Newborn sleep / routine

[Sipperskipper]

It may be a bit early to be thinking about this, but wondering how to get into a routine with my nearly 2 week old. I have a 3yo DD and we were quite set with a routine & it worked great for us- but I cant remember what / how we did it.

DD2 is ff, and feeds roughly every 3 hours. She often settles in her basket & sleeps in a next to me at night, swaddled. She seems to be more awake at night at the moment and I'm trying to encourage this more in the day!

At the moment there is no bedtime routine for her, she is just with us whilst we bathe dd1 / tidy up etc, but when should we start bathing her / having a calming routine for bed? And how do I do this with both of them when DH is back to work?

I'm possibly overthinking this, and do have some anxiety around sleep, so please tell me if these questions are ridiculous!

Hope you don't mind I'm just jumping on this as I'm a ftm and my LO is two weeks tomorrow, the night feeds are harder than I ever anticipated and she isn't even really that bad, feeding every 2.5-3 hours. I'm struggling though as the dirty nappies don't coincide with the feeds so I'm up the hour inbetween too to change her. Just wondering how long it was before other babies started going longer between feeds x

DS is 8 weeks. We follow the same pattern each night - bath, pjs, feed with the lights down and then rock to sleep. He currently won’t sleep before 10pm so we start this routine around 8.45pm. It’s late but I go to bed then too so it works at the moment. As he’s so young we’re not strict with anything, if I put him down and he cries then I’ll pick him up and rock him some more. We are finding he is starting to settle quicker now and sometimes he can settle himself if he’s drowsy. I would continue with DD1 routine and focus on DD2 once DD1 is asleep.

@BabyB19 oh I found the first couple of weeks so much harder than I expected! Obviously every baby is different but it started improving for me after 2 weeks. I was up every hour to feed and change. Now it’s 4-5hrs initially and then a couple of 2-3hr stretches. The feeds are much quicker though, it used to take over an hour and now he’s only out of the cot for around 15mins. DS doesn’t poo at night anymore either which makes a big difference. Hang in there!

Thanks @Betsyboo87 my one just wees at night really but I change her every feed as she's wet and then about half the time she wakes between feeds with a wet nappy. She hates being wet/dirty so cries as soon as there's a drop of wee! 🤣 I have to keep reminding myself and OH that some poor people have screamers that never stop so we're lucky she just wakes to feed and stops crying as soon as the bottle is in her mouth. Fingers crossed she starts having that 4-5 hours soon too it will make all the difference!
Hang in there @Sipperskipper you managed to survive all this once before I'm sure if you follow your same routine for both little ones you will nail it in no time xx