How to Establish a Routine for a Newborn

Establishing a solid routine from the day you bring your newborn home is the key to getting rest and finding the time to keep up on the responsibilities in the rest of your life. While, it may be a little tough in the beginning, if you are consistent, it will pay off.

Instructions

1. Watch for your newborn's natural routine during the first couple of weeks. When does he wake? Eat? Sleep?

2. Create lead-ins that signal what is coming next. Such as a bath before bedtime, which helps to soothe and relax newborns.

3. Make sure that you share the routine with your spouse so that they can help to make sure the routine can be carried out each day. By tending to the needs of other children or helping with the household chores.

4. Schedule the rest of your life around the routine while you are in the very early stages of establishing the routine. You can mess with the schedule a little later on if needed, but not during the learning stages.

5. Follow through. Newborns can seem like totally different babies on different days. Adjust the routine as needed to accommodate those changes but keep the basic schedule the same.

Tips & Warnings

• Be consistent, be patient and enlist help when you need it.

• Babies are extremely resilient, so don't worry about them getting upset now and again.

• Babies have no sense of time, only of light and dark. So, it is fine to shift the schedule to accommodate your own life.

• Here is a sample routine that is proven to work; 8 am baby gets up, eats and plays for a little while. 10 am to 12 pm baby naps. 12 pm the baby wakes, eats and plays. Newborns are generally only awake for 2 to 3 hour blocks of time. As they grow older the wake time will be longer, adjust the routine accordingly as this happens.

• Don't ignore your baby's signals in order to stay on the routine. If baby is in pain or appears sick, do what you need to do to care for the baby.

• Don't get frustrated if the routine isn't going well. Just try, try again or change the routine until you find something that works.