when can I get a routine in with my baby?

[mummy_in_training]

my baby is only 3 weeks and I have just been following his ques for his sleep, luckily he sleeps at night and wakes at 9am, goes to bed a 9pm. but apart from that I have no other regular pattern from him and even these can be squed. I just wanted toknow when or do babies get a pattern and how do I follow it so I can start getting ready to organise my day. any suggestions

[Danni]

Im not sure as my baby is the same age....but I am SOOOOOOO jealous that your bub sleeps for 12 hours at night. You should feel so lucky!

[christy]

Generally you can count the first 6-12 weeks as a loss depending on your baby. Some babies fit into a rhythm early on, and some don't. Neither of mine read the books about fitting into a rhythm or "routine". With my first I was dying to get her into a routine as she fed every 2 hours & I had everyone around me telling me it was wrong (except BB girls!) and I was so confused. After doing some reading I have found that being infant led is the best way to be. I feed on demand and I put Jovie down for a sleep when she starts showing tired signs.

In the early weeks Jovie would only tolerate being awake for 45minutes-an hour but she only slept for short spurts.... but it changed every few weeks. Only now we are getting into a rhythm of 2 sleeps a day, and that doesn't always happen.

[BellyBelly]

You can start rituals from day 1 I have rituals over strict routines because littlies can't tell the time and daylight savings makes things hard! So we aim to have the bath on at about 7pm, but even if we don't, they know the familiarity of the order of bath, teeth, jarmies, books then bed. Makes it soooo much easier, especially when I am not stressing over the clock. I think being able to relate things to certain things to be good

At night you might do bath, massage, a little book in a quiet room with lights dimmed... so baby relates that to night time etc...

[Lilly-Pilly]

Kel, thats a great pic of you!

[Tobily]

I'm with Kelly I started rituals (that's a good word ) from day dot with both of mine.
With my first she fell into a good pattern right from the start.
With DS it took a bit longer, he was probably around 3 or 4 months before he started "knowing" what was coming next and he then became alot more predictable.
Now it's great because the two of them have a great pattern going now and they both know what's coming next and things are so much easier.
Basically I just did the same things in the same order most of the time - I was never a clockwatcher or strict about it but I did keep things predictable and it helped us alot.

[BellyBelly]

LOL Dee thanks hon... xx

[Ambah]

Moving to General Baby & Toddler Discussion

[Visitor7]

I too started the bedtime ritual at a young age. Always doing the same thing each night, bath, massage, read, feed, bed. And now as soon as the bath is being run, Nina knows it's bedtime soon. That's the only ritual I do, I follow her ques every other time.

[Trillian]

You will find that even after a while that you tend to fit in with them more than they do with you. For example you'll say 'oh xxx is due for a feed at 10am, I will do this first/after' etc and before long you will find that you have fitted in with them perfectly LOL. I always followed their lead for feeding and everything and after a while it just suited us to keep doing things around them kwim? All three of ours have fell into the same habits and patterns of doing things too, so that was perfect for us.

[Anna**]

I too started a bedtime ritual (I love that word!) right from day dot. Everything else was pretty much infant led throughout the day.

Xander actually fell into his own daytime routine at about 7 months, I've just stuck to that ever since and it's working really well for us.

Enjoy your bub sleeping 12 hours a night!!! Mine still doesn't!

[shellbell3]

Our story is similar to Anna's.
We started bedtime ritual from early days, we also ended up doing naptime rituals which was just a shorter version of the nighttime one.
At about 7 months when Ash was taking 3 good meals of solids I found she started doing her own pretictable routine of eating/ sleeping bout the same time every day, before that I just followed her lead.

[Evie76]

mummy_in_training, Daniel is now 15 weeks old. He didn't even start to look like having a "schedule" until he was 12 weeks old.