This is kind of an oxymoron if you ask me and why I put routine in quotations.. because I don’t think anyone has a perfect regimen with a brand new baby. It’s quite the opposite, really. Those first few weeks, your world is rocked and trying to gain any sort of control of the situation will put your anxiety into HIGH GEAR. Kind of like what Alix talked about in her post on Wednesday here.
With Jackson, I was reading On Becoming Babywise before he was even born and I fully expected to put him on a schedule from day 1.. BIG mistake. HUGE! I read all of these mommy blogs (WORST!), Pinterest articles (so unrealistic) and this book that made me believe I could get my newborn to adhere to a routine. I was also reading these articles in the middle of the night, sleep deprived and crying, nursing and rocking my baby to sleep and he just wasn’t getting it. When he didn’t follow these schedules I read about, my anxiety flared. I mean, I was reading that a 4 week old could handle a 4 hour stretch, an 8 week old an 8 hour stretch. Why wasn’t he SLEEPING!!!!
I was also trying to stick to a very regimented eat, awake, sleep cycle. So, NOT nursing your baby to sleep and teaching them to fall asleep on their own (at like 2 weeks old!! WTF?!) I sobbed, I felt like a failure and I just didn’t enjoy the newborn stage AT ALL. At four months old, I took the drastic measure of sleep training him with a slightly softer approach than just cry it out, extinction method but there were still a LOT of tears. And wine. And white noise.
Along came Cameron and I trusted my gut this time around. I listened to him, I watched his sleepiness cues and we just kind of figured it out together. There was no routine or schedule.. I nursed him if he was fussy even if he had eaten 1 hour before. So what?! I trusted that the whole eat, awake, sleep cycle would fall into place naturally. And guess what? It did.. at around 6 weeks old. But you can read about how I fully sleep trained him at 3 months old (like not eating in the middle of the night at all) here.
So here we are with mister Parky Poo, the dreamiest of babies minus some of his sleeping habits. He’s slightly tougher than Cam was and I’ve had to instill a little bit of routine.. but its LOOOOOOSE, people! Take this with a grain of salt. By no means do we do the exact same thing every day.. how the F do people do that? Don’t you have things to get DONE?! Anywho, we are on the go a lot with these dang boys and their activities so Parker has no choice but to figure his sh*t out and sleep when needed. But, things have kind of fallen into place and this is what we do:
- 6:30-7 am: Up for the day and feed
- 7:30-9 am: awake, play with his bros, activity mat
- 9 am: in the car to take Jackson to school, he’ll typically snooze but it’s not great sleep so..
- 9:15 am: home and time for a nap; I nurse him til drowsy and put him in his swaddle and DockATot, noise machine on and close the door (more on if he cries at the end)
- Sometimes he’ll sleep for an hour sometimes more but I don’t push it. When he’s up, he’s up.. so I feed him and we get out the door. Let’s roll.
- 10:30-12:30: We are typically out and about, running errands, getting things done. He snoozes on and off in the carseat/stroller and catches up on rest if he didn’t get a great morning nap. **Side note: if we DON’T leave the house during this time, I will put him down for another nap around 11:30 am.. same routine as his first nap**
- 12:30 pm: Home from errands and I feed him and let him stretch and play before picking up his bros from school. He might fall asleep in the car, he might not.. I’d prefer he stays awake during this time so we can get home and all go down for a nap at the same time.
- 1:30 pm: Home from all the errands and pick ups. He hangs with the bros for a bit and then we head upstairs for nap.
- 2 pm: I nurse him til drowsy and do the same thing as his morning nap. And he’ll typically go 2+ hours for this one.
- 4 pm: Awake and feed
- 4:30-6:30: During this time, he’s the fussiest. So we play, I’ll pacify him by nursing him on and off, and just hang out with the fam.
- 6:30-7 pm: Upstairs, change, read, sing, do all the things, swaddle, sound machine, lights off and nurse him til he’s basically asleep.
- He is down for the night by 7 pm every night.. no questions. When I fully sleep train, it will be between 6-6:30 but for now, it’s 7 when the other two go to bed. All three in bed at the same time. PRAISE. Wine bottle OPENED!
- He’s up once or twice a night right now.. giving us a 5-6 hour stretch on a good night. I know he can go longer but I’m not ready to force it on him. I want to see if he’ll get there on his own.
So in summary, he’s up around 7 am, has three naps during the day and is down for the night at 7 pm.
Now, let’s get to the crying cuz it’s gonna happen. There are times when I put him down for a nap and within minutes of me leaving the room, he starts to squirm, whine, cry. Sometimes hard. But he is changed and he is fed. He is not dirty. He is not hungry. He is TIRED AF and I know this. So, I let him figure it out. If it goes longer than 5+ minutes, sure I’ll go in and try to soothe him but I don’t stay for longer than a minute. I go in, shhh him, tell him he’s ok, mommy loves you and leave. I do the exact same thing every time.. so he gets used to it and knows he’s fine. But honestly, I rarely have to do that anymore. And on the rare occasion it goes longer than I’d like, I will go back in and nurse him a little more and put him back down.
The first few naps were tough.. he wasn’t used to being in his room.. he was used to sleeping on me only. So breaking that “habit” or whatever you want to call it took some time. I hate calling it a habit because it’s the sweetest most precious time having a baby sleep on you but for the sake of this post, we’ll call it that. After doing the same thing over and over again, he figured it out and now he goes down easily.
Now we have a routine. I know what to expect day to day, which keeps my anxiety in check. The fear of the unknown is the worst with a baby so having this loose schedule gives me peace of mind and keeps the baby blues away.. something I suffered from when I had Jackson HARD. Very similar to Alix’s experience except I never spoke up until I was out of it. SOOOOO HEALTHY.. #not.
Anyway, I know this is probably not super helpful to most because every baby is different and some moms can’t stand the thought of hearing their newborn cry. This is my experience and mine alone but if it gives another mama out there the confidence to put their baby in their crib for the first time or know that it’s ok to not have the perfect schedule, then I’ve done my job.
If you have any questions about sleep training or how to establish a routine, leave them in the comments!
xx, H and Parker
