For those who have begun a nighttime routine with their LO, what time do you get it started? What time do you put them down to bed after you've finished? What time does you LO start the day?
Our LO will be three weeks this week and we have started to kind of get into a nighttime routine. We just aren't sure on the best time to start it. Typically we give her a bath, pajamas, feed, swaddle and rock her with sound machine on. Once she goes to bed, she wakes up every 3-4 hours to feed. We have tried doing this at 8:30 and in bed by ten. I find that if she goes down at 11 then her last feed will be at 6 am which is better than it being at 5 if she went down at 10 (for us).
Interested to hear how your LO are doing with routine!
Re: Nighttime routine - start time
At 2 weeks old, we're still working on sleeping without being held... So I'm not sure how well the routine will work.
As for when to start the routine, I'm thinking I'm going to let Zeke lead that at this point since his eating is still a little erratic. My thinking is that the first time Zeke wants to eat after 8 pm or so, we'll start our routine.
So far as she is so little , baths and stories are thrown in intermittently but will become more integrated as she gets older.
For bedtime we feed on one side because she is hungry when she wakes up, bath time, fresh diaper, sing a song, feed on other side and put to bed. We do a dream feed around 11 and then she sleeps some nights until 4 for a nighttime feeding and sometimes until 7am when it's time to wake up. The nights she has slept through the night til 7 she also fed at 9 so she was cluster feeding at 7, 9 and 11.
Working towards consistency with sleeping through the night 11:30-7 ideally by 8-10 weeks.
With our first child we didn't put her in her crib until she was 3 months and we had transitioning problems.
As long as you have the baby in the crib once a day to get them used to it you are good to go.
During the day we are working on eat, wake, sleep schedule with longer naps as needed. We try to make sure he's got decent wake time before bed, but find that if he sleeps good throughout the day he sleeps better at night. We did this schedule with DD when she was little and she was/is the best sleeper! Fingers crossed her little brother is too!
Edited to add he's 4.5 weeks
He wakes up about 12 to 12.30 to eat, back to sleep for 1, another feed at 3.30 back to sleep at 4 and wakes up about 7.30-8.
During the day he naps at 10 for an hour, 1 for about an hour and a half.
I'm working on him dropping the 3.30 feed by 8 weeks (currently 5 weeks).
I have a few questions about your schedules.
1)A few ladies mentioned that they were working on dropping a MOTN feeding. How do you do that? Are you BF or FF? Are you feeding on command? If not, how do you keep LO from crying bloody murder until the next feeding?
2) Also, naps. If you LO naps at certain times, do they stay awake the rest of the day or do you just make sure they nap at those times? Also, what do you do if they don't want to nap? What if they get fussy during the nap? Do you have a nap time routine too?