URGENT......routine for a 4/5 month old, please.

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Cannot for the life of me remember what ds was doing at this age and so cant pass on my wisdom to my desperate friend!!!!

She has a 4month old dd who doesnt sleep much at night and tends to be a snacker at everything! She snacks when she eats and sleeps and means that my friend cant get on with anything! It is her first baby and she told me this morning that she doesnt think she can go on......dont quite know what that means. She is trying to work from home and her partner who is also at home isnt much help.

She says she finds it hard with her lifestyle to get into a proper bed time routine etc ie Gina Ford style but she needs some help.

If someone could give me their workable 24 hour routine, I would be very grateful. She is still expressing milk and giving formula and is not yet on solids.

So do I suggest less sleep in the day to make her go down better at night........????

Please help as I have told her about you all and that someone somewhere will come up with something.

bump

I think some babies just are fussier about things. Ds was a real snacker, and dd was totally different, food wise, but she really did little naps, until she consolidated it into one big 2 hour sleep. I think the baby will just settle in her own time - 4 months is still quite young really!

Hi, at 4 months, my ds's 'average' day went like this, give or take half hour or so:

6am - wake and BF
9ish - BF (after school run)
9.30 - 11- nap
11.30 - BF
2pm - BF
2.15 - 3.15pm - nap (foll by school run)
4pm - BF
5 - 6 - nap
6 - BF
7 - Bath & wind down time
8 - BF and to bed
Then anytime from 2-3am - a BF

At that stage, my lo feeding every 2.5 hrs (ish) and having 3 naps a day (totalling 3 - 3.5 hrs). Think he would have slept longer in the early afternoon but always disturbed him by school run.

Might be an idea for your friend to tackle the feeding first, so hunger doesn't then interfere with the sleep. When you say friend's dd is a snacker at feeding, how often is she feeding? The reason I ask is that I fed ds1 on demand but often got confused over his tired / hungry cries and signs - especially on evening. At times he was almost permanently attached to the boob but still bobbing on and off, if that makes sense! (Tracy Hogg aka the baby Whisperer has got some useful descriptions of a baby's body language in her book, ie face and ear grabbing when tired etc). With ds2 tried to be more structured, though still flexible, and found he fell into a pattern of feeding every 2.5 hrs or so - more frequently during growth spurts. Tried to introduce some kind of consistent, but flexible, routine with ds2, as with ds1, I was often all over the shot!! and I've borrowed ideas from different things I've read. Never followed just one approach. HTH

ds2's routine at that age:
wake about 7:00 - I'd feed, and change him, let him kick around on his mat (tip - put a lot of small coloured objects in front of him - I'd use baby rattles, kitchen utensils (wooden spoons, not knives), DS1's toy cars, different swatches of material etc - it really occupies them picking things up, examining them and moving on to the next toy).
around 9:00 / 9:30 ds2 would get cranky - i'd settle him and he'd sleep until 11:30 / 12:00.
bottle, walk (to collect ds1 from school)
nap at 2:30 - 3:00 until 5:00
bottle. he'd play for a bit at this time - but wa generally a bit more restless than in the morning so I'd end up carrying him around (a sling worn in the house is handy here if you need your hands free)
bed at 7:00 pm

he didn't sleep through at that age (still doesn't ), a bath definitely helped him to settle better and some fresh air during the day also helped.
the golden rule at that age for me was ds2 shouldn't be awake for more than 2 hours between naps. if he got cranky and it wasn't hunger/nappy, then I'd always try to settle him. ds2 was a snacker too, which was great fun as I was expressing full time for him. He'd take maybe 3 oz's, then look for more half an hour later. I didn't tackle it until ds2 was about that age. It takes a bit of effort but your friend should really try and get him onto just 5 bottles a day. It will make life so much easier for her. do it by stretching out the times between snacks by distracting her DD. It will work.
best of luck, hope that helps.

My cousin had exactly the same problems at this age. Her DS would graze all day and all night and she was getting very depressed. She sarted GF in an attempt to get more sleep and try to address the grazing issue. She says she noticed a drastic improvement in only 2 days.

IMHO It's the principles that really work rather than the strict routine: Get as much food into them in the day as possible, and limit sleep during the day. I think at 4 months reccomended sleep is about 3 hours, but I'm happy to be corrected.

My cousin said that by making DS wait a bit longer between feeds he fed for longer and slept better.

Don't have CLB here but maybe some other kind person can give you the routine.

BR

I think a bedtime routine can really help at this age - it allows some free time in the evening. It may have no impact on day time short feeds, but that's maybe what the baby needs.

A bedtime routine allows for a feed, a bath, quiet time and a feed, in that order, and at about the same time every night. You need to do it consistently, but it will work after just a few days if you stick at it. If the baby wakes or doesn't settle, then you don't take the baby downstairs again but settle in or near the cot. This is not controlled crying which I feel is too much for a baby of this age. It's just establishing a quite end to the day.

Great .........thanks everyone.....it all makes sense and I will pass it on.