I'll be honest, the first couple weeks, we were really just trying to figure out a schedule... but for the most part, baby girl ate every 3 hours from the beginning. I read Baby Wise before she was born and it was always my intention to establish a routine for our sanity. I am definitely a Type A person and I need to be able to plan when to do things... so scheduling was always a given. Ava Kate thrived and was healthy, so we never had any problems and she rarely cried because she was hungry before it was time to eat. Of course, if she cried and nothing calmed her down, then I would feed her, but like I said, that was rare.
The first few days, I "fed on demand," but I'd say by the end of the first week, we were rocking routine. It looked something like this:
7 am - Change diaper & eat (15 minutes on each side), go back to sleep (usually with me in bed)
10 am - Eat (15 minutes on each side), change diaper, play (singing, jungle gym, reading books for about 15 minutes), go back to sleep (usually in the swing while I did chores/showered)
1 pm - Eat (15 minutes on each side), change diaper, play (same as above, or we ran errands), go back to sleep (usually in the swing while I did chores, or in the carseat while we ran errands)
4 pm - Eat (15 minutes on each side), change diaper, play (in the bouncy seat while I cooked/sang/talked to her until Daddy got home), then go back to sleep (in the swing/on the floor while we ate dinner)
7 pm - Eat (15 minutes on each side), change diaper, play (varied between bath time every 3 days, going for a walk, playing with Daddy, etc.), then go back to sleep (usually in my or Parker's arms/on our chest)
10 pm - Diaper change, put on PJs, eat (15 minutes on each side), down for the night (in the bassinet beside our bed)
1 am - Diaper change, eat (15 minutes on each side), back down in the bassinet
4 am - Diaper change, eat (15 minutes on each side), back down in the bassinet
Repeat. :)
At 2 weeks, we knew she was back to her birth weight and thriving, so we stopped waking her in the night for the 1 am and 4 am feedings. By week 3, she was waking once a night at 2:30 am to eat. She would sleep until about 6:30 am, but she would easily go right back to sleep if I put her on my chest and then I'd wake her to feed her at 7 am. At about week 5, she started sleeping until 3/3:30 am and I'd wake her at 7 am to eat.
Sometimes she would go right back to sleep after a feeding, and sometimes she'd wake up early from her nap... at first I stressed about it, but about week 3 I just let it be... as long as we were maintaining the feeding every 3 hours routine, I was pretty lax about what happened in between. The above schedule is what we aimed for, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it varied. There were many times that I knew something was going on that evening around 6:30/7:00 or we had a doctor's appointment at 10 am... so I just adjusted our first feeding to 7:30 instead of 7:00 am. No biggie ;-)
Nap time:
Play time:
Nap time & errands... don't judge me for keeping her in her PJs! haha
It's blurry, but our first grocery trip during nap time:
Morning snuggles in the bed:
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