Routine for babies

gizmo111

Oh, unless he also has a mother who says in her day, babies were put outside at 8am in a pram and never touched until 4 hours later for 10 oz of formula and they were all perfectly fine, sleeping 15 hours a night, toilet training at 16 weeks and reading by themselves at 1 and a half.

You've met my ex-MIL then ? Given the way her son turned I'd say it was not the best way of dealing with a small child:rotfl::rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

We might even be ex-relatives!

sammy_kaye18

I will be following this thread with interest.

My son (my first child) did not sleep through the night until he was 18 months old. He would wake up every 4 hours screaming for a bottle and was a big baby (born at 9lb 7ozs) so it was a bigger feed than most as he was a hungry baby - he was bottle fed from 3 weeks due to mastitis - and my OH did take over some feeds but worked full time so I didn't feel it fair on him to work from 5am - 6pm and then come home to a night shift.

Now I am overdue with our second and am hoping to get her in some sort of routine as my son is now 6 and I don't want him to feel like he's losing time with mummy because the baby is here.

I'm hoping to get a basic routine in place in the evenings. (so I know the times wont be dead on these but this is what Im aiming for!)

5.30pm --- teatime for all - son, partner and babe
6pm --- bath time for babe
6.15pm --- babes bedtime (put down in cot)
6.30 - 7.30 --- my sons time (reading/playing etc)
7.35 --- bath time for son
7.45pm --- supper for son
8pm --- teeth / story and bed for son.

God knows if that will be achievable but hoping so or roughly so.

Counting_Pennies_2

shelley_crow wrote: »

Sorry to hijack thread OP, could you point me in the direction of the research that states this please? My 2nd is due in September and I've never heard of this. It's been five years since my first and no link had been established then, need to brush up on my research, thanks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4509240.stm

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/health/cotdeath/#14

http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Cot-Death-Reducing-the-Risk.htm

The cot death information website is out of action at the moment, but here are a few links I have got from Google for you.

I too was surprised, when I had my first over 6 years ago dummies were a no no, now they are encouraged!

bylromarha

((((:grouphug:))))

Ooooh, this bit is hard, but it does end.

I Gina Forded my first, then went with the flow for my second as "I know what to do" - it was horrid! She grazed and was whingy and grumpy - one memorable hard night when she was 4 weeks old I decided to Gina her and within a few days she was settled and content in a way she wasn't previously.

I'm not fibbing by the way gratefulforhelp - both my babies were in a routine at 6 weeks old and both fully breastfed. Both extremely happy with it too

You NEED to get OH involved - stuff his quality sleep, you need it too. You are a team and you both need to get through this bit, not just him. My OH leaves home at 8.30, drives across the country about 5 hours a day, works in extreme detail, then comes home and works a lot on the computer. When 2nd was a baby, I would do the 7pm feed. Go to bed around 9pm. OH would be working from 7pm onwards. OH would then wake her at 11pm with an expressed bottle, then go back to work. He would come to bed around 1am after finishing work, and I would wake up to do the middle of the night feed, around 4/5am. He would be up at 7am to get the toddler ready whilst I fed the baby. He realised it took 2 to make the baby, so 2 needed to care for the baby and he needed to care for me whilst I cared for the toddler and baby all day every day. I had a haircut when baby was around 3 weeks old and OH hugged me hard when I got home and thanked me profusely. It made him realise the type of work I faced every day and how difficult it was.

You've obviously reached near break point - let OH know just how much you need to him to help - you're no good to the family if you've collapsed from exhaustion, or suffering with depression. Make him understand he has to share the load as you can no longer carry it alone.

All the best.

Jo_R_2

I think you've had some good advice so far, so I won't duplicate any of it.

A couple of things I wanted to throw in.

The first. I've got three LOs and I remember well those desperate evenings where nothing seems to go how you'd like in the early days. The best advice I read (and I still remembered it with my youngest, DS, who's now 16 months, and will hold on to with baby due in a few months) is when things are stressful, don't fight it, but go with it. When baby wakes for the umpteenth time at night, or is still wanting to feed and cuddle at midnight and you're desperate, it always made me worse thinking how stressed I was.

I instead very zen-ly:D told myself that this situation was what it was, at that time, and wishing it different wasn't going to make it different right then. Instead of wishing I was "bloody well going to get at least half an hour of sleep" (ahem:o), I was thankful for the half an hour I did get, IYSWIM.

Doesn't make it all better but it does help sometimes, honest:)

Secondly is despite mulling over the "OH works a stressful job..." conundrum many times, fact is that YOU do a stressful job also, yes?

I remember OH saying it was important for him to get his sleep because of the type of work he did, and cited various examples where not being on-the-ball could result in a horrible situation for either him or a colleague.

Fair point. I also explained to him that falling asleep holding a baby because I was so bloody tired could result in a horrible situation for baby, that I really hoped he didn't think he could clock off at 5pm and his work was done whilst I was on duty 24/7, and that he was 50% the parent so he could do 50% of the work when he was at home:mad:

I did explain nicely that look, we knew it was going to be stressful so how could we implement 'damage limitation' - remembering we were supposed to be working together, not be at each other's throats when we were soooooo tired/stressed.

Our way was that OH would pick up the slack with baby after he got back from work, I'd put DDs to bed (sometimes feeding DS at the time, when that happened OH would help with reading stories etc, if not he'd have DS whilst I did DDs' bedtime.)

I'd do feeding duties (DS was breastfed) and OH would tackle bedtimes with DS. He'd go up and do the settling thing during the evening as much as poss, or we'd alternate, the idea being he do the majority (or as much as poss with baby being bf.) Thus taking the stress off me in the evening, allowing me to have a shower in peace (luxury!)

Conversely, if I got stuck on the sofa feeding DS for aaaaaages, OH would get stuck into cooking tea/washing up/doing pack ups - basically a team effort.

This way I felt better about tackling night feeds, knowing OH was picking up the things during the evening I was worrying about not getting done.

Would OH get on board with something like that?

LauraN_3

Hi OP,

My son has just turned 7 months old and that's him just starting to get into a bed time routine. He was a big baby when born and a very hungry one as well and as he is breast fed it was quite hard to keep up with his demands. He's my first child and I can only imagine how hard it would be to have a toddler and very small baby to deal with at the same time.

I did try and get him into a rountine from the word go but it just didn't happen. He had so many grow spurts it just didn't work lol. Now that's he's 7 months he was waking during the night out of habit rather than hunger so my partner and I decided to try some controlled crying (which isn't for everyone) but it has worked for us and he is now quite happy to sleep from 8pm to 6am. Get up for a feed at 6am then go back down till 9am. Fingers crossed it continues.

I do hope you managed to work something out that fits in with your family. Fingers firmly crossed for you as there's nothing worse than being totally knackered.

Lalaladybird

Thank you all so much for the replies. Yesterday I only fed the baby every 3 hours and gave her a dummy between feeds if she was unsettled and put her in the swing/bouncy chair/cuddled her to get her to the 3 hour mark. OH did the 10pm feed so I went to bed at around 9pm so didn't have to do another feed til 1am (and then 5am) but it's a start.

I'd love to do the Gina routine, I bought the "baby and toddler" book but I find it really hard to implement. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, one problem being that I can't find the time to read the thing lol! For those who have used it, do you follow it to the letter? What do you do if the baby doesn't comply? Do I jump in at the 6 week mark? How do I stop my baby wanting two feeds between 10pm and 7am?

My toddler loves playing with all her little toy figures (peppa and friends, mickey mouse etc) and she's lost them all! They've vanished into a black hole. I have searched the whole house because they're all she wants to play with and they were keeping her playing happily for hours every day. I had to resort to more cbeebies/nickjr than I'd like yesterday. So frustrating!

My MIL is being a huge help by popping in every day that OH is working for an hour or two and helping with the housework and/or letting me get back to bed if I really need to catch up on sleep. Without her help I'd have PND and exhaustion for sure. I tried to be supermum the first time and ended up with PND because I expected too much of myself and wouldn't accept help as I wanted to do it all by myself. I'm not so daft this time.

NAR

My grandchild is 6 weeks old today. This last week he has been feeding at 10pm, 2am and then sleeping through until 9am. We told DD how lucky she is that Alex is already sleeping for 7 hours at night. I think she's missing her full night's sleep and wants it back!

onlyroz

I think you remember that at 6 weeks, your baby will still be very tiny and will need feeding every few hours. However, I don't think you should let the baby snack - however much or little feed they have taken I don't think you should be giving the next feed for at least two hours, no matter how much they scream.

I found that a baby-sling was a god-send during those first difficult months (the Baby Bjorn is the best) - most tiny babies are perfectly happy to doze in a carrier, allowing you to get on with the basic household tasks like cooking, cleaning etc as necessary.