Routines

[ferdy]

Hi everyone, please can you help I am driving myself mad with all the books I have read, Annabell Karmela, Jo Frost and Gina Ford..

I have a 5 week old.. do i need a routine do they work, any suggestions to good ones ..

My personal opinion would be, yes you do need a routine - but your routine not someone elses!

A routine doesn't mean that the world falls apart if you don't do something on time - but just something to go by... I'm sure that you eat at kind of the same time during the day each day and it is the same for babies.

Also I think that if you want a lo to sleep through the night there has to be come kind of routine...

Ferdy

If you are breastfeeding, it is now generally accepted that it is best to feed on demand. The first weeks / months are mad, then generally things fall into place somehow, and you and your LO develop a routine that suits you.

Go whith what feels right for you and your baby, and leave the 'experts' books alone for a while. All the contradictions are enough to drive anyone round the bend. I certainly remember reading some that really sapped my confidence in my own judgement. Not good.

Personally, I found reading about other mums' experiences on the breast / bottle feeding threads and the ones on sleep much more helpful.

i didn't get on with routines at all! both of mine were breastfed on demand, which pretty much throws any routine out of the window anyway,.

but I just am totally not the kind of person who can have their day planned out already. I like to get up, decide what to do and go and do it, which I think is pretty hard with a routine.

ds1 fell into his own routine pretty quickly. ds2 never did, but we've muddled through just fine

Ferdy, if ypu're someone who feels like they would like/need a routine then by all means go for it... despite lots of people thinking I was a psycho, it just became very apparent in the early weeks that I wasn't going to survive with my sanity intact at all without some kind of structure/routine in my day. You need to think about whether this is you. Don't take on a routine if you're happy as you are/content to go with the flow etc. because someone has made you feel as if you ought to.

That said, if you have decided it's the way you want to go, just pick a book and go with it - they all seem to go along similar lines in any case, you may find.

BUT, don't get all bent out of shape when things go awry (and at 5 weeks they invariably will, if my experience is anything to go by), if/when it goes pear shape, just try and wriggle things round until the next viable time slot.

This, I think, is the key to not driving yourself batty with those books - understanding that your LO hasn't read them, and will want/need what he/she needs when he/she needs it and you won't have a lot of choice but to comply!

It won't fall into place immediately, but it will eventually... take it a day at a time.

By the way, if something doesn't work for you, you can always switch - we started with the baby whisperer, but the daytime sleep patterns were all wrong for my DD, so we switched to Gina [ducks and whispers] which worked much better for us...

The early weeks are total chaos though, and whatever you do, it WILL get easier.

Good luck!

db
xx

I don't think exclusive breast feeding and routines are massively compatible.

But you'll only be doing that for at most about six months (seems ages I know but it will fly by) and then you will have a routine for solids (not so easy to just whip out a puree) sowhen it may become a bit easlier and natural.

Anything you do find will change anyway!

I regret trying to follow Gina Ford, especially her bottle feeding bit, which I probably just experimented with.

Try to go with what feels right for you, if baby is hungry feed, if sleep, put down for a nap, if crying, then cuddle.

I think too much information knocks confidence & your own maternal (which will kick in) ability.

On the plus side, about 4mths ish, I was using the sleep 'rules' as a guidance. My dd's are excellent sleepers.

DD2 feed every 2 hours, stretching to about 3 at 4-5mths, then maybe went to 4 hours. The main thing, is they grow so fast & before you know it, you'll be weaning (am assuming 6mths) & then you can tweak things again.
Agree that just as you get past one stage, it does change

~Maybe Skimty, although I exclusvely BF for 6 months while following a fairly strict routine, and didn't have any problems. I'm not saying that's the case for everyone, but I don't the two are always mutually exclusive. I had a couple of Gina Fordish friends who also didn't have a problem.

But then I had a baby who never really asked for food - she wasn't that interested (still isn't) so 3/4 hourly feeding was never a problem. I suppose it's maybe harder with a hungry one, don't know.

Sometimes she would cluster feed a bit in the evenings, but once i learnt that was what she was doing I just went with it, and because it was evening time it didn't muddle things, really.

Anyway, IMHO, you CAN exclusively BF within a routine...

agree & in case I didn't make it clear, I exclusively BF dd2 within a routine (albeit a 2 hr pattern) She also cluster feed.

DD1 probably had about 2 bottles in the first 6mths & both were bf until they were 2years for DD1 & 2 years 5 months for dd2.

I BF both mine and was very much a routine mum BUT as said above, it is a routine that fitted me and the baby. I did read Gina Ford and found a lot of useful info in it esp. sleeping and feeding but i was not religious about it and a few things I disagreed with. I did find a bottle of expressed or formula last thing at night, say 10/11pm was very useful when your milk is getting low. I would say 5 weeks is still a bit too early to expect a routine. By all means, start at a set time each morning and try to keep to a pattern but you will find that some days baby stays awake 1/2 hour after a feed and other days, stays awake for 2 hours which then screws up the rest of your "routine". I would say 10/12 weeks is more reasonable to expect a routine. Also, the drawback to the GF books was that it seemed her babies miraculously went into the routine in a day whereas for me, it was working into one as the days and weeks went by. Certainly feeds became more set and then naps. I did things to get the daytime naps set in stone simply by going out in the pram or car, baby always fell asleep and daytime naps were always in the pram so to her, that was naptime. Both babies were about 6 months and settled into their routine before I put them into cot for long lunchtime sleep.
The important thing is to try and relax and enjoy baby, if a routine works for you then great, if some days things go awry, ignore it and don't get upset. The months will pass and you will end up with a baby that eats and sleeps fine. Both my babies slept through the night from 7/10 weeks old. I did find that sleeping in their cotbeds from day one, in the dark, in a sleeping bag worked a treat.

Unless you are desperate for a routine, don't bother. Babies change day by day and week by week, so you can either fight them to make them follow someone elses routine, o go with their own

Can I just say bin the books? They put a lot of pressure on you. 5 weeks old is very young. If BF, at 5 weeks, it's hard because many babies get very unsettled in the evenings and you are also tired. It's hard work (for bottle fed babies as well!!)

I didn't follow a routine as such but I noted down when my DSs were tired. At 5 weeks old they were probably awake for 1.5 hours and then getting tired. Two naps a day (1 morning, 1 afternoon) came much later, and came naturally.

You will have a lot of people - here, and friends, and family and in laws - saying that THEIR child slept through at 10 weeks, THEIR child never made a fuss in the evening, THEIR child was potty trained at 18 months, THEIR child was willingly eating brussel sprouts, etc etc. Welcome to the competitive world of motherhood.

My DS1 slept through the night for the first time at 18 months old. DS2 at 6 months old - but still wakes up once in a while specially when ill or teething.

I found the Gina Ford routine really useful but didn't follow anything slavishly; It was really useful as a framework though; for example putting ds down for a nap at 9am, 12noon and 4pm...it worked an absolute dream.

Some babies are great and will give you good signals for feed me, or I'm tired (eg rubbing eyes, yawning!) DS did NONE of that, it was either completely 'normal' or screamingly overtired, so much so that he simply couldn't drop off....so having those sleep times as a framework was fantastic. He got the rests he needed, the feeds kind of followed on from that and he was very, very contented.

So I guess I'm saying don't dismiss the idea of a routine; some babies don't 'fall' into their own, IMO, but need a bit of guidance to help them, it worked fab for us.

But by 'worked' I mean DS slotted in fine; we didn't have to leave him sobbing for food or naps etc....I would not continue with a routine that seemed to be agony to everyone, they are meant to make things easier!

Good luck...

Totally agree with Thisisyesterday and Pippa, they have their own routine........it's for you to find out what it is before they change it again!

Gina Ford gives you a good feeding routine but it's a rough guide no more than that.

The thing with routines - from some of my friends' experiences - is that it can be frustrating, and you can feel let down by yourself, and by the routine itself. You can wake up one morning and go 'right, today, we will do this at this time, have milk at this time, sleep at this time' and by 12 oclock you have gone completely off the routine and you have a crying baby on your hands, you don't understand why, and your energies are focused on 'getting it right according to GF'. One of my friends said to me that she has waisted the first few weeks of her baby DD's life focusing on a stupid book. THat's not right.

Do what you feel is right. It's hard but you will look back at it with very fond memories.

I did GF with dd1, worked well for sleeping (7-7 at 12 wks) but completely knackered my bf as I was feeding to timetable and not demand. However, dd1 was fed for 6wks on demand and demanded more than I could cope with so I went onto bottles at 6wks.
dd2 bf 6mths- started GF sleep/ nap times as much as possible at 6mths and slept through 7-7 from 7.5mths.
5 weeks is way to early. The only thing I did do was bath/milk/bed routine aiming for sleep upstairs in bedroom at the same bed time. I also religiously dressed both in the early morning. This was to help them distinguish day from night. I kept night feeding almost silent, cuddles but no chatting. Daytime I encouraged awake time and talking/singing so it encouraged longer stretches asleep at night.
Don't stress because it is very early days, just try to cherish this time because when you look back it goes so quickly and before you know it they are 3 and almost 1

Once they seem to be awake tons in the day I have always put mine to sleep 2hrs after they last woke as per GF and have generally found that advice accurate- that babies are tired after 2hrs awake and once awake much longer than this they become too tired to settle i.e. overstimulated.