Calling all 5 month mommies - share your schedules pls?

If your babies are 5 mos. and you're breast feeding, I'd love to hear what your daily routine/schedule is.

I *almost* had my girlies on a schedule. But then they started going longer between feeds and sleeping longer. And now it's suddenly all over the map again. I've written it down for a few days now, and see no rhyme or reason to it, short of them waking up and going to bed at the same day in the morning and at night.

I've also got fraternal twins, and I'm finding they're both very DIFFERENT in their needs for sleep & eating.

I'm trying to nudge them onto a similar schedule (again) ... But I'd love to hear from other bf'ing moms. Most schedules I've seen are from formula feeders, who have babes going 4 hrs. between feeds.

My questions:

1. How long can your bf'ing babes go between feeds? 2 hrs for one of my girls, 3 hrs for the other. Anyone have success "imposing" a feeding schedule? Is it reasonable to push 3 hrs at 5 mos? Both girls are 14lbs and healthy.

2. How about naps??? Our naps are all over the map. One girlie sleeps 45 minutes at a shot... the other can sleep for 2 hrs.

3. Are your babes sleeping through the night? Mine go down at 6:30, and then dreamfeed at 11:00 pm and wake at 3:00/4:00 for another feed... and then go to roughly 6 a.m. Some people are telling me they should go longer at 5 mos. My daughter did, but she was in the 90th percentile... the twins are in the 25th percentile for their age.

4. If you've got fraternal twins, are they really different?

I'm going crazy trying to get our days into a predictable routine. Especially tough since I had 10 days of calm, scheduled bliss where we were ticking along nicely...

Any thoughts appreciated!

 

HERE is a list of other TSers schedules at 5 months from the FY Handbook in case you havent browsed through them.

 

QUOTE(DATJMom @ Feb 16 2009, 02:20 PM) [snapback]1192296[/snapback]
HERE is a list of other TSers schedules at 5 months from the FY Handbook in case you havent browsed through them.


I've reviewed them a few times now; most seem to be formula feeding moms though with babes on a 4 hr feeding schedule. And many have started their babes on solids.

I was waiting until 6 mos for solids?

 

Cool. I just wanted to make sure that you had seen them. :good:

 

here's what our routine looked like at 5 months:

7:00am wake & nurse
8:00/8:30am nap #1
10:00/10:30am wake & nurse
11:30/12:00pm nap #2
1:30/2:00pm wake & nurse
3:00/3:30pm nap #3
4:00/4:30pm wake & nurse
6:00/6:30pm nurse & bed
10:30pm dreamfeed
3:00/4:00am nurse

QUOTE
1. How long can your bf'ing babes go between feeds? 2 hrs for one of my girls, 3 hrs for the other. Anyone have success "imposing" a feeding schedule? Is it reasonable to push 3 hrs at 5 mos? Both girls are 14lbs and healthy.


we were doing about 3 - 3.5 hrs with feeds getting closer together later in the day. we didn't impose a feeding schedule per se - but you could try stretching feeds out by 10 - 15 min increments every 2 - 3 days & see how your LOs tolerate that.

QUOTE
2. How about naps??? Our naps are all over the map. One girlie sleeps 45 minutes at a shot... the other can sleep for 2 hrs.


we did some nap/sleep training with our girls. it involved CIO - if you're interested i can tell you more, but otherwise i don't have any advice for this part of it.

QUOTE
3. Are your babes sleeping through the night? Mine go down at 6:30, and then dreamfeed at 11:00 pm and wake at 3:00/4:00 for another feed... and then go to roughly 6 a.m. Some people are telling me they should go longer at 5 mos. My daughter did, but she was in the 90th percentile... the twins are in the 25th percentile for their age.


at that point, no they weren't. like yours they got a dreamfeed & one nursing session a night. considering their age & weight, you could probably wean out the nursing session if you wanted to. but if you don't mind getting up for that, then there's no need or rush to cut it out. again, if you're interested i can tell you what we did with our girls. let me know.

QUOTE
4. If you've got fraternal twins, are they really different?


our girls are ID, so again no thoughts in this area.

HTH!

 

Oh this is tough because 5 months was a real transitional period for us. That's when we got them on the 3 nap schedule, and started trying to do the Healthy Sleep book. I also moved them out of my room at that time. We moved them from an 8-8:30 bedtime to a 7-7:30 bedtime by the end of the month.

So here's a typical day (my guys got two bottles at that time--first and least feedings of the day), but keep in mind in the first part of the month it was chaotic, as they just reached being old enough sleep train. They usually woke around 6:30 and got a bottle from Daddy, and then I fed them right beore their first nap. I tried breastfeeding them before and after naps, and they took three naps.

Believe me it was flexible depending on when they woke, and how long they napped. Above all else we follow the 2 hours of wakefulness rule, and I tried feeding them before and after naps.

They typically went to bed between 7-8, and they would sleep 3-4 hours the first stretch, 3 hours the second stretch, and 2-3 hours the third stretch. If you add that up you'll see we did have at lot of 4-5AM wakings. They ate 3 times in the nights, 2 times if I got really lucky.

Sorry to say, but 4-5 months was hard in the sleep and eating department. I did start solids at 4.5 months, but I didn't do it everyday because I thought my ped was full of it. Truthfully, they never got much food down until 6 months and 6.5 months respectively, and solids had no impact on sleep.

My guess would be that their day time eating interval was 2-3 hours, and night time was like I mentioned above 3-4, 3, and 2-3.

 

Oh, one more thing, my guys are fraternal, and while they do have different sleeping habits and styles, I decided around 6 months that they needed to be on the same schedule. That meant we did wake sleeping babies, because if we were really rigid in following healthy sleep the boys would be going down for naps at different times, and if one was already asleep and the other came into sleep and fussed around, forget about it. The sleeping baby would be awake after only a partial nap.

 

Sorry forgot to add the questions:
1. How long can your bf'ing babes go between feeds? 2 hrs for one of my girls, 3 hrs for the other. Anyone have success "imposing" a feeding schedule? Is it reasonable to push 3 hrs at 5 mos? Both girls are 14lbs and healthy.

Yes, my guys were always three hour babies, but if you are trying to get them to consolidate their eating and sleep. You should try to go to 2-3 hours in the day, and 3-4 hours in the night.

2. How about naps??? Our naps are all over the map. One girlie sleeps 45 minutes at a shot... the other can sleep for 2 hrs.

Oh that sounds like trouble... Have you done CIO for naps? We did at that age, and it made nap times longer. Also that Healthy Sleep book, says it's not a restorative naps unless it's at least one hour, so we tried not to go in until after an hour if they woke early.

3. Are your babes sleeping through the night? Mine go down at 6:30, and then dreamfeed at 11:00 pm and wake at 3:00/4:00 for another feed... and then go to roughly 6 a.m. Some people are telling me they should go longer at 5 mos. My daughter did, but she was in the 90th percentile... the twins are in the 25th percentile for their age.

LOL!! Mine were doing that a few weeks ago at 7 months, and they were full term, big twins. If they are preemies I'd go by adjusted age.

4. If you've got fraternal twins, are they really different?
They are different, but we've worked on training them to be more like each other, and after a few months it has worked.