To wonder if anyone successfully managed a routine with a baby?

[Toomanymuslins]

By routine I mean one in books (I don’t just mean Gina Ford - any book.)

It seems impossible to me. You can’t make a baby sleep it they don’t want to but also if they are tired waking them up is difficult/impossible! And if they are hungry you know about it but likewise you can’t force them to take more milk than they want ...

Do I just have awkward sods for babies or are routines impossible?

DD did the 4 hour EASY from the Baby Whisperer. She did it herself at 8 weeks. (Helped by the fact she sucked her thumb).
It was amazing.
Well I had no friends as no one likes a show off, but it honestly was nothing to do with me 😁

Eat, play, sleep sounds good, but what do you do if your baby falls asleep after feeding, and if left to play would stay awake for hours and cry inconsolably because they were over-tired?

@MaskingForIt How old is the baby?

If they're fed as soon as they wake and are falling into a deep sleep straight after then I'd assume their wake window is just very short? Eat, sleep, eat, sleep is very normal in the early weeks. It's only once they're a bit older that they start having wake windows that are longer than the time it takes to feed, change and wind. Then you introduce the play aspect.

If they are eating then sleeping and then waking very soon after (but earlier than you'd expect to feed). Then I'd assume they have a feed to sleep association and would continue to offer a feed as soon as they wake (even if it seems too early) to help break that. Then I'd aim to use the rest of the wake window for play.

Once they're getting towards a predicted nap time and/or showing signs of sleepiness then you put them down however you do it. For me that was literally just putting DS in his cot with his dummy and leaving him to it. Or rocking him for a little bit to get him drowsy then putting him down.

But it varies from baby to baby and this is just what I'd aim to do with my baby in that scenario.

Yes I did. I followed the EASY routine which worked.

If you feel like that about it just don't do it!

I wake my babies to feed using fresh air and light. I get them to take full feeds by a number of means including not offering dribs and drabs but trying to reach a point where they are actually ready for full feeds, not just peckish and bored. Far easier when bottle feeding. Get them to sleep by keeping them awake if at all possible at certain times. That may mean not going out because they fall asleep in the pram

I think it works for us and babies are settled rather than whingy. If they're cross I know why. But equally it's just down to the baby really and if it means that much to you. Waking a sleeping baby or delaying a feed slightly can feel difficult but the alternative for us seemed to be babies who didn't know what they wanted and had colic. I don't find babies know what they need at a given time.

@Curiosity101 He’s 6 weeks. Will currently only fall asleep at the boob or in the pram while I am walking. If I am lucky he might stay asleep for an hour or so when I get home with the pram, but other than that he is attached to me, or crying if not being held. Often crying if being held.

I nearly drove myself demented trying to do the EASY routine and eventually dropped it after some lovely women on MN talked me down off the ledge when I posted about how I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working despite following the guidance to the letter. I think having structure and rhythm to the day is good but that small babies do what they want to do.

Honestly I think that when these books “work” it’s because the plan suits the baby, i.e. the baby would have fallen into similar patterns anyway.

I think some babies (and people!) are more compliant than others but I’m with @MatildaTheCat and really find routines sanity-saving. Including sleep training and walking for miles if that’s what it takes for them to sleep. Paid off massively in the long term for us.

@MaskingForIt If you've ruled out any intolerances and/or colic or silent reflux I'd probably be trying to work on different routes to sleep. Have you tried a few different dummies and rocking to sleep, white noise, swaddling etc etc? DS hated his dummies at first and kept rejecting them but we persisted and now (at almost 19 months), he loves them and would have one 24/7 if we let him but only actually has them at nap/bed time.

It's impossible to advise in your case though as he's your baby and you'll know him best. It also could just be that your baby needs exactly what you're doing for him right now. Experiment with anything you feel comfortable with and ignore anything you don't, just don't be put off if the first time you try something it doesn't quite work out, keep trying and hopefully you'll find what works for both of you ☺️

[quote MaskingForIt]@Curiosity101 He’s 6 weeks. Will currently only fall asleep at the boob or in the pram while I am walking. If I am lucky he might stay asleep for an hour or so when I get home with the pram, but other than that he is attached to me, or crying if not being held. Often crying if being held.[/quote]
Oh, hi there, past me. This was DS to a t. I wish I hadn't flogged myself to death trying to get him to do things "properly". Have you heard of the fourth trimester? You're right in there.

He finally settled down around nine months and continues to be a routine-loving lovely little boy. If he's your only one, I'd try and roll with him as much as possible and remember you can always start doing things differently later on. You won't ruin him for life by letting him feed to sleep or sleep on you. By all means give the routine stuff a go, but don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work.

No.

I did in that I made sure nap times/ feed times would allow for sleep at night.
I worked very hard at establishing self-settling.

We only really fell into a routine when DS started solids. Before that he was exclusively breastfed on demand, and he was a bit slow to gain weight at the start because he had a tongue tie and jaundice, so I basically offered him the breast every opportunity I got. There was no way EASY would have worked for us.

At about 3 or 4 months he did get more tolerant of being put down to sleep at least once in the middle of the day, so he often used to doze off about lunchtime and I'd put him in the carrycot of his pram for a snooze. Other naps were all on me or DH or in the sling or in the back of the car. Our "routine" was something like Eat, Sleep, Eat, Activity, Eat, Sleep.

I didn't do any kind of sleep training either until 6 months because I just fed him if he woke up at night. Looking back I might have been a bit obsessive about getting milk in him he packed on the weight though and went from under the 2nd centile to about the 40th between 2 and 6 months.

Then at 7 months when he started having 3 little meals a day and a couple of bottles when I started work again, a 3-nap routine started fitting in more easily and then a 2-nap one did. He's 16 months now, normally sleeps through for at least 10 hours at night, and has just started having one long afternoon nap which is pretty amazing!

DS is almost 5 months. Has been in a decent “routine” since about 3.5months. We just spent a week writing everything down - whenever he was hungry/tired, how long he slept etc and could soon see that there was a pretty rough “routine” already in there. We just worked on that really 🤷🏻‍♀️ I wake him at the same time every day (7am). He eats, plays, sleeps. If he’s more tired and starts his sleepy cues then we put him down a bit earlier and he naps longer 🤷🏻‍♀️

Baby Whisperer yes

But was formula feeding

I was never one for a routine. But toddlers like routine, so if you have 2nd/3rd/4th babies I think they end up a bit more routine driven because they have to fit in with the bigger ones. I'm not organised enough for a strict routine, it would have been unbelievably stressful if I'd had babies that absolutely had to be in their cot at 7.01pm.

You see masking I’d let him get on with it!

There’s no way mine would have lasted three hours between feeds. And often fed to sleep.

Yes, I did with both of mine, similar to MM123 - by working it out from the DC's and writing it down.

I worked overtime to shift routines too, such as sleep from early evening, a bottle at lunchtime, etc, just by extending/delaying/ starting 5 minutes early/late daily until I got to where the task needed to be.

Worked really well.

We introduced a routine from the day we bought baby home although to be fair it was only a bedtime routine. Bath, feed, then Moses basket in our bedroom whilst we sat in living room. Did it with both babies and friends still comment years later about how good our kids are at going to bed - never complain, never shout down or leave their bed after lights out.

When was that nichy?

Did Baby Whisperer with Ds1, so a routine not a schedule and watched for cues but back then The Baby Whisperer was on TV! It was 18 years ago.

Ds2 was a poorly baby so that and having to take Ds1 to nursery meant we just did what we could.

If anyone is relatively new here you cannot mention the author named in the OP on MN. She sued MN and won, you can google.

Anyone that had a baby that only slept on you... when did it get better? DD 9 weeks is very fourth trimester. Today she napped for 15 min in my arms then 1.5 hours cosleeping (i had a snooze too ) then 1.5 hours in my arms this afternoon. She had a play this morning doing tummy time etc but have napped and eaten all afternoon really.

I wish she would sleep in the moses basket!

Should i wake her to do tummy time or anything like that?

I used to be fed up when I was constantly asked Have you got a routine yet? My response invariably was Yes, today's routine is this and tomorrow it will be different! Such a pointless thing to get worked up about, my motto was always Go with your gut.

I had a full on routine for dd1 and whilst at times it was restrictive, it also meant that I enjoyed her babyhood because we both got enough sleep. Dd2 however laughed in the face of any routine and I wasted lots of time and energy trying to convince her that routine and sleep were the way forward. In hindsight I wish I had wasted less time shushing and patting her in her cot and just let her sleep on me whilst I watched telly. Mind you, she was not a fan of me sitting or leaning either!!!

I did the EASY routine with both my kids, probably from about 3 months. Think that’s baby whisperer. It wasn’t set in stone, but having a rough idea of awake times and feed times helped me a lot and the babies seemed to be happy with it.

Obviously we had days when it all went to hell, but overall it suited us