12 days old baby - should I start a 'routine'?

[pommesdeterreetfromageblanc]

Hi! I am not talking about a Gina Ford type routine, but I was wondering how early people have started a routine like giving baby a bath, a bottle, playing some music etc so baby recognises that it is evening and time to go to sleep and calm down.

We had cluster feeding in the evening with dd until I started a routine at 3 weeks. It sorted it out straight away - the routine made sure she had had sufficient milk during the day so that she didn't need to madly tank up on an evening any more. Previously she'd slept all morning so didn't start serious feeding till the afternoon, and then clearly had a deficit to make up! It wasn't long before she was sleeping through, with just a dream feed at 10.30pm.

A routine has served us very well for both kids, and it makes me sad when people try to put others off them. Obviously they don't work for everyone, but they can be a godsend.

Thanks for all that. I will have a look at the books I have. So far I sleep with the baby on the sofa (a hard sofa, not squidgy and I cannot roll onto her) and my man is in bed upstairs. It makes sense as he is back at work and it means I can watch TV whilst BF at night and he can function during the day. It works for now, but obviously I want to be in bed with my man at some point and I would like the baby to be in her cot. At the moment she sleeps in the evening (on one of us) and wakes up around midnight for a feed. I give her a formula bottle as I am giving a break to one of my bleeding nipple.

I find it quite hard to identify a pattern so far... I just don't want to do nothing for too long and find in a few months time that I need to implement basic stuff I should have started earlier...

pomme I would just go with it for a while, and once you see some vague pattern emerging then by all means use that to steer your day.
I found though, that as soon as you get into the swing, your baby changes what they are doing and you have a new 'routine'!

Squidgers - the issue is not whether you can hear them moving or whatever. The issue around SIDS, is that very young babies sometimes forget to breathe, and being in a very quiet room with no other people breathing can be dangerous. Hearing their parents breathe reminds babies that they need to do it - after all until a few days ago they didn't need to do it at all!
So those monitors are actually a vast waste of money and prey on the insecurities of parents.

Agree with monitors being a waste of money. Also, Squidgers, what do you do if your monitor screams that your baby has stopped breathing? Do you know how to perform CPR on a baby? Far safer and better just to have them in the room!

We found writing everything the baby did down helped a huge amount. Seems silly when you are doing it, but after a week or so you can generally start to see a vague routine appearing i.e. naps every 2 hours, eats every 3 hours. And then if you do want to start a slightl routine you can see what your baby might settle in to.

Pommes PLEASE swap your arrangement so that your partner sleeps on the sofa and not your baby. Sofa sleeping is associated with many, many of the so-called SIDS deaths (where actually the baby is suffocated or overheated). It is much safer for you to sleep together in your bed, having previously removed all pillows and keeping the duvet no higher than your waist level and making sure your baby has his own sleeping bag or cellular blanket. Sofa sleeping is dangerous.

At that age, we were just gently trying to reverse DS's circadian rhythm by treating night and day differently - e.g. quiet, whispers and low lights for night feeds and the opposite in the daytime. I think that's pretty much all you can do with a newborn. At about 6-8 weeks we began getting a bit more structure and introducing a 'bedtime' routine (the timing varied from night to night depending on when DS wanted feeds) - a nice, relaxing bath and a quiet feed in our bedroom before putting him down to sleep. At first he invariably slept in the moses basket in a quiet, dark corner of our lounge and the TV was turned low. Then, as he got older, we tried to put him down in our bedroom. Sometimes it worked a treat, others he wanted to know we were close by and so he slept in the corner of our lounge again while we watched TV. Eventually he slept more and more regularly upstairs - probably by around 10 weeks he was sleeping quite reliably in our bedroom, with the occasional blip. We never left him to cry, always responded and gave him comfort and cuddles - even if it meant having him sleep on our chests as we watched some TV or read or whatever. He's almost 2 now and is a great little sleeper and sometimes even asks to go to bed when he gets tired!

Wow my baby is 11 days old and we haven't even thought about a routine. I guess we are noticing some patterns but they are not immutable. I was a bit worried reading the first half of this thread but more reassured by the end.

I figured for the first few weeks we would just follow whatever the baby wanted, as I am ebf and we don't want to introduce a dummy there are limited options for soothing.

The only thing we have tried to do is give each other a few hrs guaranteed sleep - DH is an early bird so he goes to bed around 9.30 or 10pm and has 4-5 hrs while I stay up (DS currently cluster feeds for most of that time), then I get a couple of hrs in bed after that and DH sits up with the baby, if DS will settle in the basket then DH can doze off again too. Then he brings ds up, I feed again and the rest of the night is up for grabs, DS often sleeps well 6-9am but sadly he forgot this morning so I feel pretty rough! When I put it like that, maybe it is the beginning of a routine but it still feels very centred around DS, not trying to impose anything on him.

The cord stump came off this morning so we might try a bath later, will be interesting to see what he makes of it.

ps Sorry if this isn't a very helpful contribution, just a load of stuff about my own DS, but I'm a bit foggy at the mo...

when we did get ds into an evening routine (my Mum's suggestion when we were losing it after about 3 weeks), things became much calmer. He really enjoyed bathtime, and I enjoyed the sleepy cuddles. And dh and I both enjoyed having the evening to ourselves!

different things suit different people - do whatever feels best for you?

My baby girl is nearly 6 months and we don't have a strict routine. We do try to put her to bed at the same time each night (around 9pm - any earlier and I have to get up twice in the night with her rather than just once) and recently I've noticed that she tends to want a nap around midday and late afternoon however it's not strict and for example on a Friday, I try to put her down for a nap earlier as we go swimming just after lunch and she needs to feed about an hour before. I've been breast feeding on demand and if I'm honest, although she's not sleeping through and we don't have a strict routine, I've found the "go with the flow" approach to be pretty stress free but I think that's because I have that attitude generally. If you're the sort of person who prefers to stick to a routine yourself, do that; if not, don't worry about it. I believe from my own experience and from talking to other mums that if you're relaxed, your baby will be too so do what's best for you.