starting a routine

Last night we started a bit of a routine. As Hugo is now over one month and we've switched to bottles (mainly expressed milk with the odd bit of formula) it's easier to manage how much milk he's getting and when, so it feels like the right time.

Yesterday I tried to feed every 3 hours and let him fall into a natural sleep routine by staying in the house so that he didnt fall asleep in the car. This was a challenge because his feeding has been so frequent until now so he wanted food much more quickly.

We managed a few feeds 3 hours apart and then the last one before bed was 2.5 hours from the previous. I did use a swing seat to put him to sleep when he was fractious in the afternoon, but he was awake for most of the day.

Our new bedtime routine is as follows:

8.30pm - evening walk or activity to keep him awake! (weather permitting)

9.30pm - stretch out on the play matt to burn off any energy

9.45pm - bath

10pm - bottle

10.20pm - storytime in rocking chair

10.30pm - sleep!

8am - woken up for day to begin!

At the moment I'm letting him fall asleep on me before putting him down. At some point I need to encourage him to fall asleep on his own, but I'll wait until the routine is more fixed. At that point I intend to use music to help too.

Night one went well, he slept from 10.30pm until 2.50am - the longest stretch yet and the earliest he's gone to sleep. He then woke at 6am but didn't manage a whole bottle so was up again at 8am.

Here's hoping we can keep this going and gradually increase the stretches between feeds and put him down to sleep earlier!