First few days/routine

[pestopot]

Hi!
I'm trying to find a video or some information on what the general pattern of life becomes once baby is here. I've YouTube'd 'first few days' and similar topics but struggling to find examples of genuine experiences - to explain better, I'd like to be able to prepare for what is to come by be finding detailed examples of a day with a newborn, when did they get up, need feeding, changing, how many times, what happens in between, etc etc.
Thanks!

Total blur of nappy changes, feeds, sleeping.

There is nothing because everybody's experience is different. You just follow baby's lead. A routine is mostly impossible before 6 weeks.

The baby will give you their schedule! Follow it 😀

The book “your baby week by week” is quite good on this. We were fairly routine-y but even for us it was all bonkers until a month or so in.

If you plan to breastfeed, prepare to think somethings wrong with you or your milk because your baby is eating round the clock..:it’s normal!
Check and change the nappy before every feed
The baby will want to sleep on you and will hate their Moses basket.
But always remember, the time passes in a blink of an eye

In terms of what happens in between feeds, nappy changes and everything else that you do for a baby, you might be lucky enough to manage to clean your teeth, nip to the loo, possibly even get dressed. Don't expect much more than that, though...a tiny human can take up pretty much every waking moment!

With DD1 I spent 5 days in hospital trying to get her to feed. She slept nearly all the time.It was also the middle of a heatwave so I was trying to stay cool.

With DD2 I had the joys of dealing with heavy snow, a mystery rash meaning an emergency admission for my 2 day old baby that took the Consultant to identify (and she had only read about it... A once in a career thing apparently... Completely harmless though), a toddler developing a stomach bug, and a husband a few thousand miles away.

There is no normal. You do need to watch out for them sleeping too much- nobody ever told me that. They should feed and have wet nappies frequently.

General cycle is wake, feed, nappy, back to sleep. On a loop. What time of day or night this could be however will be totally random.

At NCT we got a great chart that emulated a clock, and mapped out a day with a newborn hour by hour. I can't find an example but it was something like..

7am wake
7.10am feed
7.30am nappy
8am sleep
10am wake
10.10am feed etc etc

It helped make us realise that there would be very little time for things like cleaning, food shopping etc! You are totally baby led at the beginning so just need to go with it.

Before I had my baby I found the idea of and term “routine” confusing and stressful until I realised a routine is just the way that you usually do things. So before my baby was born my morning routine was shower, coffee, make up, clothes, work.

When your baby is born without you having to do anything you’ll get into your own routine. They feed every couple of hours so wake up around that and in between you cuddle, give them baths, change nappies and curl up on the sofa and watch tv. Aside from basic things like feeding and changing newborns very much fit into the way you like to do things the only time I find that went out the window was when we are trying to get out of the house! X

Eat, sleep, poo, repeat. Not always in that order or for any set period time. They don't understand day and night for weeks so suddenly come alive at 2am after being asleep all day. Which is fun.

There is truly no day and night for the first few days/weeks. I think it would be really difficult to explain, but if you set your alarm for every 1.5-2hours all night and got up to do chores. It's like that. You mostly just sit in bed or on the sofa. Baby feeds, you had it off to someone, try to sleep, repeat, 24 hours a day. It's incredibly disorienting and there is really no routine.

I think the best thing we did was to have lots of easy meals and snacks in the house, dh just regularly brought me food and put it next to me, even in the middle of the night.

And we both took turns sleeping, when I was feeding in the morning, dh would go sleep. And then if baby was settled and I could pass to him, I would go sleep in the afternoon. We also traded off in the evenings, I'd do the feed around 7, go up to bed, dh walked around the lounge with baby til about 12-1am, while I slept, with a break for a feed around 10, and then we switched. Babies don't usually just sleep if you put them down initially, so there was a lot of one of us being awake, holding them, while the other slept.

I remember at one of my NCT meetings they played a game with dice. Each number related to nappy change, feed, sleep, cry etc we went round the group rolling the dice to see what our pretend baby was getting up to. It’s a pretty accurate way to get an idea of your routine. Just don’t plan to do much and follow the baby’s cues. They will also change a lot from week to week in the newborn phase. So even if you find a routine after a week, it will be totally different the next week.

The first few days (and weeks!) are just a blur of feeding, changing, cuddles and snatched sleep. Follow your baby’s demands - it will be ages before there is any consistent routine, and even when there is all babies are different.

I had a weird twilight zone feeling at the beginning because I would be awake for so much of the night, and asleep at weird times in the day. I felt out of step with the rest of the world for a while. But it did get easier, by 6-8 weeks we were in a reasonably predictable pattern.

6 weeks is often given as the 'magic number' for when a sense of normality starts creeping back in! There's been some good advice so far... Just go with the flow and as a PP said, if you're breastfeeding and your baby wants to feed all the time in the first few weeks, just know it's completely normal and there is nothing wrong with your milk or your baby. It's called cluster feeding. I suggest reading about the concept of the fourth trimester. It's helpful to explain things from your baby's point of view. Also have a read online of Sarah Ockwell-Smith's article 'why your newborn baby is only happy in your arms'. A brilliant read for a first time parent.

Congratulations and good luck!

Baby Wales, cries, feeds, poops, feeds, falls asleep in your arms. If you cuddle them, they will stay asleep for a while. If you put them down, they will wake after a minute or 3.

Feeds can last for minutes, or hours. Do can sleeps.

This cycle is repeated every 2-3 hours throughout the day and night. So 8-12 times a day.

Plan to watch a lot of TV, have batch cooked meals in the freezer ready to heat up. Ask someone to take the baby for walks, hopefully they will sleep while you have a nap.

In terms of prep, I'd recommend reading about the safe sleep 7 for cosleeping, so that if it happens by accident you are as safe as possible. Also consider an antenatal breastfeeding class.

• wakes, not Wales

You won’t get a routine for ages, I found pretty much the only decision I had to make was whether to do a nappy change before or after a feed. We usually went with before as our baby had reflux so lying down after a feed was guaranteed to cover everyone in vomit... to be fair keeping her upright often ended up with vomit too but slightly less often!

The only thing you can really do is follow baby’s lead and accept that you’ll find getting minor things done (like a shower or minor housework) a logistical nightmare and completely exhausting.

I was breastfeeding so obviously couldn’t share the feeding which meant my husband took up more of the household tasks / feeding me to compensate.

It’s really important to work as a team in the early days. Try not to get into competitive tiredness, it’s a lose lose situation.

Don’t worry about a routine or timetable. The best thing to have in place is someone around you who will get on with cooking, laundry, cleaning etc so you can just focus on yourself and the baby. Not everyone is lucky enough to have this unfortunately but if you do everything will be much easier.

At the start you should feed the baby every 3 hours from the start of each feed. In the early days a feed can easily last an hour or more, this makes them poo, so you change them and then feed them again, they may poo again or be sick everywhere and the cycle restarts or if you are lucky they go to sleep, you now have 60 mins at most or maybe 15 mins before it’s feeding time again and you have to decide if you are going to do the exercise from the physio, shower, brush your teeth, eat or sleep. This is your whole day. They tend to feed all night.

That is at least every 3 hours. Over night it maybe for hours.

The first week I found pretty easy it was a 3h cycle of nappy, feed, nappy, sleep repeat all day and night like clockwork. I found a comfy spot and stayed there all day. Once she passed through the newborn sleepy phase it was much more varied and irregular. She started with reflux symptoms at 3 weeks which through feeding and naps into a spin.

You just do what your baby needs. It’s basically an endless cycle of feeding, diaper changing and trying to squeeze in a few moments of sleep before you start the whole thing over again. If you are lucky at some point you will shower or eat some food. It helps immensely to have food cut up into bite size pieces to eat with your fingers.

For those first few days you never go longer than 3 hours without feeding the baby and it can take an hour to do a feed so that can mean only 2 hours in between, but sometimes they want to eat sooner.

Different every day but for a rough example:
6am breastfeed for an hour, burp.
7:00 change nappy
7:15 cuddle baby, go to loo, make cup of tea
7:30 baby cries, cuddle and rock until asleep.
Drink cold cup of tea, potentially attempt shower if partner there to watch baby
8:15 baby wakes up, cuddle
8:30 short 15 min feed
8:45 cuddle, show books and toys, try to get baby to smile etc
9:00 baby poos all over outfit, nappy and full clothing change (possibly for both of you)
9:30 calm is restored, play on baby gym or something for 15 minutes.
9:45 Nap. Cup of tea.
10:30 baby wakes and feeds for an hour. Burp and deal with milk luke all over clothes.
11:45 nappy change again
12:00 brief spell of cuddles and cooing
12:15 nap, you may attempt again to eat something
1:15 baby wakes up. Prepare self and baby for outing.
1:30 try to leave house. By 1:45 baby will be hungry....decide to feed now. Feed for 45 minutes.
2:30 nappy change
2:45 actually leave house. Baby naps in car/ buggy for 20 mins.Arrive at supermarket / friends house / cafe. Instantly need to feed again for 30 mins. Pursue task in said supermarket / friends house / cafe.
Change nappy. Travel back home.
5:00 get back home, feed again. Brief spell of cuddles / singing chatting with baby on bouncer / play mat while you try to make dinner.
5:30 nap
6:00 bath, nappy, feed. Try to encourage baby to sleep.

Baby wants to continue to be cuddled / feed / sleep in your arms continuously until midnight. Do so whilst watching tv on sofa and eating your dinner with a spoon.

If you are lucky they will sleep for longer spells (2-3 hrs) in night and feed for 30-60 minutes each time they wake.

It sounds absolutely mad written out like that but that is pretty accurate! The most full on time but so special.

The first few days, forget the notion of a 24 hour schedule - all you have is an event based schedule.

The baby wakes up. (0:00)
You cuddle them and prepare to feed (make a bottle/warm a bottle of premade/arrange your cushion nest for breastfeeding) (0:10)
Settle down for a feed. This could take anything from 20 minutes to an hour or more. (0:50)
You wind them. It takes a while. (1:05)
They are happy for a little while. You enjoy the cuddles. (1:25)
They poo/they don't poo, you change them anyway. (1:40)
They are happy for a little while. You might try to put them down to do something else. (2:00)
They want feeding again. Prep + feed (2:30)
They might now be asleep again. If you are allowed to put them down, they might sleep for anything between 1-2 hours. (4:30)

Repeat, all day, all night - the whole cycle takes anything between 3-5 hours and isn't especially predictable. You have to take care of all other needs - your own sleep, showering, getting food, driving to the supermarket, putting a wash on, cleaning the house, phoning your mum - in that 20 min period they are happy to be put down or during the 1-2 hour stretches they may sleep, or while someone else is holding the baby. And some cycles, they skip the part about being happy to be put down, so you lose those time chunks. Or you are just besotted with the baby and a bit mad with sleep deprivation, so you keep holding them anyway.

You can also do it this way around - this is what I tended to do in hospital, it's a bit more upsetting for them during the change part, because what they really want is milk, but it's slightly quicker overall.

Wake (0:00)
Change (0:15)
Prep to feed (if lucky someone else can do this part while you change, or vice versa) (0:25)
Feed (1:05)
Wind (1:20)
Feed/cuddle (1:30)
They are happy for a bit / they fall asleep again (possibly involving another feed/cuddle) (2:10)
They may now sleep for a couple of hours.

Of course, if you have another adult around, they can do some of the baby-holding shifts! And the in-between-feeds bits, if you're breastfeeding.

Some people will try to tell you it's very important to separate the feeding part from the sleeping part. Don't listen to them - it's madness! Feeding makes them fall asleep, it's supposed to. And their sleeping is your best opportunity to do anything non baby related.

But mainly, everything revolves around the baby's frequent need to feed and the very little time you have to snatch essentials like sleep and food.

Don't worry - it does get better! But it helps to go hour by hour in the first few days, rather than trying to envisage a routine or anything like that.

I agree with others, it's hard to have a routine as they can be completely different! The best thing I did to prepare for ds was to cook a freeze delicious dinners and lunches. It was so good to have these easily ready.