Sleep schedule for newborn?

[TGLucie]

Hello!

I've seen so many different sleep schedules and we want to find some recommendations for sleep patterns/training.

Baby not due for a few more months but want to get some ideas so we can put a rough plan in place.

[steppemum]

swaddling - again, very individual.

dc 1 would screma if swaddled, he was a huge baby (over 10lbs and was late arriving and and very long, he had been so squashed in the womb, that his prefered position was flat on his back with both arms stretched out above his head and legs akimbo. He filled the moses nbasket and got annoyed if the sides were in the way of his hands. He was in his big cot (and my bed) after a couple of weeks.

dc 2 loved being swaddled.

and yet more people saying newborns don't need playtime until 3 months.
3 months! Good grief at 3 months I have videos of my babies laughing and interacting with people.
None of mine were these sleepy feeding machines, awake, looking round and wanted to see everything. (well 2 out of 3, dc2 was pretty sleepy, but only for a couple of weeks)

Every baby is different. That is OK

[Flittingaboutagain]

Hi OP

I can see there are some posts that might make you feel crap on here but a lot of people probably had their own naive versions of your questions when they were pregnant and are forgetting the benefit of hindsight.

There is no harm in reading things like the baby whisperer sleep to get informed and then decide what you hope to do when the time is right.

[OneEpisode]

If you are planning I would plan for your own sleep. Make sure your room has good blinds or curtains and is a nice place for you to nap. If it’s noisy think about what you can do (soft furnishings absorb sound, maybe a book case against the wall to the noisy neighbours)

[Ginfilledcats]

[quote maryberryslayers]@Ginfilledcats what tracker app do you use please? [/quote]
I use Baby Tracker x

[christmasathomeagain]

😂 Newborns don't have a schedule and they certainly don't stick to one you try and enforce 😂

[FATEdestiny]

[quote Cleverpolly3]@FATEdestiny
I did almost ask if you were in fact a baby whisperer

Sorry but three kids later I just roll my eyes at this sort of thing but great if it works for you perhaps my kids are just Duracell bunnies or the infant equivalent of Thatcher and her minimal sleep rations[/quote]
Im a baby and toddler Sleep Consultant and long term visitor to the Mumsnet Sleep board. I have 4 children currently aged between 6-16.

I am humbled by the title Baby Whisperer after the late Tracy Hogg. I respect her ethos (unlike that of GF!).

[sockywock]

As others have said, but here are some tips for the newborn stage:

Encourage a bright, busy daytime and get baby out in natural daylight where possible. Conversely, keep nighttime quiet, calm and dark. Feed, speak quietly and don't be too stimulating during the night, and straight back to bed. This will help baby's circadian rhythm adjust to learn night from day.

Swaddling really does help newborns sleep in my personal experience. I rated the 'swaddle up' by Love to Dream and credit it with getting me and baby some extra sleep! We used it up until the point he was rolling.

At about three months, I introduced a set bedtime and wake time, and naps slowly stabilised and formed a pattern from there. The bedtime was 8/9pm at the time (the slightly later bedtime tends to work better for younger babies and naturally becomes earlier as they get a bit older).

You probably won't see much of a pattern beyond feed and sleep for a while! It gets easier though!

Another thing is to look up appropriate wake windows and aim for a nap after baby has been awake for so long.

[StacySoloman]

My only tip would be to feed them everytime they wake up rather than before they need to nap.

[minipie]

For the first three months, just try to get the baby to sleep as much as possible. Especially the first few weeks, they should basically eat burp nappy sleep and repeat (no “playtime”). If they don’t sleep enough they get overtired and wound up and that’s a nasty vicious cycle.

Sleeping well is very reliant on feeding well so do everything you can to get feeding going smoothly. The best thing I did to help DD’s sleep was get her tongue tie snipped.

[Oly4]

You’re right, and I apologise.
But I do think it’s not the right thing to be thinking.. babies are highly unpredictable and really really need cuddles and reassurance.. and lots of physical contact 24/7

[SouthDownsLass]

Not sure you should be having a baby if you hope to sleep train them

Wow what a horrible thing to say @Oly4

[SaveWaterDrinkGin]

You need to massively lower your expectations OP and be prepared to go with the flow. As everyone else on this thread has said babies come with their own schedule.

Congratulations on your pregnancy.

[Twinkie01]

They wake every 2 hours feed for 50 minutes, do a poonami then you clean them, get them back to sleep and it's time to go again or maybe that was just mine!!

[Cleverpolly3]

@rorosemary

Baby is not really meant to be awake for anything much more than a feed as a newborn, then straight back to sleep.

Someone forgot to tell mine this.

😂

[Cleverpolly3]

@FATEdestiny
I did almost ask if you were in fact a baby whisperer


Sorry but three kids later I just roll my eyes at this sort of thing but great if it works for you perhaps my kids are just Duracell bunnies or the infant equivalent of Thatcher and her minimal sleep rations

[rorosemary]

Baby is not really meant to be awake for anything much more than a feed as a newborn, then straight back to sleep.

Someone forgot to tell mine this.

[RedMarauder]

Newborns and young babies routines are really for you the parent.

I had no routine until my DD was nearly 10 months and started at her CM. Then the routine was to ensure I got to work on time.

Anyway OP the issue you will find is your baby's sleep pattern will change as they grow, get weaned, start rolling, start crawling and start walking. You just need to read up on how many naps and how many hours sleep your baby should have at a particular age then remember your baby is an individual. My DD has never napped consistently during the day.

[steppemum]

I am interested in some posters saying that their babies just ate and slept.

Mine really didn't.

dc 1, was awake a lot from day 1. He was a bit of a model baby, ate loads, ate on the dot of 3 hours, and then was awake, slept through the night early on too.
i had to work out how to get him to nap as by preference he was awake all day.

dc 2was a sleepy eat and sleep baby, but only for 2 weeks, then she was awake loads too.
dc 3 was somehwere in between

I never forced a routine but I did do 2 things.

1. try and have a difference between day and night. Daytime = lights, conversation, playtime, reacting, etc etc. night time= very quiet, feed and sleep time. As mine were awake during the day we interacted with them, tickle toes, smiling etc, but not at night. It worked pretty well with all of them, but dc 2 took ages to sleep at night.
   
2. as mine were wakeful babies, my challenge was to work out how to get them into any sort of nap routine so they weren't overtired and screaming by 5 pm. I went with - if a baby has been up for 2 hours, they need to sleep, so the 2 hours includes feed and nappy changes etc, and then I would rock them off to sleep. That worked.
   

and I often hear of people who feed their babies to sleep, but mine didn't do that, once their tummy was full they didn't want the boob, they didn't want any more milk.

In retrospect my 3 baboes were SOO different. Dc1 was routine routine routine. Dc 2 was go with the flow. This actually is part of their personlity and not me at all. They are still like that today.
Which is why it is so much easier to follow the flow of your child's needs

[Oly4]

Not sure you should be having a baby if you hope to sleep train them.
They don’t do schedules. Just go with the flow, they are only little for a short while. The lack of sleep is a form of torture really but we’ve all been there and got through it

[OhToBeASeahorse]

I suppose it depends what you mean by routine.

With mine, I always fed when they woke up, then wind, change, play then nap for as long as possible - normally a couple of hours

However all these naps were in a sling. Never managed to get a newborn to sleep alone after the first couple of weeks

[FATEdestiny]

[quote Cleverpolly3]@FATEdestiny

Is that a joke?
Unless by sleep you mean lying by on you so you can’t move at all[/quote]
Could be lying in your arms. Or could be put down in. Both/either don't change the general cyclic cycle of sleeping and feeding.

Is she Gina Ford?

FYI the concept of a repeating predictable cycle rather than set routine times, like that I suggested, is derived from Tracey Hogg's (The Baby Whisperer). Very different concept to Gina Ford.

[Willow4987]

We didn’t even attempt routine until over 12 weeks. All I did was make sure nappy was changed before a feed as both DS would fall asleep feeding so I didn’t want to re-wake them during a change

[ShinyGreenElephant]

Agree with others, follow your baby and if you are religious about keeping everything dark and quiet at night and brighter and less quiet of a day, they MIGHT just work out that night time is for sleeping by around 3 months. What they do with that information depends on the baby. By 6 months they will hopefully have fallen into something of a pattern and should be ready for a bedtime routine - bath, stories etc. There's also apps (I used huckleberry) that can help you with nap times so they don't get overtired - certainly wouldn't bother with a newborn but at 4+ months they can be quite useful

[SouthDownsLass]

Well I'm going to disagree with everyone. I used a mixture of the Baby Whisperer, and Gina Ford.

Yes yes, burn me now.

But, for us and our baby, it worked. Fifteen years ago now through, so I'm sure some new books have come along.

[maryberryslayers]

@Ginfilledcats what tracker app do you use please?