The first couple months after your baby is born are brutal. You have no sleep and you are extremely exhausted until you can get your baby into a routine you can cope with. Once that is done the hardest part of taking care of a baby is past you. A lot of people try very hard to put their baby into a routine that fits their lifestyle but if you ask me, that's the wrong way to go about doing it. A baby will do what its body tells it to do. They are small and they sleep most of the day and want a lot of milk. You have to let them do what they have to do on their own time. You have to put yourself in their routine for the first few months and once they are adjusted to this big big world, your life will start to get easier.
Let a baby set up their own routine. Slowly but surely they will adjust themselves into a routine that will definitely fit your schedule too. Babies sleep all day but they also sleep all night. In the beginning you will need to wake up every couple hours to feed the baby but it only takes a couple months for the baby to understand the difference between night and day. And the only thing you have control over is making a baby understand that difference.
My baby girl set up her own routine. I did absolutely nothing. After trying my hardest to try and get her to follow a specific routine to make my life easier, I decided after the first 3 weeks of extreme exhaustion that I will let her do whatever she wants to whenever she wants to do it. And I slowly started to notice a pattern in her ways. And because I let her set her own schedule, she started to sleep longer through the night and started to drink more milk before bed time. She is now 3 months old and thankfully sleeps through the night till morning (knock on wood). It took her a total of 2 months to get herself into this routine but she did it... and she did it all by herself. I just listened to her needs and gave her what she wanted.
Now 3 months later my amazing baby girl follows the routine below:
- Wakes up at 6:30 am to have some milk and get her dipper changed and goes back to sleep
- Wakes up again at 8:30 to have some more milk and dipper change and goes back to sleep
- Then finally wakes up at 10. Has her milk and stays up till 11
- Takes a short 15 min nap
- Wakes up and we take a bath. This lets her know its morning and there's going to be play time and fun stuff happening.
- After her bath she gets exhausted... has her milk and sleeps for another half hour
- Wakes up
- Stays up to play for a couple hours then takes 15 min power naps
- Does this till 7 pm
- Sleeps for an hour and stays up for an hour till 10
- Before bedtime I take some olive oil or baby oil and massage her whole body. she loves it. It relaxes her and she knows there's no more play time after her massage and that she has to drink her milk and go to sleep. Also ... a massaged, swaddled and well fed/burped baby will sleep for longer.
- Self set Bedtime at 10:30
- At midnight while shes asleep I change her diaper and feed her before I go to bed. she sleeps through this process.
- Wakes up at 6:30 am
Things I have noticed:
- Babies love massages before bedtime
- Babies get startled if their arms are not swaddled which wakes them up in the night.
- Bath time in the morning helps them stay up longer during the day.
- The more you play with your baby during the day the more tired during the night they will be
- During the night after bed time if you do not communicate much with your baby they will soon start to realize its "sleepy time".
- Babies that go outdoors and get fresh air sleep longer
Try it out. It actually works. =)
Hope this helps!
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