Tips to start a routine please? 3 months old

[BabyCJuly]

Hello there,

There is so much information out there... some tips please to start an all round sleep/feed routine. Thanks so much!

We do bath, book sleep at night but rest of the day not a set routine just yet.

Any guidance would be amazing!
Thanks so much xx

What are your baby’s naps like at the moment? How much awake time can they handle?

At three months depending on nap length you might be doing 3-5 naps a day. I wouldn’t aim for a set routine just yet, because soon enough it’ll change anyway and it can drive you mad when it’s not going ‘right’.

At three months you could be doing eat play sleep, if you’re not already? And then any other feeds on demand.

It can help to get more of a rhythm going to wake your baby up at the same time every day. But that isn’t for everyone!

One thing that helped me a lot was the huckleberry app - it’s free and if you log baby’s sleep it predicts the best time for a nap. I found it was most helpful between 3-6 months. Now DD is eight months I am finding it much less accurate. But I also feel much more confident in my own judgment now, and we’re down to just two naps a day. So for these tricky months ahead I’d really recommend the app, but do remember it doesn’t know your child and don’t let it override your instincts as baby’s mum!

Hi!

Not sure how qualified I am to comment on this as I'm a FTM and he's only 13 weeks but thought it may give you ideas to hear what other people are doing 😊 and hopefully I can pick up some tips too!

A routine seems to have emerged for us over the past couple of weeks - he's awake for about and hour and half during the day before he needs a nap so I work around that. He has a big nap in the morning (usually back in his crib), a smaller one at lunchtime, a small one around 3pm and then his final one before bed. Ideally I want him to be in his bed by 7.30-8pm so try to make sure he is awake for 1 and a half hours before that and we have a long bath (he loves them, really tires him out) then bottle, story and a bit of a cuddle then he goes down awake. Im not working to set times during the day for naps but stick to the 1 and a half hours as that is his wake window, any longer and he's crabby and won't drift off easily. At the moment the first nap of the day is in the crib, the second usually in his carrier when I go for a walk, and the other two are either in his crib or pram if we are out. I put him down for his nap with the same phrase and little song each time so hopefully he starts to associate that with sleep time! And if he wakes up before 7am then he has his feed in the dark still with no talking. After that I open the curtains and talk to him so he knows it day time.

I don't really have a set routine of what we do when he's awake as sometimes he wakes up hungry and other times he doesn't. But it will always include milk, play of some description and cuddles. He has reflux so I have to think about when he can go on his play mat etc if he's just had a feed.

I guess as he gets a bit older he will drop /some of the day time naps but at the moment he very much needs them. Now we seem to be on a rough schedule it means I can plan doing things for me. So as his first nap is the longest I'm trying to workout, have a shower, breakfast and coffee 😍😍 then we usually have a baby group or walk in the afternoon.

I follow some baby sleep consultants on Instagram where I have picked up tips from them and followed the ones that fit in with us. I started doing most bits at about 5 weeks and so far so good 🤞🤞

@Sarahlouise86 just read your post and it sounds like you’re doing amazing! Seriously impressed by the working out!

That’s a really good tip about sleep associations. The more independent sleep associations you can introduce the better. Little nap routine for example a song, sleep bag, white noise, comforter. Those are things that you don’t need to keep repeating overnight/are independent from you. The more things like that your baby can associate with sleep, in my limited experience, the better! Also if you use white noise play it all night long and for all cot naps

Haha don't be fooled, I didn't work out this morning and I'm just sat in my pjs eating croissants instead while he's snoozing 😂

We don't use white noise because he seems to be a pretty good sleeper but I know that can change! Do you think it's worth introducing it before it's needed? I did try it when he was first born but because he was premature he slept solidly for 5 weeks so seemed silly at the time.

If your baby doesn’t need it I wouldn’t bother. My DD had started to struggle to just fall asleep by 8 weeks, and was easily woken by noise and light (at around 3 months we gave up trying to keep her downstairs with us after she went to bed at 7pm! We just woke her up and she was so upset) so I think I started it around then. I found it helpful to block out the noise DD made in her sleep when she was in my room, and also to block out noises made in the house that could wake her from a nap/overnight.

Also, croissants and pjs sounds much better than working out!!

With all three of mine a routine emerges rather than me creating it. That approach for bedtime sounds good and I always used awake windows as a guide for when they would need a nap (google it). But at 3 months it is still early, some feeds turn into a two hour nap in the chair with them on you when you’re totally unprepared and need the loo, others are unexpectedly long or short in the carrier or pushchair (although mine all hated the pushchair that early on). Their naps tend to settle into a more reliable pattern and length around 4/5 months and then your routine is there for you. And, for example, mine didn’t like napping in the Moses basket or cot earlier on but by 4/5 months we had transitioned to one or two in the cot. But the awake windows were always super useful for me as two of mine didn’t show clear signs of tiredness but if I assumed they needed a nap based on how long they’d been awake they would usually have one and you can adjust it as they get older so it helps you tweak things as they drop naps later on.