Routines work for me - and my baby! - by a Haddington mum
My baby has always been a good sleeper. He is now 10 months old and sleeps for 30- 45 minutes every morning (09.15 to 10.00am), for 2 hours at lunchtime (1pm to 3pm) and for over 12 hours every night. I do count myself as very lucky. When I was pregnant he was never particularly active and he obviously liked sleeping a lot (like his Mummy). Was this a sign of things to come? I could argue that he slept well because of the routine that we chose to adopt at a fairly early age but it may well have been that he would have slept well anyway.
He was a bottle fed baby (breastfeeding was never established) due to him spending the first 2 weeks of his life in hospital and that definitely made it easier to apply a routine that we could stick to as a family. Both my husband and I like routine and therefore that approach worked well for us. Some people argue that strict routines are restrictive but we have found them liberating as we know when our baby is going to sleep, when he needs to be fed and therefore it seems, to us, to make life simpler.
My sister has two children and both of them had slept very well during daytime naps and at night from around 12 weeks (again they were bottle fed) and she recommended Gina Ford. Other friends had also used Gina’s principles and their babies were also sleeping through the night from an early age. Gina can understandably get a very bad press because she makes comments like “make sure you get some breakfast yourself – aim for some cereal, toast and a drink no later than 8am” (The New Contented Little Baby Book) however you do not need to follow her advice to the letter and in fact we just cherry-picked some of her better pearls of wisdom. Gina says that you should put your baby in a darkened room for its daytime naps but that was the last thing I wanted to do when he was small as there were too many coffee mornings with other new mums, music groups, lunches and NCT Bumps and Babies to go to! My son therefore slept in his pram, in the car or in my arms when I was out and about and he was very small. Only when he was on solids (from 6 months), and so we were usually at home in the middle of the day for his lunch, did we start putting him to sleep in his cot in the nursery and making the room a bit darker.
We did not even think about any kind of routine at the beginning of his life as we were too busy getting used to being parents; but when my son was six weeks old we felt we should try it. Up until that point we had fed on demand and his sleep was dictated by that. The New Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford structures everything and so almost everything you do in the day has a specific time. It is easy to become obsessed with clock watching and some days were a disaster as our son would sleep when he was meant to be awake and would be hungry sooner that expected and when you have high hopes that something will work it can be disappointing. We persevered with it however, feeding him at set times every day and establishing a solid night time routine. We felt that by imposing a consistent bedtime routine he knew what to expect and it would be a fun, close time so he felt reassured. The bath time routine would start at 5.45pm and he would be put down to sleep in his cot at 6.45pm after a bit of kicking with his nappy off, baby massage, a bath and a bottle in his nursery. We tried to make sure more often than not, that he did not fall asleep during that 6.30pm bottle so that he was put into his cot whilst he was awake which meant he was not reliant on being fed to get to sleep nor being held by one of us. Other sleep associations I was keen to avoid were rocking him to sleep and giving him a dummy as I was concerned that he would need the same comfort to get himself back to sleep if he woke in the night. Again these are all easier if you have a bottle fed baby. When he was 6 months old however we introduced a soft blue teddy comfort blanket for him to cuddle into but only at sleep times. It is amazing how he now associates the teddy with sleep and as soon as he puts it against his cheek he relaxes and closes his eyes. We now have two so they can be washed on a regular basis!
The book recommends you wake your baby for a 10pm/10.30pm bottle feed (the dream feed as it is known) until you start weaning them. We are convinced that this feed enabled our son to have enough food in his tummy to sleep through the night and meant we did not have to get up at some horrendous hour to give him his bottle. I was in the lucky position that my husband could do the dream feed which meant I could go to bed early if I was tired. We were sceptical that the dream feed would mean that he would be wide awake and would not go back to sleep until the early hours of the morning but in reality we only had about 5 nights where he would not settle very quickly. When he was established on three meals a day (about 6 and a half months) we decided one night not to wake him up and we were worried that he may have become accustomed to the habit of the dream feed. Much to our surprise however he slept all the way through and this has continued since that time. I think we could have stopped the dream feed earlier, however we were not prepared to risk an early wake up call and we were keen to ensure he was taken plenty of milk as has always been on the lower percentiles for his weight!!
Since we began the routine we have always woken our son up at 7am or 7.15am at the latest. That is one of the downsides of a routine as when you have had a night out you just wish you could lie in till closer to 9am. When our son was younger he used to tell us he was awake and wanted his milk by crying and inevitably the morning bottle would be given to him closer to 06.45am when he woke. Now he is used to the same pattern every day, we never hear him cry in the morning. We go into his room at around 07.15am and sometimes he is happily wide awake lying in his cot waiting for us to go in to wish him “good morning” and other times we have to stir him from his slumbers. I strongly believe that if we did not wake him in the morning then he would not be as ready to go to sleep before 7pm in the evening or follow the same pattern every day for his day time sleeps.
What my husband and I both enjoy about this structure is that when we put our son to sleep whether during the day or night he often chats for a little bit and then he simply drifts off. If he cries we know there is something wrong such as he is not well or needs to bring up more wind and we go straight back into the nursery to check up on him. Another benefit and from a purely selfish perspective is that I know that he sleeps at the same time every day and therefore at lunchtime when he sleeps for 2 hours (from 1pm to 3pm) I can do the housework, have friends for lunch, cook or do paperwork. Also on the rare occasion when I have not been feeling well this time allows me to sleep and re-charge my batteries. We are hoping that this should continue until he is at least 2 and a half years old, although I am very optimistic! It has also really helped with the transition to the childminder because she has been able to put him to sleep in her house in a travel cot in a slightly darkened room and he has gone off to sleep quite happily, with the comfort of his blue teddy of course! What we have also really enjoyed as a couple is knowing that as he goes to sleep no later than 7pm we therefore have the night to ourselves to relax, see friends, have dinner, perhaps enjoy a glass of wine or simply watch tv.
The downsides of doing a strict routine are that it can take over your day particularly when your baby is younger and you are giving them 5 bottle feeds and you can become a bit obsessive about what time each event (ranging from a walk to their bath time) takes place. You find that you are less flexible about what time you meet people, and it can make things difficult if you are going to classes and your baby needs to be fed in the middle of the class. Also when you first start the routine it can be frustrating because things don’t just fall into place over night and babies don’t just sleep when you hope they will and they are often hungry before the time you had planned to feed. Weighing up all the pros and cons, though, we would, without question, adopt the same approach again as we believe we have a happy baby who knows what to expect and at what time of day. As parents, we know that we can constructively use his sleep time to do things that need doing and have more time together at night.