Help: 2nd baby ow 6 weeks & struggling to get a routine.. advice needed!

[Jiz28]

second baby, a girl, now 6 weeks but I'm struggling to get a routine.. especially daytime awake / sleep times. She doesn't seem to be able to settle herself to sleep so I resort to a sling ... will this cause problems later on (ie unabel to settle herself to sleep)? Tried Gina Ford 1st time round (1st baby was a boy) but kept failing.. anyone found it worked? I seem to remember 1st baby easy to put down to sleep during day & night (or is my memory too rose?!). Any advice gratefully received.

I tried Gina Ford with ds (now 2), felt like a complete failure as 1st time mum that I couldn't fit into the routines. After about 3 weeks, read the Baby Whisperer and found it much more helpful! However when ds was 3/4 months old, I found that he had more or less settled into Gina Ford's routines naturally, so used it at that stage to move him through each stage and it was very useful for that. Good luck

thanks toothyboy. I'm nervous that I might try less ths time round (ie take the say options .. sling etc.) and then create future problems.

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I don't think you will create problems. I think at 6 weeks they already know what they want. Some babies are fairly easy to settle to sleep (as in, it is possible with hard work!) and some just aren't. But they get better as they get older. Or at least, when they are older, they are more able to learn. At 6 weeks dd would go balistic if I put her down, just totally panic and carry on screaming for as long as I let her. But at 6 months I could let her yell for a bit and she learnt pretty quickly that this was the way it was now.

Do you want a routine cos you are going mad without one, or cos you feel you ought to? My goal is to survive with most of us happy most of the time (ds is 17wks, dd is 3yo). Tomorrow can take care of itself...

Also the one thing I've really learnt is they change. There is no point worrying over some behaviour and breaking your neck trying to change it cos in 2 weeks time your baby will be different. I have discovered that most problems go away if I ignore them long enough .

I think you are being too hard on yourself. I remember at the time feeling that dd wasn't in any "routine" but actually she was of sorts. Wake ,quick feed ,get bundled into the car to take ds to preschool for 9am, back home, snooze/feed/change, repeat ! , back in car for the 12.30 preschool pick up then the rest was a blur ! Suddenly at 6 months I realised we did have more of a regular routine apart from merely revolving around ds, so things had changed somewhere in between!

Second babies have to fit in to an extent so you do what is necessary to accommodate their needs as you carry on, and for now the sling works, and they do change as, fruitful said, week on week sp don't fret too much yet.

Good luck

to all .. thanks for the reassurance