April 29, 2010

On V's (that's what we'll call my son) 9 month birthday we started strictly implementing a schedule. I am a stay-at-home mom and almost 31 weeks pregnant, so for a while, we kind of just went with the flow. From the beginning, I did a baby-led schedule. I had an old composition notebook leftover from college and I wrote down his every move. When he nursed, which side, for how long, when he used the bathroom, when he slept, when he woke up, when he spit up, E V E R Y T H I N G. I actually kept this up for a while, noted the patterns and made a loose schedule based on his natural one. This worked out fine until the pregnancy fatigue stepped up and the new mommy adrenaline piped down. Once that happened, I napped when he napped and wasn't too concerned about it being at the same time each day. Anyway, the new schedule evolved from his 9 month check-up. The doctor told me V should be sleeping 12 straight hours a night. He eats about 2 ounces, every 2 hours so I thought (er..still think) going from every 2 hours to 12 hours was (is) impossible. He is eating more than just my milk now so I went to www.gerber.com and used their handy menu tool. (It's pretty simple so if you need some meal suggestions, I suggest visiting the site!) I divided the meals into times and devised a schedule from that. Here it is:

9:00 AM Wake up, wash up, change diaper, etc.

9:30 AM Breakfast

Play time (playgroup, his room, or somewhere where he can crawl around)

11:30 AM Morning Snack

12:00 PM - 2:00 PM Nap

2:00 PM Lunch

Play time (walk, playground, his room or an outting)

4:00 PM Afternoon Snack

Play time with daddy

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Nap

6:00 PM Dinner

Play time (visit my parents, go for a walk, play with daddy some more, whatever gets the energy out!)

8:00 PM BBBB (Bath, Book, Breastfeed, Bed)

9:00 PM SLEEP

He seems to be adapting well and goes right to sleep for the 12 PM - 2:00 PM nap. We had to add in the 5PM nap because if we don't, he whines until about 7PM and then wakes up at 9PM ready to play. This happened the other day and he didn't go to sleep until 1:00 AM. Today he ate our meal for dinner and loved it. He's been asleep now for 2 hours and 35 minutes!!!!

Each day I plan to write about the schedule, how V did with it and any new developments and appreciate your input.

Now, I have a few questions for you all!

Do any of you all have set schedules? If so, what do they look like? How long did it take your little one to adapt (or is it baby-led)? How do they react if there's a change?