Newborn routine.

[CJ98]

When’s the best time to start getting into a routine with my baby. She’s currently 8 week old and I’d really love to start getting her into a better routine. We feed her whenever she demands it & changing her whenever it’s needed but everything else is just done on our terms. We struggle to get her to sleep at night & most of the time I’m sleeping on the sofa because she keeps my partner up (he works early shifts). Is it possible to get her into a routine at this age or is it pointless and better to wait a few more weeks.
what routines does everyone else have just so I have a better idea at what I should be doing ? I’m looking at an all day routine and then a night time routine.

It's certainly possible - mine are all adult now but i had them in a routine by 8 weeks.

They were all breast fed on demand. I can't honestly remember the days az it was a long time ago but certainly at night i had to have them in bed by 7.30pm as i was a Corrie addict back then!

With my first, we bathed her every night but it was a chore so we never did that with the others.

I dressed them in day clothes by day and never had sleep suits on them by day.

So, my nighttime routine consisted of changing them into nightwear, clean nappy. One of them i did massage with oils as that was a popular thing once.

Then move to the bedroom (mine were all own room by 8 weeks) and breast feed both sides til they had drained both sides. I probs kept low light and voice too.

I used baby sleeping bags (and i think i would have put that on before the feed)

Then, gently lift to cot and for my eldest 3, i used white noise (i know this is NOT recommended now) for the younger 2, i had a classical music thing that attached to the cot side. I put that on and left.

I only returned if they sounded quite upset (not running back in to any little sound but certainly when it sounded like it was building to a full scream)

I didnt lift them, just went in in dark, didn't speak, just re set the music, stoked away any tears and left again.

I would've repeated that as needed.

One of mine slept through 7.30 til 6am consistantly from 6 weeks!

But he was a big baby who could hold a belly full of milk.

The others i'd go in and lift them for another feed at midnight. And then back down. They'd go through til 6 or 7 on that.

My daytime routine was fixed with morning walk to school, school pick up. Dh worked regular hours.

My babies just fitted in round the others really.

Good luck!

I do recall all mine kind of fell into their own routine by 3 months - they seemed to nap at similar times each day. I just went with it. But maybe that is also because my days were fixed; we fell in step with each other.

I didn’t have a proper routine but started more actively getting her to nap after a set time (60-90 minutes?) at that age as I found she wasn’t always dropping off when tired. That results in a routine of sorts during the day. Still fed on demand but offered milk every 3 hr at least during the day.

You can also get her up at 7 am and offer a feed, then get her dressed for the day and aim for her nap around 8 am.

Sorry forgot to add that mine more or less fell into their own rountine though, we did feed and change at 7am though, just to try and get started with the day feeds.

Sunlight is good at promoting nighttime sleep, so if you can, get her outside fairly early.

Are you going to any local groups? They're usually good for meeting some other Mums and getting a feel of what everyone else is doing.

I also have an 8 week old (today!)

Last few days we’ve been paying a lot more attention to wake windows and actively encouraging napping at the end of them (which usually means a walk in the carrier as I haven’t found a better way yet!)

He also feeds for comfort so trying to stretch his feeds to every 3 hours.

So around those two things, our day sort of just pans out into a repeatable pattern. Bedtime wise - we change him into his swaddle suit and then sleep from then on is “night”!

We never had a ‘routine’. It just happened naturally usually between 8-12 weeks.

As for sleep, you sleep in the bloody bed. Your partner sleeps on the sofa or a mattress on the floor somewhere. It’s much more exhausting to parent a small baby 24/7 than work an early shift, so you’re the one who needs the rest. Or trade off half the night he sleeps in the room with baby and does the nighttime parenting while you sleep and then you switch the other half of the night.

Can’t believe your husband is sleeping in the bed and letting you sleep on the settee. Disgraceful behaviour from him.

We got our baby into a routine from the day he came home from hospital. He got into it very quickly.

I would start by looking at the routine the baby has. For the next 2 days make a note of naps and feeds. Then see if you can preempt when they will need a feed or a nap.

I never implemented a routine as such but we got into the swing of times and when I could fit my feeds around her. So the morning at 8 weeks was something like wake up, feed baby, nappy change. Go down stairs make a drink. Drink it, maybe breakfast, another nappy change. Cuddles & engage with her. Feed and short nap. When she woke up nappy change, her both of us dressed.
Did she wake up and feed and nap at the same time every day - not really but the pattern was the same. Some days she wanted to play for longer other days she had a longer sleep. As she got older and more troubled by her silent reflux and undiagnosed food allergies I wasn't able to have a drink and everything went to hell between 10 and 18 weeks. She was on a new routine then but again. I monitored her habits and then I could work life around that. Feed, up, breakfast, nap, play, feed, lunch, out for a long walk and a nap in the pram. Home play feed nap dinner and so on. For me figuring out when I could fit my needs alongside her needs was when it started to feel less like I was sinking!

Definitely you sleep in the bed. My partner did early mornings for work so slept in the spare room. Had we not had a spare room he would have had the choice of share the bed or be on the sofa

I can’t believe you’re on the sofa.

Sleep windows were important to me at that point, she would nap, we’d feed, nappy change, some sort of activity, maybe another nappy change and feed to sleep. I have friends who had sleep trained babies and structured routines with set things happening at set times at that point though but I was a bit more loose with it. I found the huckleberry app useful to see where we were and how far we were from what I’d have liked, then I could tweak it a bit

Swap with your DP though, he really should be looking after you more. Maybe part of your routine would be going to the bedroom to signal that it’s nighttime too.

8 weeks is young for a strict routine and you should continue to feed on demand.
But you can definitely start putting her down for naps at set times now, and make day and night sleep different by not dimming the lights or being too quiet during the day but having it dark and quiet at night.
Also a daily walk outside during the day is meant to help them start to work out when it's day and night time. I used to do a walk every afternoon with my eldest around the same time each day

I also found the huckleberry app really useful for seeing patterns and keeping track of wake windows. We don't live and die by it but it's a good guide. Also helpful when DH and I are swapping care between us, we don't need to give each other a run down of last feed / last nap as it's all there.

Agree with PP's, get off the bloody sofa! The person with the full nights sleep gets the less comfortable sleeping option. The one with broken sleep gets the more comfortable / better sleep quality option.

Get yourself off the sofa! It's so risky from a safe sleeping perspective if you fall asleep on the sofa with the baby. Your partner should be on the sofa, or get themselves some ear plugs.