Newborn + routine?

[sparkleblue]

Hello! This is my first ever post :)

I'm currently 32w with our first baby. Just spent the weekend surrounded by mums at a wedding, they were all discussing sleep patterns and routines. Everything I've read so far seems to suggest getting your baby into a routine is a good idea. But every post seems to start from when the baby is 3 months old.

I'm sure this is a rookie question, but what is the reason for waiting until 3 months for a routine? Is the baby just too young to pick one up before then? How do you know when it's the right time to start one? And rotuine wise, what do you do in the first 3 months - just go with the flow? (I'm definitely not panicking over here...haha!)

Thank you!

Yes, you defintely just go with the flow at first. The first few weeks can go by in a bit of a blur.

Don’t worry though, there’s things you can do. Try to keep daytime busy and bright, get baby outside each day (send DH out for a walk with them while it’s light if you can and keep nighttime boring and quiet.

I found Baby Calming incredibly helpful. It’s not prescriptive like sone baby books, instead it gives you the confidence to settle into a routine that suits both you and your baby, however you decide to feed them. I’d read it before baby arrives though, you might not have chance when LO is here

You might just find that by 3 moths, you’ve both fallen into a routine anyway

A bedtime routine (eg. bath, bottle, massage, bed) can be started from 6 weeks. Well, that's what my Ovia app stated with my DS and he was sleeping 6 hour stretches from 8 weeks and 10 hour stretches by 12 weeks! It just got better from there. Have to be honest and say I obviously can't attribute it 100% to the routine but we were always stringent with it and DS (now 2) has never had sleep issues (bar a bad couple of days here and there) so it can't hurt!

In terms of feeding/nap time routines, you're not likely to get that down for 3 months at least.

While they're newborns, you're best to let them sleep freely. The more daytime sleep they get, the better! Nothing worse for night time sleep than an overtired baby! We had daytime naps on a thick, soft playmat in the lounge where there was plenty of daylight and night time sleep in a Moses basket/cot in an almost pitch black room to help adjust the body clock to recognise day and night. Also to help associate cot/night time with a longer sleep. I think it was coming up to 5 months when DS started showing tired signs at regular times (when he had been awake for a set amount of hours) which is when we started putting him in his cot for naps and he would have longer naps at set times in the day.

The closest to a routine you'll get for a newborn is that you may find that they feed in set intervals (eg every 3/4 hours). I think my little boy was 4 months before he had set feed times (every 4 hours and set wake/bed times so 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 8pm bottles).

That was just our experience though and honestly we let our little boy lead us to his routine. Follow the babies cues and you'll have a routine that works for them!

That being said, I did come across an article by a mother who had breastfed all four children, used a routine from day one and swears blind it worked for all of hers so worth a go I suppose. Here's the link if you're interested!

amotherfarfromhome.com/sample-newborn-routine/