So much for the new routine
Starting last Wednesday we thought as Andrew wasn’t sleeping very well we’d try a new routine, thanks to the Gina Ford New contentented little baby book.
Basically it has set routines as to when your baby is to sleep, eat, wake, bath and it even tells you in the early stages as new borns when you (the parent) are to eat. I first picked it up when i was about 6 months pregnant, it completly freaked me out, thinking that this is what life was going to be like from now on, planned, fixed and never, ever having a moment to yourself unless Gina said so.
Anyway i put it down vowing never to go there again, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all that, so on the advice of Martin (AKA ‘the oracle’) the guy that works with Steven we thought we’d give it a go, as what had we to lose.
He said it was really strict and had been too strict for him and Mrs Oracle but one of their friends had tried it and within 6 weeks their child was sleeping through the night and it was more or less a miracle book.
Hmmm…Basically the routine goes like this for 4-6 month old babies…
7:00AM Milk
9:00AM Sleep (up to 45 minutes)
10:00AM Should be fully awake on mat with toys
11:00AM Milk & Solids (as were starting to wean him now)
11:50AM-12:00PM Sleep (up to 2 hours 15 minutes)
2:00PM - 2:15PM Awake + Milk & Solids no later than 3:15PM
4:15PM Cooled boiled water or juice + short nap if didn’t sleep well earlier
5:00PM Small feed if hungry + get bath ready for 5:30PM
5:30PM Bath + Massage
6:00PM - 6:15PM Milk & Solids
7:00PM Bedtime
10:25PM Awake slowly and not too much for example with dim light
10:30PM Milk feed but not to finish any later than 11:00PM
All pretty straight forward and it seemed to make perfect sense waking him up for a feed at a time when he’d probably be hungry, as his last feed was 4 and a half hours earlier, looking good.
Previously he’d been waking us up at anywhere between 11pm and 1.30, then again between 3 and 5.30am. At least this way he would go back to sleep have the majority of the sleep between 11 and 6am and it would be much more sociable for us.
Well ‘no’ in a word, it was great at first, he was woken as planned at 10.30, had his feed and went back to sleep… for about 10 minutes and that was pretty much it for the night he screamed, kicked, yelled, screamed some more and again mummy got no sleep, oh yeah and I forgot to mention daddy got some kind of nasty bug so couldn’t help, not his fault i know but he did try to blame my cooking, saying that i’d given him food poisoning but we found out later it had been passsed on from a friends kid. typical bloke may i add you know the ‘man flu’ epademic that men get, well he thought he had ebola…
(for full details go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola)
talk about exaggerate, blimey.
Anyway the, ahem ‘routine’ has been scrapped as last night was equally as painful, I even resorted to bringing Andrew into our bed to get a bit of sleep at around 4.30 and funnily he slept, not tonight though, its back to mummys routine, maybe he’s just not ready to sleep through yet, big sighs. I have started to wean him off his dummy though, only giving it to him when he reallly needs it and trying to take it off him before he falls asleep if he needs it to settle, doing good on that score though, he’s only needed it to calm down once today and I think that was just because he was hungry and tired at the same time.
Also can I just add, I really don’t understand why anyone would want more children ,I mean he’s not really a bad child but when you hear parents say, ‘they’re hard word’ you don’t quite understand the concept before you have one of you own.
Also those women that say ‘I loved being pregnant’ I mean really, sicknesss, headaches (and no drugs), blood being taken or trying to be taken when you’ve got veins that seem as thin as hairs by the student nurses, not being able to do anything ie lifting things, hoovering the upstairs becomes somewhat of a two man job, getting to a point where you can’t reach over to put your own socks on, never mind not being able to shave, the comments… my favourite being ‘god shes huge’ yes i am pregnant not just fat, the food and drink police being on your case, the birth , oh the joys and oh course the constant worries of are they ok etc,etc.
Anyway we’ve just put him to bed (6pm) and he went down without his dummy, fingers crossed if he wakes in the night its just a case of going in and letting him know that we’re still here and he’s ok to go back to sleep, but i’ll won’t hold my breath.
Anyways I’m off now to do his bottles, then bed for me ‘cos I’m knackered.
Goodnight world
Flop x
Add comment September 8th, 2007
