Help me ease an 11 week old into some sort of routine... I'm losing my marbles!

[usingapseudonym]

With my first I was very very AP - sling wearing, baby led everything, co-sleeping and I loved it. I was quite suspicious of the GF methods. It also worked for us in that I napped when she did, took her everywhere I went and just fed her when she wanted. She is now a very delightful 3 year old and I have a fantastic relationship with her. However, I did have very broken sleep until she was a year and we night weaned and I did only have one.

My second child is now 11 weeks and I'm exhausted. I've got some parenting books out from the library but I'm too shattered to take it in and keep rereading the same pages over and over. I need some help...

My baby is completely unpredictable - which I know is normal for a baby, but I really want help to ease her into a routine. I know it won't come overnight and I don't want to impose crying etc just some sort of routine advice as I've never had one before.

For example - last night she did sleep 8-12 (so does sometimes go more than 90min/2 hours without a feed) but then woke 1-2 hourly and didn't always go back down after a feed. I rely on feeding to send her back to sleep (as that worked with no 1) but when that doesn't work I dont know what to do. This morning she finally settled again at 6am and slept until 10. However this was only possible as husband was able to take DD1 to pre-school. Normally I have to do that on a pre-school day so would have had to wake her.

I need her to sleep at night more reliably. Any help really welcome. I keep coming across people on threads who have babies that have slept through early - how?! I've been reading some past threads too..

• Should I be waking baby as a matter of course at 7am? At the moment if she is still asleep I let her sleep so I can see to DD1.

*Can they sleep too much? I never used to wake a sleeping baby but if she sleeps more than 2 hours should I wake her during the day?

• I've just started reading that htey shouldn't be awake more than 2 hours - I never knew this. Why doesn't anyone tell you this? Should I encourage a feed after 2 hours to get her to go back to sleep?

Sorry for the rather confused post. I'm so very very very tired.

I think that you have to accept that this early on there is no routine. My DD is 4.5 mths and we are only now starting to see a pattern emerge. I think you have to batten down the hatches and go with it for a few more weeks but make sure those around you appreciate how you are - just bringing you a cup of tea or wizzing round some shopping can make your life easier. I got to the point where I was driving my self crazy reading / listening to what 'should' be happening - I made a decision to stop and to just accept that DD and me were doing it our way - life suddenly seemed much easier because suddenly what we were doing was right!! For Us!!

Some things to try:

Swaddling, it didn't work for mine but I know a lot of people swear by it.

White noise, I find it helps my daughter to stay asleep for longer once I've got her to sleep.

Put her to sleep on an item of your clothing so that it still smells as though you are near her.

Try rocking her to sleep if feeding doesn't work- I sit with her facing my chest on bed and bounce up and down until she's asleep which normally takes around 15-20 minutes.

You can try "pick up put down" but this is time-consuming and I'm not a fan myself. Basically rock the baby until she's sleepy but not asleep then put her down, if she cries or it wakes her up further then repeat until she does sleep. I read this in a book (baby whisperer I think) and she said it takes 3 days to work but on the first night with one baby she had to repeat around 150 times before it worked.

7am starts aren't necessary, my baby (3 months) sleeps from 9pm to 8am I think just follow her lead and see what times she wants to wake and sleep.

Babies shouldn't be awake for more than 2 hours because they get overtired which causes disrupted sleep, although obviously every baby is different, and when my baby has been awake for 1 1/2-2 hours I put her in her swing and she's asleep within 5 minutes.

it is still early of course but what I would say is that it can just depend on the baby. DS slept through quite early but DD is only just now at 9 months starting to and is not yet reliable (though she will get from 7- 4ish). There is a world of difference between controlled crying and self settling though - if you can allow your LO do have a just a minute or two by themselves, maybe with a jumper of yours to cuddle up to, she may go off. I shall whisper the next bit but have you considered a bottle for the last feed before bed? It really does seem to settle them for longer and it maybe that once she is the habit of a long night sleep you could switch back to BF. Other than that, swing seats are good (you can even buy one now that has a car motion movement and sound effect ). It is hard to co-ordinate two. I felt so bad last week for my DD - she didn't get either of her naps in her cot as we had to do pre-school runs and things, jusy had cat-naps in the car and buggy. It does take longer I think to get no2 sorted for that very reason, you just can't always accomodate them. Up to a point, prehaps just try putting her down every two hours or so when it would suit YOU for her to sleep and see what happens. Oh, also, dummies? They are called pacifiers in the US for a reason! Best of luck

Hi there, sorry to hear you're struggling. I'm going to be in the same boat as you in July and am already planning ahead!

I have to disagree with a lot of what is posted, I'm afraid, because I do think it's possible to have a routine right from day one. This isn't to say you're forcing the baby into doing something which comes naturally, it's about taking guidance from routines and adapting them to suit you and your older child. I think for baby no. 1, it's great to co-sleep and fit your lives around theirs because it's perfectly realistic to acheive that. For no. 2, I think it can lead to a lot of despair, tiredness and upset unless you are convinced it's the right way to go. There's no right or wrong way - but if you are asking for help with a routine, then that's what you should get!

What follows is my personal belief and what I'll be doing as far as possible with my second child, but everyone will have different approaches and you need to do what fits in with your life:

• Treat 7am to 7pm as day and 7pm to 7am as night. Doesn't have to be these times but splitting 24 hours into two zones makes sense and can help to structure your life around.
• Feed regularly (every 3 to 4 hours), unless baby demands feed sooner e.g. after 2 hours which can happen during growth spurt. It's important to distinguish a hungry cry from a tired/painful cry though otherwise you can just end up feeding endlessly when it's not needed. Don't let her sleep through a feed.
• Don't keep up for more than 2 hours, less if you think your baby is tired. It's rare they can last more than 2 hours at this stage and if they get overtired, it will affect the quality of their sleep.
• Try and structure daytime naps around feeds (so the two don't clash) and so that she has a short nap in the morning, a long one at lunch and a short one in the afternoon. If you were doing 7-7, this would usually be around 9am, 12noon and 4pm. Too much daytime sleep will cause just as many problems as too little and will affect nighttime sleep, so it's a case of working out if you've got a sleepy baby or not and structuring naps accordingly.
• Implement a regular bedtime routine but don't try and bath a hungry baby. You can split the bedtime feed so you give some at about 5pm and some afterwards at about 6.30pm before putting them to bed.
• I did a dream feed with my daughter at 10pm which worked wonders in getting her to sleep well at night. It also meant my partner could do this feed, meaning if I was shattered, I went to bed at 7pm and slept through until 2 or 3am for the night feed.

Most of what I've said is taken in some way from GF who you say you're not keen on, so feel free to disregard it all!!! I do hope some of it can help you though as I know what it's like to feel so despairing at a time which should, in theory, be happy.

By the way, a PP mentioned PUPD; I may be wrong but as this is technically sleep training, i dont' believe it's recommended for babies under 6 months.

x

pop back and let us know how that goes, loveis

all babies are different. none of them have read any manuals.

you are at about the right point to try and get whatever routine works for you baby, toddler and family going, but it won't be the same one for every baby or family.

be kind to yourself and try different things slowly to see what works.

(the two hour and then sleep thing makes me rofl, sorry. none of my three slept anywhere near that much, ever. not to say that some babies don't, but mine didn't. dd1 didn't sleep in the daytime at all until she was 12mos. well, she did once, at 4mos. i thought she was ill, and called dh home from work. it was lkiterally the first time she'd napped, ever. )

GF can be restricting, but I've had our 6 month old on it since 3 weeks, and he is just a pleasure of a baby. I did adapt it though slightly ie, if we wanted to go out, we went, he slept in his own room from 3 weeks, and for all naps. He's slept 7pm-7.30/8am since 4 months without a feed, which is bloody fab. I stopped waking him at 10pm at 12 weeks and only woke for 1 feed around 3am.
I will be using her with the next one :-)

I disagree with loveis!

However, you could help your baby find more of a rhythm to her day, especially as she's nearly three months old. Days and nights are different - body routines are different in light and dark - so I'll deal separately.

At this age I found that my two were awake during the day for about 90 minutes and (after a feed) would then sleep for about 45 minutes. Naps settled to two or three longer ones during the day at about 4-5 months. The late-afternoon nap was given up around 6-7 months. Both mine kept the short morning nap as well as the long afternoon one until they were at least 15 months.

Nights are a completely different story! What you describe - her sleeping for four hours and then having an unsettled night sounds to me like a baby who's slept through a feed and is then starving/tummyaching for the rest of the night. Have you tried waking her for a feed after a couple of hours of sleep? Every two hours through the night is a good rhythm to get into because it means only three wakeups for you, and two hour stretches are decent amounts of sleep.

I will not pass comment on GF, though as a childcare professional I would dearly love to.

madwoman - I probably will be eating my words in July :)

I know it sounds a bit prescriptive, but I think the point about taking the basics of a routine and fitting it around your life and your baby makes sense (and this is something that GF does recommend). No-one would be daft enough to think that babies are all the same or that they read manuals - but why are there so many mums on here desperate for advice and the one thing they seem to have in common is that they're not following a routine/structure/whatever you want to call it?

There was a GF thread on here once for women who didn't want to be criticised for using it and they were ALL saying how brilliantly it had worked for them. Just saying, that all.... :)

Octavia - fair enough, I know MN is not a place where GF's routines are popular so I didn't expect many people to agree with what I was saying.

I'm not going to get into a debate about GF as it's been done to death - just wanted to share my experience of her, like KLou11, I found it worked for us.

Defo worked for us, I would not DREAM of waking baby for a feed overnight at 11 weeks! If baby is hungry, he/she will wake up. I struggled to wake our son at the 10pm one, that's why in the end we just left him. He would be woken at 10pm, then wake once in the night, yet when we stopped waking him, he only woke once anyway, so clearly did not want the 10pm feed. After a few weeks, he got later and later, and eventually started going all the way 12-13 hours. I always made sure he got what he wanted in the day though. I started weaning at 16 weeks too (on hv advice) so I think that helped.
Like I said though, I adapted the GF routine to suit us, she says wake baby at 10pm til 6 months, keep baby in your room til 6 months, do not go out at certain times blah blah.
I was very sceptical to the routine at first, and must admit, I'm not really one for being told what to do, but with so much conflicting advice out there, you have to just see what works for you :)
This is my first baby, so may eat my words if the GF doesn't work for number 2, but so far so good :)

Also just wanted to add, when we started the routine, I never demand fed in the day.

I couldn't cope with dd when she was a baby at all in terms of being constantly on demand so I picked myself up a copy of the Gina Ford book and I know people aren't a fan of it much but it really worked wonders for me!! Dd was sleeping through from 7pm - 7am every night from 9 weeks!

I am planning to do the same with this next baby (currently 24 weeks pregnant) and I suppose the interesting thing will be whether dd was just naturally a good sleeper or whether the routines worked!!

The main things I can remember that helped me (bearing in mind this is 9 years ago now!!) is never letting dd sleep past 7am - I know it's hard when you're knackered and you think "wow they're asleep I can DO things!" but you need to start them feeding earlier in the day in order to get their daily allowance of milk in and then they stand more of a chance of sleeping through at night.

I would always put dd down to sleep in her own room for naps so the naps were (although short) more of a deeper more restful sleep so she would feed better next time. Of course if we went out somewhere I would try and time it around her "awake" time.

I also put dd in her own room (with baby monitor!) from about 6 weeks old. I found we all (including her) slept better this way. I also wouldn't rock her to sleep. I would put her down awake where possible, stay close and talk to her quietly with the blackout blinds down and only a small nightlight on (thereby creating night and day experiences).

If she hadn't had all of her daily feeds for some reason (going out, sleeping in the car or whatever) then I would always wake her for a feed at about 10pm so that I knew that she would probably sleep through from there and I could get some sleep.

Doesn't work for everyone but worked for me! Saved my sanity!

Glad to see I'm not the odd one out here!

Just wanted to say I was dubious of the routines at first because left to her own devices, my LO would sleep all and be awake all night. I couldn't function like that and I didn't consider it was 'cruel' (as many people dub GF) to instead, feed her regularly and give her good amounts of sleep but spaced out during the day. It saved my sanity and in that respect made me a better mother. We're only human, not machines who can survive on no sleep indefinitely.

loveis and looneybun happy parents = happy contented baby, which we all seem to have :) GF is a star imo! I wouldn't have known where to start. My mum is a retired mw and she doesn't agree with some things of GF, but everyone we know has commented how 'lucky' we are to have such an easy and happy baby :o

You wouldn't believe how hard I'm sitting on my hands here...

Keep sitting lol, try it, you might like it. Unless you've used it, you can't really judge people that have and it worked

I'm not judging the people that use it, I'm judging a woman who sets herself up as a parenting expert without any direct experience or medical qualifications whatsoever. I can completely understand the attraction, but I think you shouldn't be able to publish books on this stuff until you've done it. Literally any woman here is better qualified than flippin' GF.

Totally understand that octavia, totally respect that, I couldn't get my head around that tbh, but if it works, it works. Must say though, my little fella is an absolute pleasure of a baby, and so easy as he 'knows his day' as it were, I don't know how different he would be had I not used GF. A lot of it is common sense, a lot is a bit hmm, I don't know how she got all this knowledge, but I am grateful she did lol!

'Your baby: week by week' - it offers a structure, but is not as strict as GF. It sounds like it might be a happy medium between your need to sleep and the way you raised DC1.

What Sweetpea said. Also, GF is pretty hard on little babies - which yours is - so maybe a slightly more flexible approach like The Baby Whisperer?

Personally, I am with Octavia and ditched the books very early on, with GF the first to go. But i appreciate your situation is different as you have another DC. I have just one DS (now 15 mo). I would say, however, that you state your DD is now a delightful 3 yo. Perhaps there's a reason for that and you got it right the first time around? Not saying that others haven't got it right, just that sometimes forcing a routine so early can cause more anxiety than just going with the flow. I know that this was the case with me, but appreciate your situation is now different.

Fwiw, i found that from around 16 weeks my DS fell into a more reliable 'routine' of his own accord and i was able to plan my days a lot better. Given the chance i believe that most babies will do this (of course there are exceptions). And i think that 'sleeping through' means different things to different people (some of whom will exagerate due to competitive parent syndrome) and if you're BFing your LO then this will also make a difference because they will rely on the boob as much for comfort as food and aren't filled up for as long because breast milk is more easily digested. My DS regularly went for four to six hours from his 7pm feed, but would then wake every two. He began sleeping for 12 hours uninterrupted at 7.5 months after he was established on 3 solid meals a day. He's now a reliable 7.30 - 7.30 sleeper and needs no props to help him sleep. He too is exceptionally happy, content, relaxed, adaptable and 'reliable' in terms of sleeping and eating.

But if you're fixed on a routine, then you could do a lot worse than looking at the Baby Whisperer...

Good luck.

Few weeks further down the line than you with 3 yr old DC1 and an almost 5 month old DC2. Bit like you I was despairing of the randomness of my days but it has got better! Some things which have helped:

• downloaded baby care app to phone, put in feed/sleep times for a few days to see pattern there
• put baby down for nap as soon as seems tired, usually 90 mins after waking. Don't wake baby from nap unless getting to 5ish pm because I want him in bed by 7ish. He will usually take 2 short and 1 long nap depending what we are doing that day, he will decide which one is the long nap.
• white noise in bedroom makes him sleep longer
• Naps in day are sitting up in chair that seems to make him sleep longer
• make evenings/nights very boring, dim lights, don't interract, don't change nappies unless you really have to
• Decide on a bedtime (roughly) and get a bedtime routine going to cue baby that this is the long sleep time
• I've still kept on feeding on demand and not bothered with the 10pm bottle, but recently started bottle at bedtime (otherwise bf) which does speed up the settling process I have to say.

My DC1 was in a Baby Whisperer routine practically from birth, it really is much more challenging to put a second baby in a routine as you need to be flexible to meet your older child's needs/routine as well. I think its partly down to the baby as well, my older child was always quite happy with 3 hourly feeds, this one would chew his own arm off if he had to wait that long!

Actually I wish I had had the confidence to take your more baby-lead approach with DC1 instead of going 'by the book' and this time am able to follow my instincts more but having a bit of a routine definitely helps.

HTH

octavia thought your comment about GF not being an expert was interesting as I see this mentioned from time to time. She gets a hard time in the press for not being a mother but she has been a maternity nurse for a very long time caring for hundreds of babies and frequently talks about situations she's faced as a nurse in her books - that's where her research comes from.

I've only ever raised one baby. I don't think that makes me an expert. It just makes me a mum.

You don't have to have had cancer to be an oncologist but most people with cancer would put their trust in you.

if you co-slept with your first, why aren't you doing it with this one?

DD is 11 weeks old,and we co-sleep.
i have unbroken sleep, but she wakes me up cos she wants to feed, so i latch her on and go back to sleep myself.

i currently find it works because i don't feel shattered in the morning.
i do the side sleeping hold.

~ i hasten to add....

loveis she was a maternity nurse (WAS, not is) - not a nurse. She has no medical training. That's why her claim to have looked after 300 babies can't be verified - because she was never a nurse or worked within the NHS so there are no records of how many children she may or may not have looked after, just her word for it. I don't like her because I think she's a charlatan. I also disagree with parent-led methods in general as all the neurological evidence is that baby-led methods are better for the baby.

Loveisa - but you are an expert with your own baby. DD would have never tolerated a routine however DS probably would he was in a sort of 3hour routine by 7 week's of his own accoured no manipulating on my part. They are all different and for some it works others it doesn't.

He wasn't a great night time sleep though and we co-slept. After DD being so fussy there was no way I was doing it any other way this time. I do wonder if the fact I had to get up and out the door at the same time everyday made a differences with DS (pre-school most mornings). But we where very sticked with a bedtime routine with DD (the only thing we did routine) but she was probably 3months before this work. I actcualy think that I spent many nights in a dark room for no reasion, I'm sure she would have got there on her own eventualy.

Oh and a not of the naps in seperate rooms just in case you didn't realise the SIDS advice is they have every sleep in the same room as you not just night time. I know it can mean they don't sleep as well but a baby who sleeps more soundly is at higher risk of SIDS.