Routine?

[DairyMilkForLife]

Hi everyone - I'm new to mums net and never been on a forum before, so hope I'm putting this in the right place, just after some advice!

My little girl is 7 weeks old and is my second baby - we have no routine whatsoever as she is just dragged around to wherever we need to go for my little boy, e.g. playgroup etc. She can be very unsettled and struggles to have any proper naps in the day, and her feeding is all over the place. By the end of the day she is so overtired and fretful bless her, I feel like I'm letting her down!

When my little boy was a baby we had a great routine, especially for feeding, and it was great to have structure to the day and he was happier for it! The last 7 weeks have been chaotic getting used to life with a newborn and a toddler, so I'm ready to get some sort of routine going and regain my sanity!

So, question is... How to introduce some sort of feeding and napping routine to a second baby when you have a toddler to contend with? I thought about feeding her at 7am every day to start the day at a consistent time, but she tends to feed at 5:30am and isn't really ready for a feed by 7.

Any advice welcome! I'm tired of 'going with the flow' and feel that my little girl would be happier with some sort of structure to her day xxx

I did EASY (eat, awake time, sleep, you time) from the baby whisperer with both my kids. 2.3 year gap. Obviously with the second she just had to go with the flow more, so more naps in the car and the sling than my first, but the overall structure really helped.

I think you will have to adjust your toddler (or what age?) to baby time for a few months. Surely you can establish morning and evening routines fairly easily as you are at home? Then during the day just try and be in a place so during nap time you are somewhere your baby can sleep in her pram. Maybe confine out of house activities to morning or afternoon?

Thanks both for your replies! My little boy is 2years and 2 months Pipandmum ☺ I think the thing I'm struggling with at the mo is getting baby girl to nap for longer than 20 mins at a time (my little boy was also a serial cat napper as a baby!) which also makes routine a bit tricky. Hmm!

I don't expect her to be clockwork with a routine, but some predictability would be nice. We do have a bedtime routine which works well, so really it would just be great to get the morning sorted and hopefully the rest of the day will follow Xxx

I used the Little Ones programme and it was a gamechanger for us. Or just Google 'awake times'.