Any tips on how to start a baby routine?

Hello, Mmmmmm, I found this info, related to sleep routines, that maybe can help you. http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a7654/establishing-good-sleep-habits-newborn-to-three-months

I know it's a little early to think about sleep routines but I don't think it's a bad time to start getting some kind of order to your day, and I found starting with bedtimes worked well. Again, your LO is probably too small to be too strict about things but if you just start doing things in the same order, at roughly the same time of day, that's a good place to begin. With my second (my first I didn't have a clue and was all over the place!) we started a bedtime routine at about seven weeks. Before this she'd just stay downstairs with us until her last feed at about 10.30-11ish and sometimes she's be agitated. Bedtime for her brother is 7ish so we started putting her in her bath about six-ish each day - same time as her brother as we were hoping to get the two of them onto the same routine early on! - then doing her feed, then popping her into the crib and lights out until her next feed. It sounds really simple, and it was, but it seemed to establish good 'ground rules', if you like, and she knew where she was within just a few days. Once she seemed settled with this, we moved onto daytime routines and again, just did the same things in the same order at roughly the same time of day. For a baby so tiny staying up longer than around an hour is practically impossible, so whatever time she woke up, she'd be changed, fed and back in bed for a nap no more than an hour afterwards. This leaves very little time to do anything apart from change and feed but hey-ho, if it leads to a happy baby, who cares?! I know with my two, being overtired led to them being incredibly fussy and agitated, so perhaps some of the signs you're thinking are wind could be overtiredness? It's all so confusing when they're tiny and you're just getting to know them :). Probably the best advice I could give is to learn tired and overtired signs and work backwards to happy time, so you can catch them early on and make sure they're in bed ready to go to sleep when you still have some happy time left for them to drop off. We saw Cecile de Scally for our first baby (horrendous sleeper and permanently agitated between 4 and 7 months) and she had us keep a sleep diary so we could work out what his signs were. I did the same with our second and thankfully we never encountered any of the problems we did with our first. Good luck!

My LO is now 6 weeks old and we have problems with colic and bad reflux so things have been challenging up to now. However, I would like to start into a routine to try to settle her a little more and am wondering what is the best way to go about it? She is generally not settling for the night until about 10pm or 10.30pm. She will go between 2 hours to 2.5 hours between feeds at night as long as she has no wind problems and will sleep until maybe 6am where she starts to get very agitated and her sleep for the rest of the morning is again very agitated sleep (I imagine this is due to wind problems but again I am guessing). Sometimes she will sleep late into the morning (with feeds every 2 - 2.5 hours) and sometimes she will awake about 8am in grumpy form for the day, probably due to tiredness. Also, as she was breastfed until very recently, she has taken up the habit of snack feeding so she is taking half a bottle, not wanting more and then getting hungry about an hour later. Are there any methods of getting her into the habit of taking a full bottle so she will go longer between feeds? Please do not suggest trying to make her wait 5 minutes for her bottle when she is hungry as she is a very strong character baby (!!) and she screams when she is hungry! When she wants her bottle, she wants it NOW! So delaying the feeds just really isnt an option as she gets herself into such a state! I know things will get easier with time but I would like to get her into a routine from now on for her own good. Any tips or suggestions would be gratefully appreciated! TIA! Hi Our little one had colic/reflux and feeding was a nightmare. I breastfed on demand for four months then put her on the bottle, which somehow helped space her feeds and helped me too. We to her into a routine with bath and a feed at 7.30pm then bed. She would then wake twice during the night until 5 months when she slept through. Every baby reacts differently but putting her to bed at 7.30 meant I had some down time with my husband. Good luck. <em>edited by Bongo74 on 20/01/2013</em>

My LO is now 6 weeks old and we have problems with colic and bad reflux so things have been challenging up to now. However, I would like to start into a routine to try to settle her a little more and am wondering what is the best way to go about it? She is generally not settling for the night until about 10pm or 10.30pm. She will go between 2 hours to 2.5 hours between feeds at night as long as she has no wind problems and will sleep until maybe 6am where she starts to get very agitated and her sleep for the rest of the morning is again very agitated sleep (I imagine this is due to wind problems but again I am guessing). Sometimes she will sleep late into the morning (with feeds every 2 - 2.5 hours) and sometimes she will awake about 8am in grumpy form for the day, probably due to tiredness. Also, as she was breastfed until very recently, she has taken up the habit of snack feeding so she is taking half a bottle, not wanting more and then getting hungry about an hour later. Are there any methods of getting her into the habit of taking a full bottle so she will go longer between feeds? Please do not suggest trying to make her wait 5 minutes for her bottle when she is hungry as she is a very strong character baby (!!) and she screams when she is hungry! When she wants her bottle, she wants it NOW! So delaying the feeds just really isnt an option as she gets herself into such a state! I know things will get easier with time but I would like to get her into a routine from now on for her own good. Any tips or suggestions would be gratefully appreciated! TIA!

I wrote a reply on your other thread which may be useful http://www.expatwoman.com/qatar/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=197703 Is it important to you that she has a large gap between her feeds, what makes you think it would be "for her own good"? Its actually much easier on a refluxers tummy to have frequent small feeds as reflux is due to an immature lower esophageal sphincter, overfilling the tummy mean there is more pressure and they are more likely to spit up. Human babies are designed to be in close proximity to their mothers and have frequent feeds and it is certainly not harmful for them to do so. In the case of my son, his weight gain significantly increased when we moved from 3 hourly feeds to a "snack"schedule as he was able to keep the whole feed down. Please don't get caught up in the idea of a "full feed" there is no such thing and just because bottles are a certain size doesn't mean there is any scientific reason that a baby should have that amount each time. Listen to her cues per feeding and she will be a lot more comfortable. Don't feel that a sleep schedule and a feeding schedule are linked, they're not, she's not quite ready for a fixed sleep schedule but you can certainly get the wheels in motion, I've given some ideas in your other thread. You can use the schedules in books as a starting point, but again, all babies are different so don't be too rigid about it, if she resists a nap the timing is most probably a bit off.