Routines
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Do what works best for you! My little boy is 20 months now and I have never followed a strict routine with my little boy. He goes to bed later and wakes later. He naps when he wants to for as long as he wants to. That's worked for us.
We sleep at 9 and wake up between 8 to 9 Nap always Same time after lunch Doesn’t have to be tfe same for everyone
Totally get you with the social media thing, I had to take a break recently as it was making me feel rubbish! My sons 8 months and we still don’t have any routine we go with the flow and follow my sons lead tbh! Since doing that both me and him have been so much happier! Haha he usually wakes around 6 sometimes later and still on 3 naps a day and bed is between 7:30 and 8:30! X
When I first had my son I drove myself mad with wake windows and the ideal routines that I saw on tiktok. After a couple of weeks of these routines and wake windows not working for us I decided to just follow my babys cues and needs. He eventually got himself into his own routine, these routines changed slightly as he got older and when I went back to work etc. No two babies are the same so what works for one may not work for your baby, so just do whatever you feel is best and follow their cues and needs. :)
I don’t have a routine with our twins. My eldest is 4 and we don’t really have a routine. They naturally go to bed and wake up at the same times and feed at the similar intervals, everything in between we wing it. Don’t even go by the so called ‘sweet spots’ and they go to sleep when they’re tired. Means we’re much more flexible to go to classes or meet friends and not have to be strict with working around naps. I’m very much an advocate for baby led everything. I was curious with my first so downloaded the huckleberry app and my god was it hard work tracking it. I literally did a day and I couldn’t be bothered again
I ignore allll that stuff. Don’t follow ‘wake windows’ or huckleberry-whatever either. lol. Works great for us My boy wakes up around 8/9am (dreamy!) and we stay in bed til 11/ midday just chilling, chatting and reading stories. It’s lush. Then we slowly migrate downstairs. In terms of naps , he sleeps whenever he wants. Some day he sleeps for hours and some he barely sleeps. It’s usually all good either way. Then at night he sleeps amazingly. Goes down easy at 8pm and wakes once for a quick feed around 4am :) I’m sure we just have it lucky but all works for us
@Elle this sounds very much like our days when my daughters in nursery. So chilled! I remember talking to one mum at a baby group with my daughter when she was about 6m and this mum hadn’t been out for 6 weeks with the baby because she’d paid a fortune for a sleep consultant who said her baby needed to sleep at a specific time, in their crib with curtains closed and lights off. This poor mum spent 2 hrs trying to get this baby down for a 45 minute nap 🤯 the baby slept through the whole playgroup …. At the sleep consultants allocated time! She said the following week that was the first time the baby slept through
Even huckleberry stresses me out as I feel like it’s just another thing to do / complete. I feel I know my baby best and haven’t really had any major issues with napping, wake windows etc. I have been putting my baby down earlier now (if it suits) as he is getting up about 6ish / 7isham anyway regardless of what time I end up putting him down. I think nowadays we’re just overloaded with information and that we need the next gadget and app that it just comes too much and we need to do what’s best for us and baby x
@Ceri-Ann Madness. idk if we’re just lucky, or if following all this wake /window / sweet spot / enforced naps etc is all just silly lol. Even just tracking everything sounds exhsusting
This has been so helpful! Thank you for all your reassurance that I’m not lazy by not waking us all up at 6:30 every day! I do actually quite like huckleberry as it’s actually pretty spot on with her sweet spots when I track her naps but I don’t follow any set routines by them. Just pop in when she’s slept so I can guesstimate her next one. My most favourite thing about it is my husband can access it too so doesn’t have to constantly ask me when her next nap is as this was getting very annoying 🤣 I also have the worst memory in the world so constantly think oh it’s only been an hour or so since she was last fed when a lot of the time, it is actually 3! 😵💫
I'll use things like wake windows as a rough guide on when to anticipate things like naps, feeds etc. But I don't let them dictate my day. Baby's aren't textbooks. Feel free to get inspiration from other people's routines but then use your own intuition for how to adapt it to best suit your own lifestyle and family x
Oh absolutely! They definitely aren’t textbooks are they 🤣 I’m quite happy with my day to day “routine” is working really well for us whilst we figure out this baby thing, it was the the late starts I was curious about, if anyone else does it as one of my friends is always so surprised when I say my baby slept till 9;45 or something today and she always says that’s too late! But I definitely feel better about it now. Being a first time mum can be so hard can’t it. Constantly worrying if you’re doing the “right thing” and what effect it could potentially have in the future 🤯🤯🤯
my girl is 9 mo (I'm not part of this group, this post just popped up on my feed lol) and we've never done a schedule. she wakes up any time between 6:30 and 9, we take two or three naps, and she goes to bed between 7:30 and 9. I couldn't get her on a schedule even if I wanted to ☠️ but it works for us!