I think we are moving my DD (8 months) to a 2-3-4 schedule. Maybe 2-3-3 if she can't handle the 4 hours of awake time. What I'm wondering is, how do I go about dinner? Right now, She would wake up from her 3rd nap around 5, have a bottle, then eat at 6 with us, and bedtime at 730-745. She's been waking up around 3 and then it's too late for a 3rd nap, so I'm not sure when to feed her. Do you just feed your baby separately from the rest of the family since they will have an early bedtime? I guess I'm also asking about how to make the 2-3-3 schedule work because if I can't get her to 4 hours, then she'd go to bed at 6 and I doubt she'll sleep 13 hours until her normal awake time at 7am. Right now, her naps are at 9 and 1.
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When we transitioned to the 2-3-4, I just remember having to be really flexible. I had a rule that I wouldn't put DD to sleep early than 12 hours before when she would/should wakeup the next day. So never earlier than 6pm for us. Otherwise I just followed our day. Some days bedtime was 7, and others 8. Naps were at different times depending on if she awoke at 6 or 7. I will say that she moved from 3 shorter naps (1-1.5ish) to 2 longer naps (at least 2 hours), so that helped the timing. So our day was often 6am wakeup, 8-10 nap, 1-3 nap, 7pm bedtime. I always aimed to have dinner at the 2 hour mark from when she woke to bedtime, so about 5pm? But she was my only baby so I would just eat with her and DH would eat when he got home. Not sure how that would work with other family members.
Oh, and I'm also a mean mom I guess… I made her begin to conform to the 4 hours, by starting with bedtime at the 3 hour mark and pushing it back 15 min longer every other night for a week. It worked for me, but not sure anyone else would recommend that.
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@Chaosmaven: Thank you! All that info is really helpful. The problem with my dd is that her naps aren't that long. This morning was only 45 min, but it's been almost 2 hours and she's still sleeping. I think I might try the 15 min stretching to get her to 4 hours awake time. She's also my only child right now, so I can do the 5pm dinner, but I hate making it that early! Then either DH and I would have to eat after she goes to bed, or separately. Ugh, I just had a really good rhythm down for naps and making dinner/eating dinner together, lol. My DH doesn't get home until 530, so I think it'd be too late to eat then for her unless she keeps taking naps like today.
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@abbydabbydoodlebug: You're welcome! The 2 hours definitely didn't happen overnight, but she did get there eventually - so hopefully your LO will too!
I totally understand getting in the groove and then having to disrupt everything. I feel like the first 18 months were like that; I would find a routine that was working and then it would have to switch because she was older and needed fewer/different length naps. Its been a lesson in patience and flexibility. I will say that the longest stretch has been our switch to one nap (DD is almost 21 months)… but I'm about to change that up and move DD to a toddler bed and different room. So yeah, its a moving target!
You might be able to stretch her to 5:30, maybe let her snack on something while you are cooking? Is she eating any table food? We were mainly baby led weaning, so she just ate what we ate. Sometimes I would give her little bits of what I was cooking, and that would hold her off until my husband got home. But it depended on her mood - I wasn't married to family dinner at that age, so if she just ate with me that was ok. But if you have to feed her yourself, I know that means you have to put off eating yourself, so its harder to work around. Once she is eating table food with you, you could probably push it just by adding a well timed healthy snack.
Good luck - you'll find a new rhythm in no time!
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