6 week old routine?

[Laurr]

Hi hoping for some advice/reassurance

I have a baby boy who is 6 weeks tomorrow

Should I be in some kind of routine with him? I'm not at all currently, He becomes quite fussy in the evenings as of this week also.

He sleeps at night in a snuzpod next to the bed and sleeps about 3/4 hours at a time at night (by night I meant after 1/2am) but during the day he doesn't really sleep. Also I'm not taking him to the bedroom until after his late feed like 1am because he usually has a feed at about ten and then at 1ish.

I bathe him in the evenings and do baby massage

Feel like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be because other people seem to be a lot more organised than me.

Does this seem normal?
Any advice welcome please, my partner is great but I don't have any other support really and none of my friends have children

I still fed on demand at that stage, although mine slept through from 6 weeks. Baths were every other night and rarely did baby massage so I’d say you were more in a routine that me it’s just that your baby has a different internal clock and doesn’t sleep much despite your efforts. One of my friends tried to combat this with a sleep training routine and another simply tried to be more chill and do feed/sleep/eat etc on demand . Both approaches seem to have worked in the longer run as both babies sleep through the night and do 2 or 3 day naps now.

Six weeks is too early for routine. He'll eventually find his own routine so don't worry.

It's early for a routine so just follow babies lead and you'll see a pattern forming. 6/7 weeks is the peak of crying and fussiness for most small babies.

What I would suggest is that you need to make sure he's having naps - they should only be awake for a short time at this stage and if he's not sleeping in the day he could be overtired. Easier said than done I know but I used to get out for a buggy walk once or twice a day which did the trick for my DD, I'd watch for sleep cues and be ready to get her comfy for a nap as soon as I saw them. I'd also go up to bed at after the 10pm feed and treat that as bedtime but I'd be comatose going to bed after 1am every day!

@Laurr hi there, I was also worried about a routine at this point and looked at some BIts and pieces online when I came across the blissful baby expert. She has lots of different routines for different ages and I found that even though some say it is too early for routines that it really helped and I now have a 10 week old that sleeps 11-5:30 has a quick feed then is back off until 7:30/8

I wouldn’t worry about an exact schedule but if he’s not really sleeping in the day, that will be contributing to the fussiness by the end of the day due to overtiredness. Most 6 week olds can’t really stay awake much longer than 1.5hrs roughly. Can you try a sling or something to get a bit more day sleep in?

Also agree with 10pm bedtime, even if there’s a 1am feed.

I think having a routine or not is personal parenting style. I’m the kind of person that does need a bit of structure so I do have a routine to aim for and have for a while (DS is 4 months). I say aim for as it’s not always achieved!

Check out Nanny Louenna on Instagram.

Mumsnet is always very anti routine but personally I found it really easy to follow a routine and give some sort of 'structure' to the day, but that was probably because my baby adapted really well to a routine, which we implemented straight away - GF - hated on here . DS was in bed for 7pm - one very quick night feed, awake at 7am, two very long naps in the day. But I am sure most of that was just good luck.

Yeah totally too early for the magic routine to be happening. You'll get people asking you about your routine but in my experience these are people who have forgotten the new born phase and forget that the "routine" doesn't come until much later like my sil was shocked that at 2 weeks old my daughter wasn't going 4 hours between her feeds, apparently her then 8 year old daughter at this stage fed at some routine of 7, 11, 3 and 7 pm routine but I think she'd forgotten as her daughter was 8 years old that that didn't start for some time. I found that comments like this made me feel I was doing something wrong as my 2 week old would want feeding every hour but with hindsight that was totally normal
Sounds like your doing great and it'll probably fall into some kind of pattern by about 12 weeks or somewhere around several months old xx

My little girl is 6.5 weeks and we definitely don't have a routine! Every day and night is different still.
She probably has a bath 2-3 times a week and that could be anytime of the day at the mo, just when I get chance between feeds and her sleeping.
She also doesn't sleep much most days, and I get fussy evenings as well.

She does seem to be getting into a slight pattern of sleeping around 10pm but not always.
Last night she woke for her first night feed at 3am after going down at 11pm. She was up for 2 hours as I couldn't get her to settle no matter what I tried 😖. Then she woke again an hour later, I was so tired by that point I gave her a feed and then just put her down awake and wriggling before I fell down with exhaustion!

She gets trapped wind which often disturbs her sleep, I think she also has reflux as brings up milk a lot, but is thankfully gaining weight. I get through so many muslins!

Don't worry @Laurr, we'll find our way I'm sure!

My DS did much better on a routine too, but only really from around 12 weeks old. You can have a rough plan but I wouldn’t get tied up in knots about trying to get a 6 week old to do much on by a clock.

We didn’t have a schedule as such, but we found our daughter became considerably less fussy if we bathed, fed and let her her sleep in a dark room from about 6pm. Suddenly she then started sleeping 6pm to midnight, instead of two hour stretches!

During the day she got very fussy unless we made an effort to get her to have ‘naps’ - to achieve this, she had to be a covered buggy being rocked until she nodded off. We also offered a feed every three hours or sooner if she ‘asked’.

All of this wasn’t a strict routine as such, but it helped enormously that she wasn’t overtired or hungry by the time evening rolled around.

There's no point bothering with a routine until they're at least 6 months. Definitely not at 6 weeks. I remember wanting to thump anyone who asked me if my tiny baby was in a routine yet! Keep doing what you're doing, it sounds very normal.