Baby routines/schedules

[Lacrymosa]

What are you guys doing with routines/schedules? Baby-led? Parent-led? Do you guys do specific feeding and napping times? Do you have a daily routine? Just curious..

We KIND of do. It's more baby-led, when she's hungry she eats, when she's tired she sleeps, but it kind of falls around the same times every day... just wondering if it's better to have a specified schedule and do the same things every day.

[Talula Fairie]

Not really. She's all over the place during the day but does wake up at almost exactly the same times at night.

[dislocator3972]

We're pretty similar to OP. When she's hungry I feed her, when she's tired I help her sleep, and that falls very roughly into a similar pattern everyday. About every other week she has a few high frequency days that throw us off, but usually our day looks like this:

5am - nurse
8:30 - nurse
begin day routine: wake, diaper, nurse, diaper, play (10 min), diaper, sleep (anywhere from 10 min - 2 hr)
day routine restarts every 40 minutes to 3 hours
11pm - nurse, sleep till 5 am

So she has one GREAT stretch at night, but our day is pretty busy. Sometimes I think a more rigid routine would be so, so much easier, but once she's awake and hungry the cycle can't really be stopped.

She is starting to skip about two naps per day but only one is predictable and she's not really happy until she gets back to sleep. It makes for a rough chunk of time.

And she's awake now, so I'm off to nurse! Let the cycle begin!

[GradysMom]

we are child/baby led all. the. way.

that however does entail patterns and routines that we try to learn and work with.

In other words when I see sleepy cues I rock baby to sleep and lay her down. At the end of the day I feed cues to my 3 yr old. We try to observe a "bedtime preparation" ritual... this is helping to reign in what was once a nearly completely child led bedtime routine... where in mama stay up if babe is up and momma sleeps in with said babe...

Now that I have two I steer things a bit more, and my ds seems to be doing well with this.. in fact I think it adds to his sense of security.

baby dd gets what she wants when she wants - no questions - and is thriving...

(sorry, I just have to add, for clarity, that I am mobile, and not a prisoner to my children. They nap in my lap, or in a sling during playdates and outings. they get nursed and changed on picnic tables, in stores... they get what they need but we go about our business.)

[mamadelbosque]

For DS2 theres no schedule, though DS1 has a bit of a schedule (breakfast first thing, lunch 11:30-12:30, nap ~1:30, bed around 8:30 - though he seems to be dropping the nap...), so DS2 goes along with all that somewhat, but otherwise, no

[Flower of Bliss]

I suspect DD2 has more of a routine than I've really registered We're 100% baby led too. However, with a 3 year old and her activities and such, we spend much of our days on the go - Kindermusik, Little Gym, play dates, parks, etc. It's very different from when DD1 was a baby and we spent most of our days at home, and the timing of outings was purely based on what was going on with one baby.

We do have a general routine of wake - some happy cooing time and diaper change with Daddy before he leaves for work, then leisurely nursing with some cooing added in until she eventually falls back asleep for a pretty short morning nap.

Then generally big sister gets up, we all get dressed and ready and go where ever that day will take us. Our leave time varies by an hour or more. Some days DD2 seems more fussy than others in that time frame, and I often think she'd prefer I just sit and nurse her back down. As soon as I'll dressed I stick her in the sling while I finish getting us ready and she'll often fall asleep before we get in the car.

When we're out she'll generally sleep in the sling, or wake up and watch things in the sling. We nurse whenever she wants. She does longer stretches between nursings than DD2 did - more of the every 1.5-3 hours instead of the almost constant here and there nursing of DD1. She almost always sleeps in my lap or in the sling. This week we've had more out of arms naps than usual - she took a nap in her hammock on both Monday and Wednesday Since she's really always on me, her sleep and awake times just flow pretty naturally and I really don't watch a clock.

In the evenings we do a pretty long interval of nursing/napping and she's pretty insistent on having me and nursing lots. She does more sleep nursing during that time too. DD1 regularly nursed in her sleep, waking as soon as I considered unlatching her. DD2 does it much less.

I generally get a 5-7 hour stretch of sleep at night!!! Some nights it's more like 3-4 hours. However, DD1 did 4-6 hours a night until around 4 months, so I'm not anticipating keeping the long sleep time - if we do I'll be pleasantly surprised.

[wombatclay]

Schedules? What are those?

Seriously, with three there are a few things that have to happen at specific times (preschool drop off/pickup, therapy sessions, etc) so those set the boundaries. We HAVE to be out of the house by 8:30 every morning. Which means we need to be out of bed by 7:30. Which means the older girls need to be in bed by 8pm. Which in turn means we need to start the bedtime ritual of bath/teeth/toilet/jammies/story/song by 7pm. So dinner needs to be ready to eat by 6:30pm.

DS is along for the ride. I always bring the ergo when we leave the house. Sometimes he sleeps in the car seat, sometimes the ergo out or at home, sometimes the bouncer at home. He nurses in the ergo too.

He gets the first bath in the evening, then jammies and nursing. He sleeps on DH while I shower and generally goes from 8pm-1am. Then nursing at 1am, 3am, 5-7 he fusses, then he usually falls asleep again for half an hour or so. During the day though it's pretty free form with him sleeping/nursing/playing on the go.

[saoirse2007]

been "winging it" since ds was born....

working on routine for ds who will be 3 in jan, but dd???

we will sort that out later...much later...lol