LO is 4 weeks old today and we haven't had him on a schedule yet. It seems like when they're newborns you just have to roll with it, which has been going great. Now that he's older though, I'm thinking ahead to getting more of a routine going. We don't feel the need to be super-rigid about it, but I'd like to get day/night clearly differentiated and have a little bit of predictability...
My question is- when and how did you start getting your LO on a more set schedule?
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we didn't try to start putting LO on a schedule until possibly 3.5 - 4 months old. I kept hearing that for the first two months or so, we would should on demand. LO pretty much slept anywhere too so we just let him fall asleep when he wanted to.
Then around the 3.5-4 month mark, I started putting him in his crib for naps and monitoring what his sleepy signs were to see if I could put him down at "the right time." I also read "Babywise" which talks about the 90 minute wake time rule. That helped me to figure out why the baby was cranky - because he was tired or because he was hungry, etc.
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I tried to go with the flow but that's not my strong suit so I had my LO on a schedule before 1 month. It is definitely do-able if that is what you choose to do.
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We started a schedule at around 2 months. Before that it was totally just go with the flow. My LO adapted to a schedule pretty quickly and easily so we were lucky there.
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Thanks y'all. Going with the flow is working fine with us so far (that's our style) and I don't want to be captive to a schedule. I want him to just nap if we're out and about rather than needing a specific set up.
@Andrea: How did you go about getting a baby that young on a schedule? -
@MegWag: Starting from when my LO was born, I kept a log and observed her natural eating/sleeping schedule. I found some patterns and saw that she was already putting herself on a schedule. I was lucky in that she never had her days/nights mixed up. So I decided to begin our day at 7 am each day and woke her up if she was still sleeping. Then I timed her naps and feeds accordingly. If her naps ever ran long, according to my "schedule", then I would wake her up in order to get her to the same bedtime every day. This all took a lot of obsessing over her schedule on my part, though, I will admit. However, I love predictability.
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i started LO on babywise at 5 weeks. it was hard but totally worth the training when LO started sleeping through the night. it was also good because you can plan your day around baby's sleep/eat time.
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Sounds like I need to check out Babywise! I think I'd like to take cues from LOs on his natural schedule and just be flexible with it instead of being too set on it.
I'm fine with BFing in public and so far LO is good at napping when we're out and about, so I'm thinking it would be good to keep that up. -
I don't have a LO, but I've heard a lot of not so good things about Babywise. Of course every baby and every family is different, but is pretty rigid. Maybe @MrsJacks (a pediatrician) will pipe in, but I've heard her say that has actually contributed to infant deaths, sadly. If you do read it, I would compare it with some other more flexible books and pick & choose what works for you... especially considering that you don't feel the need for a strict schedule.
From what I've gathered surfing the web, "The Baby Whisperer" has a good routine for infants under 4 months old. Rather than strict timing, she suggests keeping babies on a E-A-S-Y routine: Eat, Activity, Sleep/time for You. Here's an example of one mom's use of it: http://noobmommy.com/2008/12/easy-routine-from-baby-whisperer.html#.TrxOblZSlz0
From what I know (again, non-mama here), I think the biggest difference between this and what a lot of people do is that you don't feed your baby to sleep. Instead, you keep them up for a little bit after they eat, and then put them down when they are acting drowsy but haven't fallen completely asleep yet. Supposedly this promotes good sleep habits for when they are older.
If you used a loose routine like this, you could adjust it day to day, but you & your LO would have an idea if eating time, play time or sleeping time is coming up based on where you are in the E-A-S-Y cycle.
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Babywise was soooo helpful to me and it is not extreme. Also http://www.momsoncall.com was so helpful. My baby is 4.5 months and sleeps 12 hours at night and although I was probably blessed with a good sleeper it did take some work. I was so much happier once we found a good schedule...makes the days predictable. My baby is thriving and such a happy little girl. So i guess I just wanted to say that babywise isnt all bad...I had read that too and was so against it but all my mom friends with good sleepers told me they used it and when I read it I realized it wasnt extreme at all...in fact it says a lot of the stuff that other books said (baby whisperer and healthy sleep habits happy child...it was just the most helpful for me). Sorry for the typos...I'm writing this comment on my phone. The best resource for putting her on a schedule though was definitely moms on call
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My family thrives on a schedule, it's just how we are wired.
I had my son on a schedule from about 5 weeks out of necessity. I realized he was getting his days and nights mixed up because he was sleeping too long at his last nap, so I had to move up the second nap and wake him up from the third nap. I wrote everything down in those early days, I tossed the notes, but I also used the sleep/wake time chart that was posted on here a bit ago by Geek In Heels. That little piece of paper was a lifesaver.
He was also good with sleeping when we were out of the house, but that was from birth to 6 months. That stopped when he was too interested in seeing what was going on around him...he's a very social baby and was always the only one at mom meet ups that was not content to sit in his stroller and watch.
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