Quite possibly the dumbest question ever - how do you start a routine?

[phdlife]

DH and I are useless at routines, really, really useless - dinner any time between 6 and 10, bed any time, etc. But we now have a tiny one and we know it'd be good for him - so how do you start one?! Right now we just let him sleep and feed as and when (he's 5 weeks) and it's more or less working for us.

But I've read that next week we should start introducing the bedtime routine - and it would be handy, to help me become WAHM. So, when do 5-week olds go to bed? (And how do you tell, if they sleep most of the day anyway?) Do you wake them up to feed/bathe/put to bed?

(really feeling how useless that phd is now !)

I find it easier to start in the morning.

2 hours ish after he gets up,, put him down for a nap, rocking, pram, however you cqan get him to sleep

He will still be feeding very very often now.

I feel a bedtime routine at this age is pretty pointless, as most are still cluster feeding in the evenings even if bottle fed, so it's impossible to implement a routine at this age.

Closer to 3 or 4 months, it gets easier.

He's far too young for any bad habits to form

I don't think you should feel under pressure to get into a routine at this age, unless you really want to.

It doesn;t really sounds like you are the sort of family that need it..

However, iirc DS started to vaguely fall into a sort of pattern of feeds & sleeps when he was about 8 weeks.

If I were you, i would wait anotehr 2-3 weeks and see if a pattern is developing. Then this might give you an indication of when your DS tends to have a long sleep, when he is more awake & alert etc, when he has his feeding frenzy, and so on. You can then start to adapt a bit around that.

The most significant thing I found with DS was that he changed his "routine" every few weeks, then months, as he got older and his needs changed, so you need to be a bit flexible.

The only thing we did from when he was about 8-9 weeks was bath & bedtime at 7pm, but he would typically zonk out at that time anyway, so it fitted well.

In retrospect I envy friends of mine who had night owl babies because at least they got a good 6-7 hours kip when their babies did eventually settle at 10-11pm!

I, OTOH, was up most of the night with DS from about 1am onwards!

We had a bedtime routine from when DD was small, but not necessarily a set bedtime. I guess she mostly went to bed sometime between 6 and 9.
In general though I think the best way is to watch your baby for a few days and write down what he does and when. Chances are he has some sort of vague pattern, so then you will know when to expect things and will know that, for example, if he cries at a particular time he is likely to be hungry.
Personally I don;t advise getting a routine out of a book and trying to impose it, because most babies just don't conform!
I'm not sure though that I would try to look for a pattern for a couple of weeks - lots of babies have a growth spurt at around 6 weeks which can throw everything off...

please please please do not worry about a routine for a 5 week old

be guided by your little one

in a week or so , he;ll have a growth spurt, and feed contantly , and the routine will go out of the window!

he will be more alert soon, and have more wakeful times in the day

you can decide that the 7 pm feed is the last one,as it were, and do a bath, song/story , then feed every night, leading up to going down at 7

bearing in mind he will wake again for more milk in the night...but then at least you can feel you are getting to grips with things, and have one bit of the day sorted!

okay, he's pretty much going back to sleep after most feeds anyway; do you think I oughtn't worry then?

hello lulumama

kisses for you with the sling advice - he loooooves it (is snoring in it right now!)

choose a routine to suit you...

for a 5 month old i would suggest a
wake / 1st feed no later than 7am (but after 6am)
9 - 10ish a (short) nap
10ish a feed
12.30 feed
1-3ish long nap
3.30 feed
4 - 5 ish a nap
6 ish a bath
6.30 last feed
7ish bed
11pm dream feed

maybe anotehr feed in the night depending on baby

Probably best to start at 7am.... set your alarm and wake up and let the rest follow from there.

soon baby will drop the late afternoon nap

goodness, he's 5 weeks, don't try it, seriously. Much less stress and aggro on all sides to just go with the flow for now (and, IMHO, for several weeks/months to come). FWIW ds gradually fell into something vaguely resembling a routine at some point between (I think) 7 and 9 months.

If there's a feed around 6-8pm ish you could give a bath before feeding, just try to make it a quick dip as he'll get too hungry. Dark, quiet feeds at night can help. Then in the morning 6-8am(ish)make it light and noisier and get him changed out of his 'pyjamas'. It will take a while and some fine tuning but you will be teaching him the difference between night and day from the start which can only be good later on... What ever you choose stick at it as much as possible but don't worry about the odd hiccup.

phew! I won't worry then, we're doing fine as it is for now, just didn't want to eff it up

Our family is like yours. DS now 6 months!

At around 8 weeks we began like this:

We started with a bed-time routine bath-massage-milk-bed at any time that suited us or LO - different times.Then as weeks passed we found that LO seemed to do it better at a certain time.

When this was more regulated, we started to work backwards i.e. play-bath-massage-milk-bed,

• and then feed-play-bath-massage-milk-bed,

and then nap-feed-play-bath-massage-milk-bed

etc etc and before we knew it the whole day became a sort of very flexible routine!

Never ruled by the clock though.......

i can relate to you phd. sounds just like me and my dh, our dd1 had absolutely no routine except to wake with us and go to bed with us and eat whenever we ate. with dd2 i wanted to make sure it was different and was really pressurised about 'when do i start the routine'.
i think that at 5 weeks a bed time is not yet an option. i think the routine at this point should be bath food sleep, in the evening, and that may mean short sleep and waking up again, but doesnt matter.
i dont remember when (dd2 now 8 months) but it took quite a while before she had a bedtime, and i was quite stressed (as other mums were telling me 'our dds go to bed at 8 every night) but she would still wake at 11pm and stay awake till 1am. at some point she stayed sleeping through the night and that was it, the routine worked out.

good luck and dont worry you will succeed

of course, he's been sound asleep in his sling since 6pm, and I never feel sure whether it's best to get him out (ie, wake him up) or just leave it til he wakes himself up...

I think the best way to start routine is to get up at the same time each day

At five weeks though, it's YOU that might feel better from a routine, baby won't care as long as MummyAndBoobies are there - so if you are feeling ok then don't worry about it

Its never too early to start a routine. I mean , you musn't fret if it doesn't work all the time, but some basic ideas can never hurt. What about simplified "bathtime routine" - prepare their room, get them ready for bed, bottle or breastfeed at roughly the same time, 7pm or whatever seems right, some gentle cuddling and kissing. As the nod off, lay them down.
It might not work. If not give up, try something else, or just leave it for a while.
See how you go.

Ds was in a "routine" within dyas of being home from hospital - you could time his 4 hourly breastfeeds to the second, and he naturally settled at roughly 7pm every night. God forbid, no controlled crying was necessary.

hi phd. i think i'm a bit like you. i read this thread title and thought - good question, i must read that for some advice. and my ds is 18 months!!! we have a sort of routine but it shifts about quite a lot. tbh i think the routines are for the parents benefit so it you don't really want one, then don't have it!

A lot of my friends started the bedtime routine (we did too) around 6/7weeks.

We simply did bath/ bottleor breast / bed at an appropriate time around 7pm depending on when their last nap was. Some of the babies took to it better than others.

But each baba is differnet. The real benefit of starting a bedtime routine now is that it is second nature for both you and baby - esp if you are not a very routined person yourself. As they hit 3/4 months then the dividend pays off as you hit the same time most nights, and in my case it was then time to sit back and relax. My lovely ds slept 10-6 form 9 weeks and from 7 -6 at 12 weeks. But that is not that common. But I was very grateful.

btw it is not a stupid question at all.

you sound lovely and laidback, maybe a routine is not really for you?
it's funny how everyone does things differently. I'd start from the evening. I always set around 7 as bedtime, it just means i do a bath first then feed in the bedroom with curtains drawn and do all subsequent feeds the same way. I only started it when dd gave the signal so to speak. like my others she started to get very restless at around 7-8pm when i was trying to rock her to sleep/hold her etc - she just wanted to be put down and left to get on with it. my other 2 were the same at that age (4 weeks).

i can remember with dd when she had her days + nights mixed up my mum said routine bath-play-feed-bed I was sleep deprived obviously and like she is 7weeks old WTF however at end of our tether we did try it and omg it worked! I also used to take dd to out bedroom with dim light for last bf and althougth we had a few blips on the way it did work!!!!again we always took our cue from dd and not from the clock but by the time she was 5 mths she could not stay awake past 7pm ...bliss!

We always had one strict rule:

Once LO was in his room at night, - he NEVER came out! This was the only rule however, - we fed him, cuddled him, talked to him, sung etc. always in the room so he would learn that he wouldn't be able to come downstairs and play.

Seemed to work and better than CC etc.

Have you considered readin the Tracy Hogg, Contented Baby Book. Her "routine" is basica and not strct. Its called EASY.
EAT
ACTIVITY
SlEEP
YOU TIME
It doesn't say do this at 7.05, that at 7.25. But gives simple suggestions of things to try, listening and understanding what you baby is saying to you at all times.

Might atleast be worth a read. You are of course welcome to bin it. But it might just help.

I have definitely found that young babies need a sleep no more than 2 hours after they last woke, so if a baby is really unhappy and they have been awake for this long they are probably tired. However, for us 5 weeks was too early to have much success with the bedtime routine. DD started going to bed reliably at about 7.30 at about 2 months old. We used loads of 'props' - white noise CD, dummy, miracle blanket and they worked really well. Now at 6 months she only has the white noise CD.

Re: the routine - you don't really sound like routine people, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. The thing I like about having a routine is that from about 5pm onwards you can go onto autopilot, but if you like to be more flexible and your baby is happy, don't worry.