Thursday, February 19, 2009

Schedule

When LL started at Baby Factory in mid-January, he was on a sort-of schedule. He was taking three naps a day, but there was a lot of variation in length of nap. Since his next nap depended on when he woke up from his previous nap, we never really knew when each nap after his first one was actually going to happen.

When we hired Rosie in mid-February, he was starting to get more regular, to the point where we could tell her approximate times for each of his naps. We gave her a lot of flexibility, though, to move naps forward or back if the previous nap went long or short. Still, for the sake of being able to look back later, I wanted to record his schedule as it existed at the time.

The basic structure of this schedule was in place by the time LL was 4 months old. It was starting to be more regular by the clock when he was approximately 5 months old. It was clock-predictable by 6 months. Sometime after 7 months, he would sometimes drop the third nap. By 8 months, he was regularly dropping the third nap, and moving towards dropping a bottle as well.

Recorded for posterity:

LL's Daily Schedule:

7:00 -- wake up (we tried not to start his day any earlier than this, even if he woke up)
7:30 -- milk (and after 6 months, solid food)
9:00 -- nap
10:00 -- wake up, milk (sometimes he would sleep longer; he ate whenever he got up)
12:00 -- nap
1:30 -- wake up, milk (sometimes only 1 hour instead of 90 minutes)
3:30 -- nap
4:30 -- wake up, milk (and after 6 months, solid food, usually around 5:00)
7:00 -- bedtime routine, milk (in the beginning, closer to 6:00, whenever he looked tired)
7:30 -- sleep

From 4 months to 7 months, he would wake up once each night to eat. For a while, it was reliably between 3-4:00am, but as time went on, it got more erratic. After 7 months, he would occasionally skip it, leading to us purposely eliminating the middle-of-the-night feeding (except when he was really really upset or sick) by 8 months.

2 comments:

Sunny said...

I love when we are going through a "predictable" schedule phase! We are transitioning to one nap now, and I never know when the kiddo will go down. It's impossible to plan. :P

K @ ourboxofrain said...

I was about to do this same post (but with Harry's schedule :) Weird.

Predictable schedules are really nice, though we have found that disruptions in the schedule are tough -- it's amazing how quickly and firmly they become set in their ways.