When did you introduce a routine?

[yelyahyoung]

Our first baby is 8 weeks old now. She has been going to bed when we go to bed, and gets up when I get up in the morning. When should we start introducing some kind of routine? She gets plenty of naps but I’d hate to think I was doing it wrong or keeping her from sleeping. Many thanks

I should add she normally gets put into her bed once we’ve gone upstairs and she’s been fed, around 9:30pm. She will then not wake until 2:30am ish, then again at about 4-5am, and then will start to properly wake up at about 7. That’s her routine at the moment.

I never managed to get into any kind of routine until my LO was 10 months old & went to 1 nap a day. Before that, her wake up time would differ each day, naps would be diff times & varying lengths! It used to be annoying trying to commit on times of classes, play dates etc. I just stopped stressing about a routine & just went with the flow. And we finally got there. But it’s still by no means a concrete routine x

About 4-6 months for mine.

The asleep time in the evening went from 11ish to earlier and earlier and they end up sleeping the evening in the living room - so I started making sure they were awake in the afternoon by 5ish and started a bedtime routine around 7pm.

From about 3 months I offered feeds at regular times, basically every time they woke from a nap and they'd tend to go 2.5-3 hours between feeds. I had a rough routine of wake-feed-play-nap throughout the day. Always started the day at the same time. Always did a bottle feed around 10-11pm.

I found a routine got more fixed one they were on solids around 5-6 months.

About 3 months for daytime feeds and naps although it sort of started falling into place itself (after a very tumultuous start to life and then home life for our LO)
I started bedtime routine at 4 months, bottle, bath then bed for 6.30pm. Nonsense at first but after a couple of weeks it started coming together and he still has that routine now at 13 months.

5 months

What's a routine? 😂 DS is 8 months and we just do whatever really. So long as he's happy and producing plenty of wet/dirty nappies, I tend to assume he's fine!

I wouldn't force a routine as they sort of fall into one. I used to go to bed early (about 8) with my newborns and just feed on demand. Slowly they got a bit more predictable (eg conk our for a long sleep at certain times, want feeding at a certain time etc). At about 3 months I made a conscious effort to put them down at the time they would be asleep and made it more a bath, feed, bed routine for them.

Don't put pressure on yourself to have a set routine it will only get stressful. Just follow what they're showing you iyswim.

The same for naps and feeds (god the stress I put myself through trying to get my first into a routine I tried to control 🤦‍♀️)

I just went with the flow for all three of mine to be honest. Ate when they were hungry and slept when they were tired.

At about 8 months but it's altered several times since then and he's 2 now

DD found her own routine...slept most of day & night and woke every 5.5 hours to feed. Night feed dropped at 6 weeks.

At about 3 months she would go down after her bath/bottle (9 ish) and wake about 9:30am. She was ready for her next nap @12 and then another at @3 for and hour.

The daytime sleeps merged to one long one at about 12 months old and she would have at least 2 hours @1pm.

She's 18 now and still loves her 12 sleeps.

DS was very similar except he woke up at 6:30am regardless of what time he went down.