Reese's "Schedule" At 10 Weeks Old

I've mentioned before that if Finn taught me one thing when he was an infant, it was that babies benefit when they are on a schedule. Once we started implementing one with him, he was so happy, started sleeping through the night, and it was so much easier to schedule our day around his!

When Reese was born, I knew a schedule would be necessary for everyone's sanity. Fortunately, Reese was a great eater from the start. At her first doctor's visit she had already surpassed her birth weight, so feeding on demand was no longer needed.

By her first week, I was getting her on a routine. Feed, wake, sleep. The idea behind this is that a well rested baby eats better and can stay happy and fall back to sleep easier.

Of course, babies are unpredictable, and as soon as we got into a good routine, Reese then hit a "leap" or developmental period that threw her off and caused her to want to nurse all day long.

Regardless, we continue to follow the feed, wake, sleep cycle, which is loosely based off of the Baby Wise books.

By around 6 weeks old, Reese was waking up twice at night and going right back down. We started a bedtime routine that put her to sleep right around 7:30pm.

By 8 weeks, she was waking up once around 2 or 3am and waking for the day around 7am.

This is a very typical day, but we've had a lot of non-typical days as well. There was a week where she wouldn't nap in her crib at all, and then wouldn't nap in her crib unless I nursed her to sleep. The last few nights she's been waking up around midnight to nurse, and then again around 4:30am. Regardless of how many times she wakes at night, she goes back down after eating at night, which I'm grateful for.

Finn was sleeping through the night at this point, but I'm trying not to compare the two. We are doing things differently with Reese, mainly I've been exclusively breast feeding because Little Miss doesn't seem to want to take a bottle! I'm also trying to remind myself that she is only 10 weeks old! I'm truly enjoying the breastfeeding this time around, so I don't mind the middle of the night snuggles.

Here's a rough outline of our "typical" day:

7-7:30am - Wake for the day. Change diaper, eat, wake time.

8:30am - Down for nap number one.

10:00am - Eat, awake time.

11:00am - Down for nap number two.

12:30pm - Eat, awake time.

1:30pm - Down for nap number three.

3:00pm - Eat, awake time.

4-6:30pm - Sometimes we get a nap here, sometimes we don't. Usually I end up wearing her while she "naps" on me.

7:00pm - Bedtime routine begins. She usually nurses for about 30 minutes and goes down.

2:00am - Middle of the night feeding.