Routine

Original Post Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2007.
Let me just ramble on about schedule’s and routine’s for a bit....
Well for the past three nights Saffron has been in bed and pretty much asleep by 9:30pm and I am having to wake her up at 9am for her first feed of the day. Pretty cool I know. People say, “wow, you’re lucky to have such an easy baby!” But you know they said that with Mattias too. They didn’t say that when Sam was a baby because he cried all of the time and never slept. What’s the difference you may ask? I know exactly what the difference is...I have put Mattias and Saffron on a schedule the moment they were born. It takes a little figuring out because all babies are different. One things for sure is that they are born with a schedule of their own...up all night and sleep all day. So what I did was wake them up every three hours during the day to feed them. I would do it from morning til night and then around 11:30pm I would lay them down and hope for the best. Mattias was 3 days old when he slept through the night and Saffron was 3 weeks when she first slept through the night. Now both Saffron and Tias like eating every 2 hours after 3 pm. I see it as them stocking up for the night. With every child, the nurses in the hospital said, “just demand feed. They’ll let you know when they’re hungry!” Which indeed is true but when you have other children to take care of and need to be a functioning person in society, you need a good nights sleep. So 9am I wake Saffron up and feed her right away. Then change her diaper and get her dressed. Then 10am I lay her down for her two hour nap. Then 12pm I wake her up and feed her again and then lay her down at 1pm. Then wake her up at 3 and feed her. From then she’s usually awake and eats at 5, 7, and 9 is now her last feed for the night. It used to be 11 but now she can go the distance through the night. Mattias was on the same schedule until recently. He is older and doesn’t require as much sleep or “feeds” throughout the day. But he is in bed by around 7pm and wakes up around 8:30am. I figured this out by pure experience with Sam. To this day he doesn’t always sleep through the night and it’s usually most days a battle to keep him in his bed for bedtime. I breastfed 24 hours a day for 7months. It was exhausting and I knew that I never wanted to do that again nor could I with other children. And because Mattias and Saffron are well rested and know what to expect in the day, they are more joyful and pleasant to be around. Just some added information for those of you who are embarking on child raising or are in it.