Schedule

Well my girls are a little over 3mths and my DH really wants me to get them on a schedule. I'm really not a schedule type person with my singleton I just went with what he needed at the time. That worked for us at the time but now it's a little more complicated with all 3 of them. Anyway my girls eat every 3hrs starting about 8am then usually stay up for about 1.5hrs until they are sleepy again. The hard part is they aren't consistent with their nap lengths, it seems like I always have at least one awake at all times.

What type of schedule should they be on at this age? They are really good babies and go down fairly easy and only cry if they are hungry so I really don't mind having them up with us but I am trying to get better organized so I can have some kind of predictable awake time to do stuff. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated, I feel like I am a first time mom again.

 

At that age, we were on the exact same "schedule" as you are now... eating every three hours, and napping in between. I could never predict what the day would like, but we did have a pattern that usually was the same day to day. Somewhere around four - five months old I noticed more of a distinct pattern emerging and nap lengths evened out so I could plan better, but things stayed somewhat crazy until about six months old when my girls started sleeping more at night and napping at specific times during the day.

In my opinion, three months is a bit too early for a schedule. Your babies are still growing leaps and bounds and need to eat and sleep whenever they want. At this age, the only way to really schedule them is to force them to eat when you want them to, and to wake them up, or limit their naps to meet your schedule. If you don't absolutely need to do that, you're probably better off letting your little ones sleep when they are tired even if it means less flexibility on your part.

Good luck... you're right in the difficult part now; things get better and easier very soon!

 

At 3 months the only schedule we had was eating (every 3-4 hours). Naps were all over the place and they slept where ever, whenever. We did follow a routine though (eat-sleep-play) and that helped organize our day a bit. GL!

 

I agree with pp, and would suggest eat-play-sleep. Are they getting up at the same time in the morning? Having both up at the same time can help your day start off right and napping more around the same time. Does one of them fall asleep to music or something like that? That might help them get on a similar nap schedule too. GL!

 

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one, my DH seems to think I should be a schedule Nazi since I now have 3 little one's. I am a go with the flow kind of mom to an extent and it is working so far so maybe I should just wait it out a while longer.

 

QUOTE(Leighann @ Aug 12 2008, 09:36 AM) [snapback]926025[/snapback]
At 3 months the only schedule we had was eating (every 3-4 hours). Naps were all over the place and they slept where ever, whenever. We did follow a routine though (eat-sleep-play) and that helped organize our day a bit. GL!


That sounds like what we did at that age. A real schedule didn't fall into place until they were 6 months adjusted. It just doesn't work until naps become more predictable.

Good luck!
Cary

 

My girls are 4 mos., and they get up at the same time in the morning. They eat every three hours, and their naps are not scheduled, but fairly predictable. They do the eat- play- sleep thing too, and I still let them nap in their swings. They go to bed well at night in their room, and that is enough schedule for me!

 

Olivia is 5 months old and just in the past 2-3 weeks has started having a predictable schedule.

8:30 am - wake and bottle
10:00 - 11:00 am - nap
11:30 - bottle
12:30 - 3:30 - nap
3:30 - bottle
5:00 - 6:00 - nap
7:30 - bedtime

We haven't started cereal yet, but I'm sure it may change a little at that point.

 

I had a rough schedule in place by 4 1/2 months. We had a set wake, bed and nap time schedule. I really always fed on demand pretty much (before and after naps, etc) but was strict about slee schedules. it payed off in the long run, but certainly wasn't easy (always sleeping when they should) until closer to 6 months.

 

QUOTE(Leighann @ Aug 12 2008, 02:36 PM) [snapback]926025[/snapback]
Naps were all over the place and they slept where ever, whenever.


Same here but mine were also all over the map with feedings too. Sometimes it was 3 hours and sometimes it was 2.5 hours. I just fed them on demand. Our schedule didnt start to take shape until about 4 months when their morning nap started to become a bit more predictable and then around 6 months the afternoon nap came into play along with a short cat nap around 4:30. FWIW, I have a toddler too and I never scheduled a darn thing for her. She just fell into one on her own, but with the boys it was nice to get them on the same one and be able to know when I could spend some down time or one on one time with DD. It will come!