The newness of motherhood has not yet settled in. Mum has gone back to New Zealand and after a brief meltdown: do I know what I'm doing?, I've been forcing life into some kind of three-hourly feed-change-play-sleep routine. Three hourly because I can't keep up with milk production if it were any shorter and I worry about starving BabyBird if I allow it to be much longer. Thankfully she's a wonderfully placid child and night times are often 4 or 5 hourly (minus play and often change, depending on how coherent I feel). The routine helps me enormously. I know that when it's sleep time, she's been well fed recently and she's been up with us for a little while so the cries aren't anything to do with needing food and it's not that she hasn't had some company. She doesn't tend to cry if she's wet or dirty so I have to be good about remembering to check that she's dry and clean. If I keep the routine going, she predictably sleeps during the sleep portion so I know that I'll be able to rest then too, or do some job I've been putting off while she was awake and/or needed me. I hope these routines are helping her too.
Routines are wonderful for babies, mommas and, well, everyone I think! We are still easing into things here, but my girls are always ready to eat after 3 hours. Wish they would sleep 4 or 5 hours at night!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think we've been pretty lucky. And she's putting on good weight :-)
ReplyDeleteI agree, we couldn't have survived without that routine, my head needed order! My babies slipped into routine and loved and thrived on it! Magical wonderful years!
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