Schedule Vs Routine...

Today seems like a good day to blog. It seems that we are coming to a big hurdle on our journey in parenthood. Since Julia's birth, we've just been doing things as they come and, lucky for us, Julia is a pretty predictable baby. Since her birth she has always gotten up around 7am or 8am and gone back down for a nap around 9.30am/10am.  Her afternoons have always been here or there, with no predictability in when she will want to nap. This is probably because we do more in the afternoon (go out, go for walks, etc) and Julia is a very curious baby. There is no way you can put her in her buggy and take her for a walk in hopes that she will fall asleep because she is far too busy looking around to care about sleeping.

Lately, I've been starting to wonder about if I should put Julia on a schedule. There is a difference between schedule and routine. A schedule is time-restrictive...set times for certain activities. A routine is more flexible in time, but follows a good pattern of predictability. There are many people out there that swear by a schedule for their babies and that's cool, but I am definitely going more towards routine. I don't think Julia would like a schedule and besides, you can't make a baby do anything at any given time.

Here's our routine so far:

Julia is a good night sleeper. She goes down by about 9.30 every night and gets up every 3 hours for a feed. She wakes up ready for the day around 7am or 8am.

Julia is a morning person. She's so giggly and all smiles in the morning. She usually lasts about an hour and a half to two hours before showing signs that she is getting sleepy. She tends to stare out into space and won't interact with you much. At this point, I rock her to sleep and put her down in her crib. She sleeps anywhere from 40 mins to 2 hours. (Although, today she fell asleep during tummy time and I left her there)

Her afternoons are a mix of playing and sleeping. She usually plays for about an hour and then has an hour nap. This happens all the way until 6 or 7 when we bath her and give her a full feed before sleep. I nurse her to sleep. Lately, she has been sleeping for an hour and waking again where Daddy usually picks her up and cuddles her to sleep.

So that's our current 'routine'. We are very flexible on her timings, because Julia is really good at setting them herself. We'll see if this is the case when we go to Canada in February and there is a 5 hour time difference! Do I sense some sleepless Canadian nights? Who knows!

What has this taught me? Babies don't need to be scheduled. This was a difficult pill to swallow, so to speak as my whole world is a world of schedules. Being a teacher, I work by a rigid schedule. Living overseas, I always have a schedule on when I will return to Canada for a visit. My husband works odd hours at times, so I always know his schedule. I (lived) in a world of schedules. But not anymore. Now I live in a world of Julia...and I am loving every minute of it!

What did/do you do with your baby? Let me know your thoughts!