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.

It's pretty impossible! Main thing is to let them sleep when they want should be aiming for sleeping every 2 hours but sleep can be like a 20 min power nap!

Rough bedtime schedules (I use this term lightly more getting them used to a bit of a routine) is from about 12 weeks before this they simply don't have the protein to work out if its night or day!

Basically go for survival!

For the first three months at least, follow the baby. Do some research on the fourth trimester. After that you may start to be able to make little tweaks - but even then just tweaks. The Gentle Sleep Book (Sarah Ockwell-Smith) is great for understanding how baby sleep works, and for information on how to support your baby to sleep as well as possible.

Please do banish any ideas of being able to put your baby in a set routine, all you’re likely to end up with is feeling utterly anxious and depressed, with a screaming unhappy baby.

@Ginfilledcats

My baby was born early June, this is my track of her sleep in October. Green is sleep, orange breast feed and blue nappy.

No pattern really, or starting to get to one maybe.

The first 3 months they sleep for like 20 hours of the day. When they want to. Just follow their lead. A pattern will emerge eventually

The second image is December, 6 months. Much more of a routine. I've done nothing but be guided by her

I’m torn between being impressed and terrified

My three!s patterns would be more Pollockesque

You can't sleep train a newborn (at least you really shouldn't!!). It's pointless and just harmful. They are physically unable to go without sustenance for very long, not to mention their need for cuddles etc.

Read the NHS advice and Google '4th trimester'.

For full disclosure I must say I am really against sleep training at any age - it doesn't train kids to sleep, it just trains them to stop crying out for comfort. This is sad. But i do know friends that have sleep trained after a year or so. Never newborns though.

Mine doesn’t really have a schedule but I do aim for a walk out in the pram immediately after lunch because I have found advantageous to train them to sleep in the pram/pushchair. As they get older it gives an hours peace in the afternoon and when we are unlockdowned peace and quiet to visit a cafe or friends whilst they nap. The fresh air and exercise helps me as well.

Newborns don't stick to a schedule, you feed them, change them and they sleep when they like.

Around 4 months you can start to influence their natural pattern slightly to fit in with your day, by feeding at certain times (before they are crying for it) or doing bath and bed routine at night to get them used to night time.

By 6 months I had DS in a good routine mainly of his choosing that worked around certain classes and daily activities we did. It was nice as I could plan things for his awake times. This then changed as he got older, naps got later and less frequent so we adjusted to suit.

Please don't set yourself up for a fall, being a new mum is hard enough without putting unnecessary pressure on yourself, just go with it, you'll be a lot happier.

The only rule I followed in the early weeks with both of mine, was to make sure that they didn't get overstimulated and I kept to their age appropriate wake windows. By the time they got to 10-12 weeks a natural routine sort of happened where they'd be awake 1.5 hours between naps and in that time I'd feed, change, play etc... and then make sure they had a nap. With my first I was constantly striving for long naps but with my second I've been more relaxed and am just making sure she get a nap, even if it's just half an hour. There is nothing worse (imo) than an overtired baby!

@Ginfilledcats what tracker app do you use please?

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.

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

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

[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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

@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.

😂

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!!

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.

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

Wow what a horrible thing to say @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

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.

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