How on earth do I get my DD into a routine!

I have read lots of threads about everyones routines and I have tried and tried and tried to get my DD into one! She seems to be a random baby! Sometimes she will sleep for 4 hours sometimes 10 minutes sometimes no sleep at all! Feeding is the same sometimes hourly sometimes 5 hours between feeds and if i try to feed her when she dosent want it she wont have a bar of it! If i try to put her down when shes not ready for a sleep she will scream like "tantrum scream - the neighbour must think im hurting her" scream. Any suggestions on how to get a child into some sort of rythem? TIA for suggestions.

that's easy - you don't! LOL. is there a reason why you would like her to be in a routine or do you just think that you *should* have a routine with her? A good place to start would be to sit down and write down everything that you do in your day and do it for one whole week. You would probably be surprised to see that you are already somewhat in a routine, only it is led by her and not you. There will be things you can see that she does around the same time everyday, maybe its a feed, or a big sleep or her bathtime etc. I have always found it so much easier to follow their lead and then I know that they are feeding and sleeping when they are hungry and tired and not when I think they should be.

Once you have your weekly 'timetable' you can sit down and work out where she is doing the same thing at roughly the same time and then perhaps implement things into time slots that you want her to do - like a bath or a sleep etc.

HTH

Everyone keeps telling me I *should* have her in a routine .. that is why she isnt sleeping through the night ...

Hi Jen,
My DD wasn't in any sort of routine until she was well and truely on solids. It was at about 7 months when she was eating 3 meals a day that everything started to fall into place. Before then, she was fed on demand. Even now, her routine is based around when she is hungry or tired. I just follow her lead.

I hope this helps!

Take care,
Jess x o

I've never had a routine with Nina, still don't.
The only think I do the same every day is her bath/sleep routine. It stays the same every night. Have you got a routine for bedtime?
As for sleeping through, some babies just don't sleep through the night until they're 18 months old, others from the time they're 6 weeks old. You can try different things at night with her to see if anything works.

Hey Jen, if everyone else thinks you should have one, then you probably don't need it at all. Having a routine wont help her sleep through the night - some babies just don't sleep through the nght at all until they are a lot older and some will do it quite early - the golden rule in parenting should be that your baby will sleep through the night when they are good and ready to LOL. Aside from what other people want you to do, are you happy with things as they are? If so then I would just keep doing what you are doing.

Bah at the routine = sleeping through. Your baby doesn't sleep through the night cause she's a baby! LOL!
I agree with Sherie, if what you're doing is working for you, keep doing it!
I guess if you were fed up with the night waking, places like Tressillian would recommend a routine. But even they don't expect 5mo babies to sleep through the night. Plus they would want to start your baby on solids. You might find that when you do start solids you have a little more structure to your day... We've only really found our days are more structured now that Natty's on three solid meals.

well it sounds like our DD's are identical!!

mine is 8 months and we have never had a routine, except two weeks recently where everything seemed to go like clock work, finally i thought, finally we have a pattern, this is brilliant i thought.... BUT, i couldn't go out when i wanted, because she was due for a sleep, mothers group was hard to manage, as we have it from 2-4pm, and thats when she would have been sleeping..... don't get me wrong, the 2 weeks we had of a routine was nice, because finally i thought maybe things are settling down, but the last two days everything has been haywire again and she is back to her old self... she is sleeping in the swing at the moment, i think she is teething....

don't make the same mistake as me - i obsessed for a good six months about getting her into a routine, then it dawned on me, you can't MAKE a baby sleep, especially a strong willed one, you can't MAKE a baby be hungry when it suits you, in short, you can't control her, no matter how hard you try..... go with your baby and let her lead.... as long as she is healthy, i don't think it matters if some days they have more sleep than others and food etc, when u think about it, we all don't eat and sleep like clock work and the same amounts each day, it depends on how we feel, same for bubs.

i think the beauty of no routine is, you can pretty much do what you want when you want, bubs will sleep in the car or in the pram and cope....

i think if your baby falls into their own routine that is a bonus, as the days become predictable, but its definitely not a necessity.... oh and i also hear how the mums in my mothers group complain how if something unexpected comes up it throws their babies out of their routine, and then they have to try to get them back into it, and all their sleeping is out of whack etc..... sounds like more trouble than its worth!! also their routines change SO OFTEN.... what's the point in trying to get your baby into one, when in a few weeks her sleeping needs will change and so will her routine.... i wish i had of just gone with the flow back then and stopped craving predictabilty...

anyways sorry for the ramblings, i just feel i wasted a lot of energy thinking about routines and maybe i can stop someone else going down the same road as me!!

ps also my hap hazard dd now sleeps through the night, despite no real routine during the day.... it WILL happen.

Hi Jen

I agree with what everyone else has said. Sometimes my 14-week-old has a 40 minute nap in the morning, sometimes (like this morning, she had a 4-hour sleep). Sometimes she has feeds two hours apart. Sometimes they're 4-6 hours apart. So rather than trying to get her back to sleep when she's obviously awake and alert, I get her up and if she's hungry, I feed her. To me that's a lot less stress than trying to make her do things that she obviously doesn't need to do. And, by the way, although she isn't in a routine by any clock, she sleeps between 9-12 hours per night so I don't think routines affect whether they sleep or not. But also, "sleeping through" is counted as five hours continuous sleep (not 12 hours which we think of) so maybe Mackenzie is sleeping through anyhow?

Routine schmoutine I say. If anyone asks me if she's in a routine, I'll say "well, I don't want to go to bed at the same time, eat at the same time or get up at the same time every single day so I don't see why she should."

It's much easier to follow your baby's cues rather than try to get them into a routine that's recommended by books or other people.