What are your thoughts on routine?

[Kade's Mummy]

Hi everyone

I am interested in people's perspective on routine. I had bub in a fairly strict one from around 7wks (he's now nearly 12wks), and at first he responded to it so well and was just all round a happier baby. But he continued to wake various times through the night because the routine (from the Contented Little Baby Book) worked on the principle of limiting sleep in the day.

My health nurse advised me to let him sleep more in the day and so I have dropped the routine and am now going with him. He seems very happy and his night sleeping has improved, however I find the lack of routine makes planning our day difficult. Routine suits my personality better, and given I have to start work from home in a few weeks it also works better for this. However, my number 1 priority is having a happy little baby.

Can you achieve both? Are most people's fans of routine or not? Will he just develop his own in time?

Thanks!

[Ponyboy]

Routine?!?! What rountine!!! :)

My 14 week old daughter really doesn't have any routine when it comes to eating or sleeping - although she does come to bed with us around this time (9.30pm) as she sleeps with us. But seems to feed when she's hungry (sometimes every hour) and sleep when she's tired - I never put her down to sleep but she usually ends up having one long sleep (2-3hrs) and 2 mini sleeps (30-40mins) a day. Sometimes the long sleep is in the morning and other times in the afternoon.

I can relate to you when you say it makes planning a day very hard. However, I just bring her along to wherever I'm going and take it from there. She hates the car but will sometimes wear herself out crying and sleep. She hates the pram after a while so I sometimes have to carry her everywhere. I figure some day she might have a routine.

The only thing routine is she wakes up 6am every morning, we go for a walk in the pram between 7-9am and we go for an afternoon walk between 3.30-4.30pm and she baths between 5-6pm. I try and keep these things routine and the bedtime of 9.30pm if she is not asleep already.

[rynosmum]

We've had a routine since early on but my definition of routine is a 'pattern' of behaviour rather than set times.

For example, when bubs awoke in the morning, he would have a feed then I'd dress him and lay him on his playmat for a little while, then a feed, then more sleep and this would simply continue.

I don't believe in waking a sleeping baby so would let him sleep as much as he wanted to during the day although would stretch out the periods between sleep if possible. At night, the routine would differ slightly - I would bath him and then feed him in a darkened room, he would wake once and we would once again feed in the dimmed light and put him straight back to bed.

We have always gone out when and where we wanted to, knowing that he would sleep in the car or in his pram if tired and that I would feed him when he looked sleepy.

He is 2 next month and still sleeps twice a day and has a eat, play, bath, milk, bed routine at night. So yes, I believe in the pattern of routine but not set by the clock IYKWIM.

[misskittyfantastico]

My DD seems to go in 2 week cycles of behaviour....she's quite unpredictable really. I'd love a routine-happy bub. But it's not to be!

[BabyJoy]

I agree with Katrina... some sort of routine is good, but there's no way I could stick to the clock. I find that my baby is happiest when she does what she wants - that is, sleeps when sleepy, eats when hungry, etc. And this has somehow worked out perfectly because she sleeps from 9pm to 5am straight and has done so since she was about six weeks old.
Our routine (of sorts) is this: After her nappy change and feed at around 5am (sometimes it's 4.30am, other times 6am) she goes straight back to sleep for another hour or two. Then we both get up, another feed, short playtime on the floor while I have breakfast and prepare her bath, then it's bathtime followed by bare bum playtime. She generally spends the whole morning awake either on her playmat or I carry her around. If I'm at home all day, playtime lasts for ages, but if we have to be somewhere, then it's shorter. At around midday she has another feed, then a short nap, then spends the afternoon with me. Sometimes she has a big afternoon sleep, but usually it's short naps (15 minutes at the most). At night, I put her in her PJs at around 7pm, then she has another feed and goes to bed by 9pm (sometimes 8pm, sometimes later). So as you can see, you can't set a clock to her routine, so my motto is "go with the flow"!! :thumbsup:

[Spewiesmum]

Routine, routine, routine. We love our routine:thumbsup: We started it when DS was 7 weeks and he's now 7 months. It took a while for things to fall into place - he'd only catnap during the day, didn't sleep through the night until he was five months etc but now things are cruisy.

I do plan my day around our routine but obviously still have some degree of flexibility. We have a very happy baby boy (he used to be a very sad baby boy) and mum and dad are nice and relaxed.

The extended family initially had issues but now MIL likes to brag that her "granbaby doesn't need a bottle to go to sleep" and "my granbaby knows when it's bedtime". Yet it was my sweat and tears! And sheer determination to prove them wrong.

We use the Save Our Sleep routine and I will be using this for future additions to the family and have recommended it to friends as well.

It wasn't easy but it's soooooo worth it.

[Ponyboy]

What's the "Save our Sleep" routine?

[annb]

I swear by Save our Sleep routine as well, you have to purchase it off the Save our sleep website, i used it from 7 weeks also and have the hapiest 17mth old who sleeps and eats, no crying coz hes hungry or tired, i know whats going on all day which is great for me, i know people out there knock routines and say you should just go with the flow...but not me, i love it!!!!!

[Spewiesmum]

Thanks for that annb. I'm so glad you've used it for that long and the routine still works. I've been worried about success in the the future.

Awesome!

[FourAngelKisses]

My first two had a great routine, they were having 2 naps a day until they were 5 and we went out at the same time each day just to keep to the routine (only time I had to go out was for bread). But with Matthew, he has no routine. I was constantly having to wake him up to take the kids to school or to pick them up. Then there were other appointments that I had to go to, so he isn't in a routine really. He has only been a one nap a day baby because of the school hours, but he is always in bed by 6:30pm, which totally sucks because from 3:30 - 5:30 I am trying to do homework, make dinner, tidy up and play all at once.

[mamachops]

Flexible routine is the way to go for us. I just cannotdo a strict routine.:no:

I tend to set the routine each day on the basis of what time she wakes or we have to go out. But I aim to feed her every 3-4 hours and get 2 short sleeps (about 1 hour) and 1 longer (about 2 hours). I know roughly when she'll want sleeps/feeds within an hour or so, so I can plan a bit.

Bed time is more strict. (but if she's looking tired a bit early, we'll do bath and bed earlier)

I'm lucky that she's not a baby who complains very much. On the odd occasion I've accidentally gone over 4 hours before feeding her without so much as a whimper from her, and if she's tired she just gets snuggly.

It works for us.

[flowerpot21]

we use the contented little baby book and have found it to be excellent. i know some people are against some of the suggested methods liek waking a sleeping baby, controlled crying etc. but we are a much happier little family due to the fact that our bub has slept through from before 10 weeks and has put on a good amount of weight due to the feeding plan. he was born very small. i think it depends on the parents - we both like a vague routine for our lives so i guess thats why the routine connected with us and our little one is such a happy little thing so he has not been harmed by us introducing it.

[jembelina]

Ds is now 17 months old and in this time we have had numerous routines!!! Purely due to the fact that their needs change so frequently, you can never rely on one set routine for any periosd of time!! I have discovered, that if I let ds do his own thing, he falls into a nice routine. And untill the next time that changes I can plan my days around it. I'd like to say we can go out whenever we want,etc adn bub just fits in, but we can't! WHen he is established in a routine though, we know when the best times are to go out and we take advantaeg of that. Sometimes we throw caution to the wind and sometimes it works and other times we end up with a very grumpy baby! I also think it all depends on the personality of the child too - ds just doesn't like sleeping anywhere other than his own bed(well, and ours!!) so if we go out at the wrong time we generally have to foregoa a sleep which just isn't worth it!

All that being said I think it was some months before I ever felt I had any control over the day at all!!