Establishing difference between day/night for 3 wk old baby

[BarrelOfMonkeys]

I've heard that we're supposed to have a 'routine' for bedtime for newborns so that they get used to the idea that there is a difference between day and night - the sort of thing like having a bath, then a story, then bed at a regular time. Should we be worrying about this yet, at 3 weeks old? Or when should we start this? Our DD is still all over the place with her times between feeds, length of sleeps etc so it seems pointless putting her to bed if she's wide awake at this stage. But are we then storing up problems for further down the line? Her current 'bedtime' seems to be about 4am, so it would be nice if we could bring that forward, currently we're just working round her though.

This is one of those questions where everyone has their own idea / method or whatever so expect lots of conflicting advice and decide for yourself!! lol

Personally, I tried not to communicate too much with my children at night when they were babies and during the day I interact with them lots - I still feed them change them as necessary of course. But at night I don't talk / look them in the eye - bridge of nose / tummy instead and keep the lights low.

Daytime is a contrast of noise and light and to be honest far more interseting!

I recently heard about the 2-3-4 routine on here - never heard of it before but it is a routine which looking back on it all of my children did from an early age, so with no. 4 I am going to try to institute it as a routine from an early age - don't know if 3 weeks is too young??

Hopefully someone will come on here in a minute and set me straight!!

no no no no no no no no

use black outs and keep noise and light low when feeding in the evening/night time but a baby that young wants feeding when it wants feeding and can't tell the time yet!

Ta both. What is the 2-3-4 routine?

There is no routine at 3 weeks but it does no harm to start differentiating - at night while meeting all the changing/feeding needs be very boring and keep the lights low. When your DD is older she will learn the difference quickly! I agree about blackout curtains - and I must admit when DS and DD were tiny babies they only slept in their room at night - daytime naps were taken in their carrycot downstairs. They didn't have any trouble differentiating day and night when they were old enough.

3 weeks is far too young to be worrying about 'storing up problems'. Babies tend to sleep when they're tired and eat when they're hungry at this stage. If you want you can introduce a routine which she may or may not follow until she's a bit older. You'll probably find DD's natural bedtime will shift earlier by itself though. There will be more stimulation in the daytime to keep her awake and less at nighttime.

I didn't start with a bedtime routine (bath, fresh sleepsuit, feed to sleep) with DS till he was about 8/9 weeks old, and that was only because I was trying to transfer him from co-sleeping into his own cot. Spent two weeks living in the bedroom during the evenings in order to get him used to being there. Previously he stayed in the lounge with us till we went to bed. He's 5 months now and goes to sleep easily. I've heard some people read stories to their newborns, but any sort of talking to my DS at that time would keep him wide awake! Am looking forward to introducing a story once he's a bit older and not feeding to sleep.

I was always aware of trying to maintain a difference between day and night. I would never do a feed in the middle of the night with the TV on (mainly because I didn't want to wake myself up any more than necessary). I wouldn't bother drawing the curtains for daytime naps. That's pretty much as far as it went!

Good luck, I'm a first-time mother myself and I remember worrying so much about what DS should and shouldn't be doing. You work out what's best for your child pretty quickly though. Some like routine, some don't (but do later on).

Routines can be useful, but not at this stage. You'll probably just stress yourself out more by trying (and probably failing) to institute a routine with a newborn.

Your baby is teeny tiny and her bio-rhythms aren't established yet so day and night mean nothing to her. This tends to happen around 6 weeks (I think). Until then, she'll be in a cycle of a few hours of sleep at a time (at the most).

If you are BFing, then you are still probably getting your supply sorted and it's really best to demand feed. It may feel like she feeds and sleeps randomly/all the time, but that's normal. They tend to cluster feed in the early evening, too, so a bedtime routine is nearly impossible. For me, cluster feeding went on for about 12 weeks.

What worked for us was we kept DS in the moses basket with us downstairs in the evenings and then took him up to our room when we went bed. He would sleep for a few hours (say 7-10) feed and then sleep again. This went on for probably 8 weeks until we started to give him a "bedtime". He would still wake up for feeds, but at that stage he was going slightly longer between feeds so it made sense to take advantage and get him upstairs (still in our room).

A bedtime "routine" didn't really start until 14 weeks or so when all I would do is the same things in the same order (not necessarily at the same time). And by no means, did I do this religiously. I still demand fed and was flexible with times.

Give yourself and your baby some time. Sleep when she sleeps, etc, etc. Good luck!

(Oh, and 2-3-4 is quite good when they are older - a very flexible and quite natural schedule to fall into.)

"2-3-4" is morning nap 2 hours after waking, pm nap 3 hours after waking from morning nap, then down for the night 4 hours after waking from pm nap.

So, for example up at 7am, nap at 9am, up at 10am (if that's when they wake), nap at 1pm, up at 3pm (again, depends on baby) and then down for bed at 7pm. My son is 10 months old and does seem to favour this type of schedule. But it depends on how long their naps are....

Thanks for the pointers and reassurance! Sounds like we are okay muddling along as we are at the moment - she goes in a basket in the living room in the day and the cot in our bedroom at night (which is dark, we do have blackout curtains)... Will wait for her to get a bit older before stressing too much about anything more complicated!