grazing baby ;-( and Gina Ford

[piratetreasure]

Anybody else's 5 and half week old Baby graze during the day instead of taking a 4oz feed every 3-4 hrs? Any tips to get her into more of a routine?
Trying Gina Ford but not doing v well as she doesn't want to sleep and feed at her times... she likes to sleep during the day and 'play time' is between 6 and 9pm. A lot of people I have spoken to swear by the GF routine I just don't know how to break the cycle she is in at the moment.
any tips?

I don't know about getting baby taking more feeds all at once but please don't get too stressed trying to force a routine on your baby that clearly is not working. Instead figure out one that will work for both of you.

Also worth remembering is that at around 6 weeks they have a big growth spurt which often throws routines out of the window.

piratetreasure - have you thought about why you want your baby to feed/play/sleep differently from what her own needs seem to be?

At 5.5 weeks she is a new baby, getting used to the world, starting to form relationships with the people close to her, and she has quite a lot on her plate

A responsive, accepting, loving environment is key in these early weeks - schedules and routines 'belonging' to adults are not necessary for her at this stage. 'Breaking the cycle' will come anyway, as she grows and her needs change.

Why would you not just accept that this is the way she is at the moment - it's no better or worse than a 3-4 hourly routine, but it is what she is telling you she wants, from the sound of it!

Everybody seemed obsessed with routines and GF, was in Next yesterday and the lady behind the till asked me re my routine as her children swore by GF... I guess I'm looking for a routine to 'fit in' and to try and get some normality back into my life - after working 13 hrs a day for so long and having the baby at 44 I'm finding it hard to adjust to the new way of life and wrongly want some of my old life back ;-( I feel really selfish but can't help it.

piratetreatsure, I can understand that having a baby late and making this massive change from a busy working life can lead to adjustment difficulties , but given you're not working at the moment, what is it that your dd does at the moment that doesn't fit in?

Plenty of people would think you were doing really well to be shopping in big stores already! That can take a bit of organising with a new baby!

Oh, and not having a rigid routine actually leaves you more flexible and responsive....with rigid routines you have to get back home to enable a nap at X o'clock, and wavering from this (to meet friends for lunch, to have a day away, to shop at the 'wrong' time) makes life actually easier and more pleasant, IMO

Back to your original question - both my babies have 'grazed' during the day, fed and played all evening. DD2 is 9 weeks now and still does the same. Like you I found the mental adjustment really hard and tried to get dd1 into a routine, but it is much less stressful if you can get your head round the idea your job, your purpose, is to feed your babyand just do it when they are hungry. At about 8 weeks if you keep a little diary of when she feeds/ sleeps you may find that she does have a pattern, it's just not the one in your book.

I feed on demand and DD feeds alot during the day. I am now finding though that the more she feeds in the day and the more milk she takes, she needs less in the night and is starting to sleep brilliantly. She now goes from 6pm til 5am with an 11pm dream feed.

I really think if we just go with the flow a bit and take the lead from our babies then eventually they find their own little patten.

piratetreasure I am instinctively a routine person too and so can really understand your desire to introduce some kind of predictability. I am a bit of a control freak who went on mat leave from an extremely busy and stressful job. But I also struggled to get my DS to play ball with the routine I had identified. What helped me in the end was to decide to accept that DS was my job for the time being and adopt the same approach I would to my career. That's to say that I took time to step back and really learn about him before trying to 'fix' things. Concretely, i spent a few days writing down everytime he did anything (eat, sleep, dirty nappy etc). To my surprise, it turned out that he already had a little routine of his own and that once I had understood what that was, I could just go with it. It gave me the predictability I craved and worked with what he wanted. The only thing to be alive to is that their own natural routine does change quite quickly so you have to be ready to adapt. I've adopted the same approach for DD (8 weeks old now). It's working well and she sleeps naturally three times a day and only wakes once at night for a feed.

HTH.

my own experience is that when baby doesn't "fit" a routine, you can start to think that there is something wrong with the baby and not something wrong with the routine, particularly if you are used to working to "what the books say" in your career. This really screwed with my head in those early days/weeks and sadly months. I found being a mother challenged all of my work habits, ultimately in the most fantastic way.

I agree that everyone is obsessed with routines in the early weeks, which makes me very puzzled now I have a bit of mothering experience behind me. Some people here have good ideas about how to handle this if it's really what you want.

FWIW, the books, the routines, the gurus all have their problems such as those described over here amongst many many similar threads in the archives.

Congratulations on your precious baby-it gets easier, whichever way you decide to go!

GF is only one author and those parents who follow her routine strictly are in the minority - some find other childcare gurus helpful and others (the majority?) just muddle out something that works for them. Try not to stress about things too much, though it's difficult when you're in the middle of it. For example, young babies tend to be lively and feed a lot in the evenings, and it can feel like you'll never get your evenings back (mine used to go to sleep at midnight or later at that age!). But when he got a bit older it was easier to get him to sleep at a more sensible time. Now DH and I take for granted that we can have baby-free time in the evening (and we find something else to worry about!). As BlameitontheBogey says, you could find out if she has a pattern already and work with that (though be prepared for it to change suddenly).

my baby fed all day long for hours on end.

gf doesn't have children you know

Listen to your baby, not some 'guru' who doesn't even have children of her own. Just respond to your baby's needs and you will find your own routine.

A lot of people who think GF is good in fact find that their babies naturally slot into her routines when they are around 3/4/5 months. Then they conveniently forget the chaos that went before.

Personally I found it easier to just let the baby sleep and feed her immediately when she woke up so that feeds were spread out a bit. But my DD1 never went 4 hours between feeds in the day and 16 week old DD2 is yet to! We always had a bedtime routine with both and they go down for the night at 7, as in I bath them, feed them and put them to bed then. It seems to work, most of the time, after the first month or so.

Your baby hasn't read the book, so don't worry if she does something different.