RoutineTalk: For Babies, Pt. 2

Caly leads a simple life.  She sleeps, she eats, and she has awake time.  That’s it. Her life is a constant three-hour cycle of eat/wake/sleep and in that order. And these are the building blocks of her schedule, which I’ve used since we arrived home from the hospital. The purpose of this schedule is to help set Caly’s internal body clock and to teach her how to fall asleep on her own.

EAT: Since birth, I have fed Caly every 2 ½ to 3 hours.  Now that she is 4 months it is every 3 to 3 ½ hours.  Warning!  These times are not universal to all babies.  I would encourage you to check with your doctor before regulating your child’s eating habits.  In my case, Caly was meeting all of the healthy growth charts and thriving on this particular feeding schedule.

To teach Caly the difference between day and night, I never let her sleep past her feeding time during the day. But at night, I allow her to sleep as long as she will. Now, at four months, she sleeps for a seven to nine hour stretch before she wakes up hungry.

WAKE: I work hard to give Caly awake time after she eats (the exception being her bedtime and nighttime feedings). This was especially difficult those first few weeks when she would often fall asleep nursing. But the extra effort paid off and her body quickly adapted to the pattern.

During awake periods, I give Caly some time to play alone in a safe place (for twenty minutes, or longer if she is happy). I want her to learn to entertain herself, rather than be solely dependent on the attention of others. This wasn’t always met with a smile at first. But I made sure she was fed, changed, and happy before I put her down. Now, my girly has begun to enjoy “swing time” and “floor time.” She plays with her fingers and talks to herself.

As I said yesterday, this advice is nothing new. In their book, The American Home, Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame) write:

“Do not allow a child to form such habits that it will not be quiet unless tended and amused….A child who is trained to lie or sit and amuse itself, is happier than one who is carried and tended a great deal, and thus rendered restless and uneasy when not so indulged.”

Of course, awake time also includes special Mommy-Caly play-time: we sing songs, talk baby girltalk, and play with toys. There is also errand-time, playgroup-time, and other fun activities. I love spending every day with my girly!

SLEEP: A nap concludes our cycle.  Naps have always ranged in length from 1 to 2 hours.   A priority from the start has been to teach Caly to settle herself to sleep on her own.  This has meant some tears.  The first night that I let her cry herself to sleep, I cried too.  Mike was in full support of my plan for training Caly, and he was there to reassure me that this was good for her--even when everything in me wanted to run and pick her up. Now, I can put Caly down to sleep with very little or no crying at all.

Eat. Wake. Sleep. It’s not rocket science. But if you’re still a little fuzzy, I’ve attached an example of what a typical day might look like for Caly.  And it’s not the only way to do it, either. My mom used an eat/sleep/wake cycle, but always made sure her babies were awake when she put them in the crib. I’m not going to pretend it’s always easy. And yet the rewards—for Caly, for Mike, and for me are well worth the effort.

But don’t you be forgetting, it’s just a suggestion.