Is it possible to have a routine with a BF baby?

[megcleary]

DD is 6wo now and DH and I are keen on starting some routine for evenings night.

Is it possible with a bf baby?

Not in my experience. Six weeks is far too young to start a routine even with a bottle fed baby. The problem is that you think you have got it sorted then the baby has a growth spurt and everything goes out of the window. I would just go with the flow and then you won't get upset when the routine thing doesn't work.

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

That's a no. Don't even try. Just go with it.

Yes. Feed at set times (ish!) It will change from time to time but basically be there. Did it for both mine.

i wonder this as well as i am due soon and one of the big things swaying me to ff again is wanting to have a routine of some sort for the benefit of me and ds1 as hubby works odd hours so i cant really be knackered from bf all night / tied to the couch with a cluster feeder. ds was ff and was in a routine from about 6/8 weeks

6weeks is too early to want a routine.

your baby does not understand time or the concept of a routine.

This will cheer DH no end.

meg - it does all pass more quickly than you can imagine. It's only a few months. And you get a happier baby (IMO).

Of course you can. What you have to realise is that not everyone agrees with routine. I do, it worked for me, I have very happy children who still have a routine.

Later on I will try and come back on and explain a bit more what we did - am at work at the mo so shouldn;t even be on here!

really? theres no way for a routine? how is it possible with a ff baby but not a bf one though i dont understand that

I have had DS in a routine-ish since about 8 weeks. It just kinda happened accidentally! We settle in for the last feed at 6pm, it's normally a long one and I keep offering him boob til I am damn sure he really doesn't want any more. Then, upstairs, bath, into pjs and offer him boob again. Let him have his fill, pop him down, light off and downstairs. I don't even have to stay til he is asleep now, he settles himself within about 5 mins. He now sleeps for about 10 hours, wakes at 5, has a snack and sleeps again til 7am.

It took a couple of weeks to fine tune and I never left him to cry.

Good luck!

We are struggling to cope with dd1 who is 3.6 as we are knackered and have had the 6 week growth spurt.

Any advive appreciated co sleeping is killing as i am so nervous i am not sleeping and with the bfeeding it feels i am never free from dd2 and am starting to resent it and am not enjoying dd2 i do none of the things with dd2 that i did with dd1 like singing to her etc.

I started a bedtime routine at about 8 weeks I think.

A daytime feeding routine didn't emerge til about 3-4 months, I just built on what ds was doing naturally by offering a feed every 2.5 hours - naps then fell in between feeds really.

I don't see why you can't have a routine with a bf baby - I'd wait til you're happy your supply is well established first though. The gaps between feeds will be shorter than with a ff baby though - 2-3 hours rather than 3-4.

ds1 we set up a sleep routine - naps, bedtimes at set hours, but he fed on demand - possibly around 10 weeks? maybe a bit later, somewhat hazy.

the dts defy routine by deciding randomly and independently to nap for anything between 20 mins - 2 hours , but we have a set bedtime which works since they started being awake for longer periods in the day.

I think 6 weeks is too young though, they need to be able to stay awake for an hour or two, imo.

Unicef co-sleeping leaflet here

is he in your room or his own and a cot or moses basket out of intrest? ds grew out his moses at about this stage but had to sleep in a cot in our room through lack of space till 7 months or so but i wondered if your more likely to wake them up by being in the same room as all i hear on here is about cosleeping bf babies and i dont have much rl experiences with bf babys?

(not wanting a debate know the guidelines and wouldnt do anything to risk a dcs health am just genuinly intrested lol)

to mumofalump btw!

Mine co-slept but went to bed on his own at 7/8pm and slept 8 hours (til 4 months anyway).

in your bed or his?

i really dont think i could cosleep as i remember waking up in panicks having fallen asleep with ds and being petrified id squashed him

Xmasbunny - he is in a cot in our room, I couldn't co-sleep as both DF and I move around too much and enjoy too thick a quilt for it to be safe.

Hope this helps!

By the way, he has no routine during the day at all.

I felt it was a lot safer deliberately sleeping with the baby than accidentally falling asleep with him and risking dropping/squashing him. Plus I like my sleep too much to have to properly wake up, get up and then try to stay awake in the night . I'd feed him to sleep in bed at 8ish, then get up for the evening, then go back to bed later.

I honetly think it depends on the baby. I couldn't get DD1 into any kind of routine until she was about 4 months. DD2 on the other hand put herself into a routine pretty much from birth.

You can certainly try to encourage a routuine, but I think you need to be prepared for it to take some time unless you are prepared to go down the sleep training route.

I was starting a reasonably reliable daytime routine with DS at that age I think - I fed him at 3 hourly intervals, give or take, put him down for morning and afternoon naps and more or less knew what would be happening at any given time of day. But he was an evening cluster feeder like DD and remained so until weaning at 8 months, so I think the answer is that yes it's possible to move in the direction of a routine with some babies but not all, and not necessarily in the evening.

Routine as in by the clock, not in my experience. Vaguely predictable pattern, yes.

What tends to happen is if you fix one point and reset the clock by that every day (eg waking up at 7am) then things sort of fall into place. Sone people choose bedtime as their fixed point but personally I think that gets frustrating if baby's got really out of kilter.

I agree with snap, but I also think it depends on the baby, some form patterns more easily than others do.

I do think though you are nearly at the end of the nightmare period, I found that 8-10 weeks things really started to settle down and the cluster feeding stopped.

I'm sort of on a routine, and have been since about 3 or 4 weeks (he's 12 weeks now)... like Snap says, it's more like a vaguely predictable pattern incl. bed between 6 & 7, I wake him up for a feed at 11, we don't get up until after 6 (always resettle before then) one middle-of-the-night-feed (his choice but I resettle if he wakes before 2.30am - it is usually about 4.am though was hugely overexcited because it was 5.am last night - is he threatening to sleep through???!!!). In the day I am less proscriptive, so he chooses all feeding times, but he is predicatbly unable to stay awake more than an hour and a half, so once we're up, I'm pretty much able to say what the day will be. We do a bath and massage thing, but have been known to skip it in disrupted or overtired days. He seems happy and is gaining weight but it's really for my slightly anxious and controlling mind to have some notion of input/ control. He is EBF