Establishing routine for 3 month old

[Bellabelloo]

Hello!

My baby is 3 months old today. He is pretty good at sleeping through the night with 1 (or sometimes 2) quick feeds. I'm looking at whether I should try and establish a daytime nap routine. How important is this? At the moment he naps throughout the day in the car, in his pram, in his chair etc. I just put him down in his cot and he happily went to sleep.

Should I be trying to put him down in his cot for set periods of the day at set times? Can you be quite flexible, or should you stick to the routine exactly?

Any advice would be gratefully recently received. I have had a look online and advice varies. But my biggest query is whether it is best to say he must go down at 10am, 1pm etc or if the nap times can be flexible to fit around plans etc. And whether it is OK having his nap in a pram if I use his nap time to pop to the shops etc.

Thank you in advance.

No advice from me as I'm in the exact same situation as you with a 3 month old who has no routine so I am watching this thread with interest!

X

Should I be trying to put him down in his cot for set periods of the day at set times? Can you be quite flexible, or should you stick to the routine exactly?

You would be best initially setting awake time, this gives flexibility depending on the length of naps and how the day is going.

Fixing awake time will usually give rise to more predictability in timings, but that will develop in a baby led way.

A good approximation would twice as much awake time as sleep time. With some degree of flexibility.

So I'd naps are ususlly 30 minutes and it usually takes you 20 minutes to get baby to sleep - then your routine becomes:

Wake > 40 min activity > 20 min settling > Sleep > Repeat

If naps are ususlly 45 minutes and it takes you 10 minutes to get her to sleep it will be:

Wake > 80 min activity > 10 min settling > Sleep > Repeat

It will take a degree of always being different initially, while you learn baby's patterns. If she has a short nap, shorten the next awake time. If it suddenly starts taking you 20 minutes to get her to sleep rather than 5 minutes, near this in mind for subsequent naps.

My 15 week DS has fallen into a routine of 4 naps a day with roughly an hour to 90 mins awake time. Our 'routine' is normally something like this:

Early morning nap on me (60-90 mins after wake up)

Mid-morning nap on the go because we're normally out with 2 year old DD (pram/sling/car)

Lunchtime nap in bed (about 12:30-1 based on DD's nap)

Afternoon nap on the go (normally about 4:30 if he wakes about 3 from the lunchtime nap)

I don't remember there being such a pattern with DD but I think DS is in more of a routine because we're following DD's routine if that makes sense.

I'd see what time he wakes up and plan a nap about an hour after that. Put him in the cot if it suits or take him out of that suits you. At this stage, the location of the nap might be different each day depending on what your plans for the day are.

I second paying attention to length of time awake rather than having set nap times. Changed my life with DD! I now have a good sense of what she can cope with (Google guideline times for their age) and just make sure I get her down (pram, sling, bouncey chair, whatever works) after she's been awake that long (adjusted for length of previous nap or if she's looking tired earlier). Actual nap times vary from day to day, depending on when she first wakes up and how long she sleeps for (there's an average standard but it varies). She's a much happier baby since I started doing this rather than trying to think in terms of set nap times.

I found my babies all naturally had a very similar cycle of sleep, eat, etc to the Shona Ford routine. Taking a look at that really helped me understand them better and respond to their cues. I never followed her reotibe though! I don't think you can or should make such a small baby have a routine but instead follow their lead and be confident about putting them Dow for naps etc even before they get obviously tired. Gina Ford timings were always bang on, even though I often thought 'no way is he/she ready for that right now'.

Gina Ford! Autocorrect!

My DS has one particularly long sleep in the middle of the day with half an hour naps in morning and later in afternoon (usually) - if he has double awake time from his nap would he have a 4hour awake time after his 2hr nap? Or does it not apply to a longer nap??

I struggle to get him to have more regular naps- should I be working harder on this?

It's more for consistant length naps. Plus its only an aporoximayion anyway. Once two longer naps develops, most people find 234 (hours awake time) is a better approximate. That's for babies older than OPs though.

Maybe double the average nap length would be a better approximation for you? If your baby has 3h sleep time over 3 naps, would 2h awake time between naps work?