexible at the weekends.
Mine would be desperate to get out by 9ish anyway if we had been up since 7.
They were definitely not hungry following this routine & they were never over tired.