Is it just me or does starting a baby routine often feel like a lose, lose situation? When I was pregnant I did a lot of research on baby routines. I pinned baby schedules, baby routines, and sleep training articles left and right, I read books, and I talked to any friends that had kids. I was sure I was fully prepared and ready to help our baby get on a routine, so he or she could learn to sleep through the night. How could I not be prepared? I’d done my research, written out a detailed schedule based on our current daily routine, I’d babysat, and I was a teacher for goodness sakes. I was ready!
Ok, some of you may be laughing right now because you know, from experience, my grand plans didn’t mean squat. Don’t get me wrong there were days when our daily routine went smoothly and I’d feel like a mommy rock star. The problem was on other days the routine would fall apart and I’d feel like an utter failure. I started to question everything I was doing and I became obsessed with making the routine work. If the routine wasn’t working perfectly every day I must be doing something wrong. If you’ve felt this way too let me share something with you.
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Having a Baby Routine is Helpful, but it Doesn’t Need to be Perfect
I became so focused on making the routine perfect that I lost sight of the purpose of it all. So, I needed to reevaluate. I want to share what I’ve learned to help save you the stress and guilt that I felt.
Do Research, but Don’t Forget to Use Your Instincts
I love doing research and finding answers for the best way to do something. It’s a skill that has served me well over the years. It backfired on me a little this time. I got caught up in trying to exactly follow all the different advice I found in books and on Pinterest that I forgot to follow my instincts.
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe it is important to do research. I learned a lot of valuable information from the research I did. I had experience with kids and even babies, but I had no experience taking care of one of my own. I don’t know about you, but I was worried and I had a plethora of questions. How often should you nurse a baby? What if our baby wouldn’t sleep? How do you bath a newborn? What if we can’t figure out what our baby needs when he/she is crying? How much sleep should a baby have? I clearly needed some basic information.
I was lucky to find some great resources. I read the books On Becoming Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam M.D. and Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg based on friends and Amazon recommendations. (I was lucky enough to receive Baby Wise for free through Amazon Baby Registry for being an Amazon Prime member.) Both books gave me a better understanding of what to expect when we brought home our daughter Anne. I was better prepared when Anne was up every 20 to 30 minutes her second night because I had read about cluster feeding. On Becoming Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo helped me understand the importance of helping babies learn how to sleep because they do not yet know the difference between day and night. Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg helped me identify and read Anne’s cues which lessened frustration for Anne, my husband, and myself!
These books were valuable, but the problem came when I tried to force Anne and us to follow the routines and schedules in the books exactly. Now, many people claim that this is the problem with these books. However, both books do share that no baby is the same and that parents need to be flexible and use their instincts. Yea…I may have blocked that part out for a while.
We also took a baby class through our hospital which I would highly recommend. We got hands-on practice taking care of a baby (baby doll) lead by an experienced nurse. This helped my husband and I get on the same page and gave us confidence. We were able to ask an expert questions and also see that we were not alone in feeling nervous about expecting a new baby. It’s important to not feel alone in a new experience, especially one as life-changing as welcoming a new baby.
One of the best resources I found was healthychildren.org a site run by the American Academy of Pediatrics. When I was feeling overwhelmed by all the different advice I was receiving about sleep training Anne I found this site and it took the pressure off. It covers information for children ages infant to young adult making it my new go-to resource. While this may sound obvious, I believe that in today’s online we have to be careful what information we trust and make sure it is coming from a reliable source, the best expert to rely on is your child’s pediatrician. When we were looking for a pediatrician I fell in love with our office when I found out they offer 24/7 contact with an on-call doctor. That means that when we have a question or concern during non-business hours and we call the office one of the pediatricians answers the phone versus an on-call nurse. Just knowing we have this resource is a huge reassurance.
I’ll leave you with two of my favorite pieces of advice I’ve received from our pediatricians:
- You can’t spoil a baby. Hold, cuddle, and love on your baby when he/she needs it.
- Crying for a little while will not hurt your baby.
These two pieces of advice help me when I feel guilty when I can’t pick Anne up right away when she is crying or when a family member tells us we are spoiling her when we do pick her up when she is crying. I hope this advice can do the same for you.
Set Reasonable Goals
As I shared, I got too caught up in trying to have Anne on a perfect schedule and I would beat myself up when that didn’t happen. Instead of expecting perfection I suggest using what you’ve learned from your research to set reasonable goals for your baby’s routine. Once I realized I needed to readjust I set the following goals:
- Ensure Baby Gets Enough Sleep
- Meet Baby’s Nutritional Needs
- Observe and Learn Baby’s Cues
Once I set these three goals I realized that the majority of the time my husband and I were accomplishing these goals; EVEN on the days the schedule flew out the window. These goals helped me start to give us more grace.
I also found it helpful to switch from thinking about it as a schedule to a routine. Now, these two things are very similar and the words are often used interchangeably; however, I define a schedule as a list of set times for activities throughout a day and a routine as an order in which activities are completed throughout a day. So, instead of writing out at what times Anne should eat or sleep I focused on having them happen in a certain order. Both of the books I mentioned earlier suggest that babies should eat as soon as they wake up versus just before they go to sleep. This makes sure young babies are awake enough to eat and that your baby doesn’t become reliant on nursing or a bottle to fall asleep. In Secrets of the Baby Whisperer Tracy Hogg suggests remembering the routine as E.A.S.Y. (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your Time). Both books and related Pinterest articles have great examples of how the routine works and suggestions for how often babies of certain ages should eat and sleep.
To help me manage Anne’s routine I use a baby tracking app on my phone called Glow Baby. This app helps me track how much and how frequently Anne eats, sleeps, as well as her diapers. This app was crucial those first few weeks with Anne, especially in the hospital, when the nurses wanted us to keep track of all those things. The app was a lot easier than paper and pencil! I still use the app now that Anne is 8 months old because it still helps me better read her cues and notice when something is different or wrong. When she starts fussing, I can usually look at the app and quickly figure out what she might need. For instance, she’s currently eating about every 4 hours, so if she starts to fuss and I look at the app and it’s been 4 hours since she last ate I can quickly solve the problem. Now, I usually can do this just by reading her cues, but sometimes mom brain attacks and I need some extra support from my handy, dandy tracking app!
Learn to Read Your Baby’s Cues
Each baby is unique, so there is no one size fits all routine or schedule. I forgot this when I was trying to fit Anne into a strict schedule that just didn’t fit her wants or needs. Instead, now I have a fluid outline of a daily routine that I follow based on Anne’s cues. Once I started focusing in on and learning Anne’s cues based on a suggestion from the book Secrets of the Baby Whisperer I was amazed at how much Anne was communicating with us even though she wasn’t yet talking.
There are the more obvious cues such as rubbing her eyes when she’s tired, rooting when she’s hungry, and putting her arms up when she wants to be held. She also has some other cues that took longer to notice and figure out. Anne makes a humming sound when she’s hungry and other unique sounds when she’s falling asleep or sees something she wants.
Reading Anne’s cues in correlation with our routine helps us have a better idea of what she needs or wants. When we started to pay attention and respond to her needs and wants based on her cues and where she was in her routine we found that she was happier and more relaxed.
Celebrate the Small Wins
It is easy to say read your baby’s cues, but it can be difficult and frustrating as you learn your baby’s cues or if you forget what a cue means. During the goal setting and planning stage of creating a routine you can feel like you have control, but then the routine falls apart one day and nothing goes as planned. This is not an exact science and you will have good days and not so good days. Learn from the bad days, so the days to come can be better than the ones that have come before.
Celebrate your small wins. When you have a day that goes smoothly acknowledge it and also celebrate the rough days when you make it through by the skin of your teeth. Give your partner a high five, enjoy a bowl of ice cream, have a glass of wine, because Momma what you’re doing is hard work and that shouldn’t go unacknowledged. Don’t let yourself or others diminish the gargantuan task it can be to care of a baby. You’re helping meet the needs of someone that cannot take care of his or herself, cannot verbally tell you what they want or need, and cannot understand what you want of him or her. You are, in a sense, a mind reader.
As a parent, your goal doesn’t need to be creating perfection. I’d love to be able to share with you a detailed handbook on how to take care of your new baby, but I can’t. I can tell you that you’ve got this, even on the days when you feel like you don’t.
Do some research, trust your instincts, set reasonable goals for your routine, learn your babies cues, and celebrate even the smallest wins. If today sucked and you’re frustrated and desperate for something to change, take a breath. Assess what is and is not working and make adjustments. Remember your goal is not to strive for perfection, so give yourself a break. You can always make tomorrow better because every day is a day made fresh! 
