Expect The Best’s Tips to Building A Baby’s Routine

Do you want a strict routine? A flexible routine? No routine at all? 

There are so many things to consider when you’re trying to come up with a routine. We believe that the most important thing to consider is how you can make it work for you and your family by exploring what your priorities are from a routine whilst also considering your baby’s unique personality.

It can be helpful to have a conversation with your partner/or a trusted friend about what sort of things are your priorities. What will help you start to feel settled, calm and secure? It can feel like your world has been turned upside down. No longer are you the only party to consider, but that doesn’t mean that you have to let go of your identity.

Finding those small things that you can add into your daily routine that help you to feel like you, are of huge importance. Whether that’s getting out and about seeing friends, going for a walk, doing exercise, finding time to read a book or a magazine. Whatever it is, it is crucial that you give these needs a voice and find time to really take care of yourself whilst also considering how your baby fits into that. 

Of course, there are things that inevitably have to change, but we believe that you can still hold onto those unique things that make you, you.

A baby’s needs can be divided into fairly basic categories – sleep, feeding, bathing, love and play. Saying this, how a baby responds and what a baby requires to have each of these needs fulfilled can be vastly different. The best advice that we can give you, is that when you want to start establishing a more detailed routine start by monitoring their natural rhythms and identify what you feel is their natural sleep time and awake time you will then be able to work out how long they last before you start seeing the cues for hunger, sleep and play time. This will give you a good idea on how to base your naptimes, awake times, and feeding times.

What a lot of people tend to overlook when thinking about a routine, is creating opportunities for stimulation. It can be really helpful to provide opportunities for them to really use their brain and explore the world around them. This is particularly helpful if you have a more uptight baby that requires lots of attention. We will be talking a lot more in the next few articles about how to expand on this. But if you haven’t already, check out our article “the guilt of meeting milestones” for a few ideas. 

Whether you love routine or not, finding some fixed points in your baby’s day can be really helpful in getting some consistency and predictability in your day. We generally suggest that after the first few weeks/months you start by adopting a little bath and bedtime routine and then a time that you want to be up in the morning. This helps to establish a body clock for your baby, so that as they grow and develop you can help promote sleeping at night and longer waking periods during the day. It is important to remember that this is a slow process and you don’t need to rush it, having these little things in place will go a long way in helping the process. 

A bath and bedtime routine could look like this:

• Start the hour before bedtime by dimming the lighting and not providing exciting stimulation.

• Prepare the nursery/your bedroom so that you have everything you need – pyjamas, sleep bag, white noise, bottle (if bottle-feeding), dummy (if using), comforter (a soft toy or muslin).

• Run the bath, it can be a lovely bonding experience for you or your partner to have a bath with your baby. So that is always an option if you wish. After a bath it can be a nice opportunity to give your baby a little massage to help them calm down.

• It is not necessary to give your baby a bath every night, if for whatever reason you don’t want to give them a bath then you can always just do a gentle wash down with a warm muslin or cloth.

• Get them ready for bed, give them a feed and then lots of cuddles and kisses before putting them down in your preferred place and method. We love using a red-light bulb in a lamp for feeding time as it helps to promote the stimulation of melatonin.(the sleepy chemical). 

• As they start getting older you can introduce reading a bedtime story.

Above all, remember to be kind to yourselves.