Washington Babies
Options
What's your schedule?
Hi guys...I'm trying to figure out a time table for Maddy - I feel like maybe she'd sleep better and eat better if I had her on a schedule.
What was your time schedule like for your newborns?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: What's your schedule?
Isabelle also made her own schedule. I remember stressing about getting her on schedule in the beginning (and posting on here about it!) but she really just did it on her own.
She wakes up between 6-7, eats and goes back down till about 9. (I call this her morning nap). She then takes a nap about 11 and if she doesn't get at least an hr at this nap she's a mess the rest of the day. After that she still isn't on much of a nap schedule, but consistently gets tired about every two hours and takes a short nap 30mins-1 hr. We start bedtime routine which is bath, eat, rock at 8 and she's down by 8:30-9:00. Some times I think she wants to go down earlier, but then she will wake up around 10pm and wanna play. I try to go with the flow.
Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get her off the cat naps she's taking and get her taking a couple longer naps. It's not been working very well.
GL! The sleep part of having a baby is super frustrating!
One thing that I know I did right (wink, wink) was, I started a Bed time routine. Lincoln knows when its bed time, even for naps..
I started this routine right around 1 to 2 months old.
6:30pm - Bath, Read a book in his room in the rocker, Shut of light (leave on night light) feed him a bottle, Rocked him for a couple min. and then layed him in his crib awake but sleepy.
and during naps I read a book to him , then rock him for a couple min. and then layed him down for a nap..
Now that he is older, I start the routine at 7:30pm. I feed him his dinner then bath, book, bottle (if he wants it) , rock and then bed..
Lincoln is a great sleeper and I think I owe it all to the routine!!!! lol... Hope you this helped alil.. Gook luck!!
They usually fall into their own schedules... you canj't really force one on them. But generally, at that age, it seems like being awake for 2 hours max at a time is a good goal before another nap. Keeping them up too long just makes them overtired. Sometimes their first nap is even just an hour after getting up for the morning.
I do think having a routine for bedtime is good.. just to get everyone settled down and in the mood...
Ditto....try to get a nap every 2 hours (or less). For us at that time we nursed to sleep every 1.5- 2 hours.
I know exactly what you're asking. ?You're not wanting to force her into a schedule; you want an idea of the general sleep schedule for a newborn. ? ?Letting them dictate their own schedule is fine if they're giving you cues they are tired, but if they fight sleep and don't give typical cues, it can be pretty much impossible to figure it out.
I had trouble figuring out when Evie was tired, so it was hard for me to know when to put her down for a nap or for bed in the evening. ?It took a *long* time to figure out when she was tired. ?I wish I had known then what I know now!?
Most newborns sleep every couple hours during the day. ?Try putting her down for her morning nap two hours after she gets up. ?Put her down for her mid-day nap two hours after she gets up from her morning nap, etc. ?A 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. nighttime schedule is pretty typical. ?She might be a little different, but at least that gives you a general idea.
One of the weird things Evie would do when she was tired is rub her nose against me. ?I didn't know why she was doing it, until I read that babies who fight sleep will rub their noses to try to stay awake. ?She never rubbed her eyes or had the other typical cues of sleepiness.
For naps, the mobile was really helpful. ?Evie didn't want to sleep, but if I put her in the crib and turned on her mobile, she'd watch it until she fell asleep. ?If I just put her in her crib without the mobile, she'd cry.
Good luck! ?It's so frustrating in the beginning when you can't tell what they want or need. ?It will become more obvious as time goes by, but sometimes Evie is still a mystery to me:).
yeah if you can't tell when she's tired and she's up longer than 2 hours at a time, I'd just try to start putting her down after 1 1/2 to 2 hours... you'll find the "sweet spot" of when she goes down well... I was definitely just nursing to sleep then - Ben didn't put himself to sleep til this summer!
I know there's a book out there that has some method called "EASY" - eat, activity, sleep, (time for) you. Which is good in theory I think if you want to just think of rotating through that stuff. although I'm 100% sure that at that age and for many months, our routine would be more like ESAY - eat, sleep, activity, you (and my "you" time was a nap or watching TV if anything... Ben often slept on me in the Moby).
I know Rose was still finding her own way at that point. I think things took until about 10 weeks to get more of a routine (nap two hours after waking, then another nap 3 hours after waking from the first, then another nap after that, two hours before bed. It took about 4 months before I felt like I could plan on her schedule, though.
Feeding on demand versus a schedule is better for them so they can self regulate their food, and then the sleep routine seems to follow that. I started using a book at about 6 weeks that might help you for settling into a routine, even for naps and meals - the No Cry Sleep Solution. I just started following some of the suggestions for sleep cues and hints as to what to look for, and that helped a lot with teaching her a comfort level of falling asleep on her own.
I like Jill's suggestion of just trying to put her down after being up a few hours.
I dunno...it's weird to read everyone's take on the whole schedule deal. My second hand experience has been the compelte opposite.
All my mommy friends swear by a (sometimes controversial) book called "Baby Wise" https://tinyurl.com/c4pkgl, which advises new parents to put their newborns on a feeding/sleeping/pooping schedule ASAP. It's a Christian-based book I believe, but every mom in my inner circle SWEARS by it. I think it's even saved some marriages and perhaps made a few folks millionaires, okay I'm exaggerating on that last bit. One friend used it on all 6 of her children and never experienced the crazy cycles a lot of new moms did.
One of my best friends had her newborn on a schedule within about 3 weeks by using some of the same methods in the book. I witnessed it myself so I can attest that it CAN be done. Her motto in the house with two kids is always "I run this show. This show doesn't run me." She's pretty hardcore but her life has been extremely routine since the birth of her first child and her kids happy and healthy :-)
I've seen enough happy (and unhappy) moms to know at the very least, I'm going to try it!
We were all about letting Connor do his own thing initially. It worked really well for us for about 3 weeks. Connor would fall asleep between 6 and 10pm and sleep until dawn (waking every 3 hours for food). He's come really close to 6 hours of sleep several times.
Now he's having problems napping during the day, so we may give EASY a try.
Baby Wise is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY controversial. So controversial that our instructor at our Toddler Group said that NY state has banned it from their hospitals because they were seeing a growing trend of kids dying of dehydration and when they finally started quizzing parents , they found that a lot of them were using Baby Wise and were adhering to this strict schedule thing.
PLEASE please please please please do a lot of research on this before you consider going forward with that method. It has nothing to do with responding to the needs of the baby and everything to accomodating the parents' needs. If you're having a baby for the convenience of it, you're in it for the wrong reasons.
Babies are not convenient, and do not fit into an adult type of schedule. Their eating and sleeping needs are very different, and their sleep cycles and how and when they get REM sleep and deep sleep even happen at different times than adults sleep cycles.
Babies are only babies for a short time. It can be hard and inconvenient and draining and sleep depriving, but it is over in a blink, and worth it to respond to them in an age appropriate way.
(OP - I know this isnt' the kind of schedule you were talking about... I just had to respond though)
I think the smartest people who use baby wise don't follow it to a T. I don't know anyone who does. All my friends say "Don't read this chapter" or I don't do this part, but I do this part. No book is going to tell me how to raise my child (well except the Bible). Though you'd be amazed at how many people will take the word of a book over their instinct as a mother. As with everything I read, you take the meat and spit out the bones. I don't think any one book has the answer to raising children. Every child is different. But I can appreciate that there are people out there who have made an attempt to bring some sanity and peace to their home and make their children happy.
As to your comment about babies not being an inconvenience. I don't really see how that's even necessary to mention. I hardly think anyone who's chosen to comment on this board is having a baby for the convenience of it. I know I certainly haven't. Please....
I also don't think parents who'd like to make every effort possible to normalize their babies onto a schedule aren't being selfish either. When done correctly, schedules, however you design them can create happy, harmonious babies who grow up to be happy and loved children.
Good luck with whatever you come up with IG. I know you're a smart and discerning mama.
as you can see by the
after the inconvenient remark, I was trying to be FUNNY.
I also think you might have a lot of other ideas about raising kids once you actually have them.... so just know that there are many options out there, and read up on Baby Wise a lot before you implement it... It's worth mentioning that it is very controversial, and that there are health care providers who take serious issue with it. That was my point.
Sorry for not getting the joke... :-( I don't have a lot of appreciation for humor around the "convenience" of pregnancy. The last year has not been fun for me in that regard...
I've read up a lot on Baby Wise. I understand exactly why it's controversial and I don't agree with everything the author is putting forth. I mostly brought it up because often I think a lot of new moms think that life is meant to be crazy for months on end and there are actually a lot of women who with or with the aide of a book, find a way to normalize their baby's schedule. Every situation is different though and I don't think mothers who put their children on a schedule are any better or worse than those who'd rather go with the flow. My mom raised 4 of us and never had a problem because she used her own methods of putting us on a schedule and developing a routine. I'd like to hope I can achieve the same zen in the home some way some how :-)