A day in the life....... (long)

(I started making these notes because I'd read Gina Ford's 'Contented
Little Baby Book' and was curious as to what would happen if I tried
waking baby for feeds/putting him down for naps at the times her
routines dictate - would he magically recognise something that fitted
with his internal body clock, or would his day be totally different?
Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but since I was making some notes
anyway of how the day went and how it differed from Gina Ford's plan, I
went ahead and wrote up the whole day so that I'd have a record of life
as a new mum for my diary. Thought I'd post it here in case anyone else
was interested.)

This record is of Thursday 16th December going on into Friday 17th, when
Jamie was three weeks and five days old.

2.10 a.m. - get to sleep, baby having settled down from his latest
nursing marathon.

3.45 - baby woke up. Changed his nappy, fed him, fed him, fed him, fed
him.

6 a.m. - had reached 'make your mind up' stage of pulling off breast
looking absolutely sated & refusing to take any more, then fussing as
soon as he went back in the cot, taking a bit more when he was picked
up, pulling off breast looking absolutely sated etc., lather, rinse,
repeat. (Burping didn't seem to be getting anything up, either.)

6.30 - gave up, just got dressed & ready for the day. Took baby out to
bathroom & changed him, then downstairs for feed.

7.00 - 7.45 - baby feeding. (This is how GF's routine for 2 - 4 week
olds is meant to start. From here on, for those who aren't familiar
with her, baby is meant to stay awake until 9, then nap until 10, then
feed again.)

7.45 - put baby on a folded towel on the floor to kick and keep himself
awake, while I make oatmeal.

8.00 - baby fussing and rooting. I feed him.

8.20 - put baby in car seat and go get my oatmeal.

8.30 - baby has fallen asleep in car seat. Wonder whether Gina Ford
would say I ought to put him back on the towel (which I've put away as
DH would probably object to me leaving it on the study floor) but a) I
need my breakfast and b) GF says babies are meant to have a wind-down
before the nap anyway, so I'm not sure if having him too active would be
right. Decide I might as well leave him to sleep.

9.00 - baby awake, fussing and rooting. I feed him, take him upstairs
to change him, and feed him more as he's still obviously hungry. This
goes on until 9.50.

9.50 - put him down in cot & lie down on camp bed in hopes of getting
some rest myself (since I don't plan to follow the bit of GF's routine
where you leave the baby on his own for naps). He's a bit fussy, but I
wait to see whether he settles. After 10 mins is obviously getting more
upset, and also does not seem too impressed by my attempt at swaddling
him. Since I have no intention of following GF's advice about letting
the baby cry for up to 20 minutes, I get him up.

10.00 - change his nappy. He starts rooting again and I feed him again.

10.25 - he stops feeding. I put him down in the cot, but he's still not
happy. Since he appears to have convincingly voted 'No' to the routine,
I give up on that and pick him up to take him downstairs and make tea
for DH.

10.30 - he quietens down at last (I think he probably managed to get a
burp up somewhere along the way) and so I take him upstairs and put him
back in the cot, figuring I might as well take this chance to work on
getting him used to it. This time, he goes to sleep quite happily. I
take DH his tea and then, out of curiosity, leaf through GF's book to
see what she says about babies who don't go to sleep for their morning
naps. She says that if the baby's been wakeful in the morning, try
giving him a catnap of 15 minutes before 11 a.m., then putting him down
for his lunchtime nap around 12.15 - 12.30 instead of 11.30 - 12.00 as
recommended in the normal routine. Since it's now 11, I figure I might
as well try this.

11.00 - have a go at waking baby up. He's out for the count, however.
So much for Gina Ford. Put him in his car seat and go get some food,
since DH wants to set out shortly for the shops, and read my newsgroups.

12.00 - baby decides he wants feeding again. I change him as well in
hopes that he'll be quiet during our shopping trip. Takes half an hour
before he's settled in his car seat again, which delays our departure
somewhat.

12.45 - finally make it out the door. Trip to the post office and the
supermarket, which is the sort of thing that somehow doesn't really seem
to get scheduled in to Gina's routine (you're meant to fit all trips for
the first eight weeks into the third nap of the day). Baby sleeps in
his car seat during all this. I nap in my car seat.

2.20 - arrive back home, start putting shopping away.

2.35 - wonder what will happen if I try the afternoon routine (wake for
feed, two hours awake, one hour nap, wake for feed, bath, further feed,
bedtime). Figure I might as well give it a go, in hopes that it'll
settle him for the night. Baby quite slow to wake and feed & needs
coaxing at first, but then wakes up properly, becomes a lot more
enthusiastic, and feeds well until 3.50.

3.50 - put baby on folded towel on the floor to kick and go get some
food, as I didn't get much lunch.

4.30 - baby starts crying. I feed him.

4.40 - baby has settled down, which, surprisingly, puts us back on track
for the nap, since it's now 2 hours since he last woke up. However,
fusses when put in big cot. Decide I really don't care that much
whether he's already developing good sleep associations or not, take
pillows and duvet off our bed, and nap there, holding him. Since he
still can't latch himself on from lying down, I get woken intermittently
by his fussing, and make vague attempts to poke a nipple at his mouth
before falling promptly back to sleep again, but do manage an hour of
broken sleep in this way.

5.50 - get up, feed baby.

6.35 - put baby down in cot for two minutes to use the loo, during which
time he starts screaming. Get stuff ready for bath as quickly as
possible. Baby calms down a lot once wet nappy is off and seems to enjoy
his bath a lot.

7.20 - Feed baby again in hopes of getting him to settle for a bit.

8.00 - Try settling baby in big cot. He still isn't too happy about
this. Since I see no need to push the issue at his age, I pick him up
and take him downstairs to put in his carseat while DH does dinner and I
empty the dishwasher.

8.45 - take my chance to go pump some milk for the freezer stash I'm
trying to build up.

8.55 - DH comes through to say baby's hungry again. I put the ounce
I've so far managed to pump in the fridge, hoping optimistically to be
able to add more to it later on, and feed baby.

9.15 - baby finishes feeding. Only a few minutes before dinner will be
ready, so I don't bother restarting the pumping.

9.50 - baby wants feeding again within a couple of minutes of me
finishing dinner. (This is unusually impeccable timing for him.
Normally, he manages to time his more vociferous demands to coincide
with dinner. Of course, since he's been feeding non-stop during the
evening, this is hardly surprising.)

10.20 - baby finished feed. I seize chance to go and brush teeth.
Remember that while putting away his laundry earlier (don't ask me when
I found time for this, it's all a blur) I noticed he only had one clean
Babygro left. DH tells me that there's a load of baby's laundry waiting
to be dried, but he has nowhere to put the stuff that's currently in the
drier as the bag is still full of the clean laundry that hasn't been put
away yet. I go to start putting my share of this away.

10.50 - DH comes upstairs with baby, who's hungry.

11.50 - baby finishes feeding. I go back to folding laundry.

11.55 - realise that if I want a shower that day, which I certainly do,
I'd better grab the chance to take it while baby is between feeds and DH
is available to keep him going if he suddenly decides he's starving
again. Dash to do this. Baby is fussing a bit, so I suggest to DH that
he could try the dummy (pacifier) just in case at least some of this is
comfort sucking.

12.10 - finish showering, go back to the last of the laundry. Baby has
been persuaded, after some dissent, that, yes, he does like dummies. DH
and I have a reprise of our dummy vs. thumb debate (DH doesn't want him
to be the child who gets bullied for still thumbsucking at school &
thinks it'll be easier to wean him off a dummy - I've heard too many
horror stories of parents having to get out of bed several times a night
because their babies keep losing their dummies while sleeping and can't
get back to sleep without them).

12.20 - finish laundry, leave DH to put baby in cot while I run
downstairs to put the dishes in the dishwasher and the milk I pumped
earlier in the fridge (having given up on previous plan to pump more to
add to it).

12.30 - back upstairs again to find that baby is screaming after being
left alone for less than ten minutes. Feed him.

1.00 a.m. - baby still fusses when put down in cot, so I try the dummy
again. After an initial reluctance on his part, he actually takes it
and seems happy with it. Unfortunately, it's of limited use as far as
me getting sleep is concerned, since it falls out of his mouth every
couple of minutes. Also, for reasons given above, I don't really want
him to grow dependent on it to get to sleep. However, after twenty
minutes of replacing his dummy, followed by a further short breastfeed,
he has actually quietened down enough that he drifts off to sleep.

1.45 a.m. - bed.


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??


All the best,

Sarah

--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley

Phew, I'm exhausted! I don't really believe in scheduling babies this
young -- waking them from naps to feed, or whatnot. I've found that if you
just feed them when they are hungry, and let them sleep when they are tired,
eventually, without any further work on your part, they will organize their
sleeps until they are sleeping through the night (considered to be a 6 hour
stretch, I believe) by about 2-3 months. Most babies, without a lot of
prodding, eventually learn to sleep through the night, and take predictable
naps and feeds. I say toss the book and "read" the baby!

Also, although it is a pain to replace the binky when it's fallen out, it's
not the end of the world, and it doesn't last forever. For me, both of my
girls relaxed when sucking on the binky, and it enabled them to fall asleep
better than without. Same for when they were a little older, and were upset
or crying about something -- the binky would help make it "all better."
Plus, around 8 months old, they can put it in and take it out themselves, so
you don't need to do late night binky duty.
--

Jamie
Earth Angels:
Taylor Marlys, 1/3/03
Addison Grace, 9/30/04

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Sarah Vaughan wrote:


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child manage??

I gotta say, that schedule sounds utterly hellish to me,
and I've never had to contend with anything like that. Compared
to mine at that stage, that's a *lot* less sleeping, a *lot*
more feeds, and a *lot* longer feeds. I'm not sure what to suggest
to you to change things, though. I do feel like pacifier vs.
thumb is the least of your worries right now. If I had to
deal with that schedule, I would use a pacifier or pretty
much *anything* that helped!
More typical for mine would be eating every two
hours, with one longer stretch of 3-5 hours overnight.
They probably wouldn't be awake for more than two hours
at any one stretch (and some inter-nap intervals would
be smaller than that). Feeds would last about 10 minutes
(I realize that is speedier than normal). Naps would be
generally 1-2 hours long. "Bedtime" would be around 10pm
or so until 7am or so, during which time there'd be feedings
but no real awake time.


Best wishes,
Ericka

Sarah,

Informative and entertaining account. I'd like to see more of
these from other mothers with varying styles.

Larry

Wow. Now I'm REALLY glad I had new mom amnesia and I didn't write down
everything or I'd never be asking DH to consider ttc in the next few
months.

A lot of this looked really familiar. Kay didn't like schedules and had
her days and nights flipped and napped very quickly and unpredictably.
And, to boot, she was colicky at night. She did, however, figure out the
whole "eat on your side" thing, which was a blessing. DH refused to
co-sleep, so we'd lounge on the couch until he left in the morning and
then WE GOT THE BIG BED and we'd sleep five hours straight.

OH --

Kay's now 10 months old. She still doesnt' sleep through the night and
we're working on getting her more used to her crib/cot, but she is even
more fun now that she's walking, recognizing the dog and birds, and eating
real food all by herself because she's a big girl! :^)

arrrggh, however it does sound like you have a normal newborn, a few things
did strike me though, first of all why on earth at 11.50 were you folding
laundry? Your DH could have done it, or it could wait, and if you really
need more baby stuff, go to Asda or Tesco, they are even cheaper now than
when I was buying them 18 months ago, I got 7 body suits for 5pounds last
week.

In the morning it sounded like the car seat was in use a lot, we had a
bouncy chair, the absolute basic one 10 pounds from mothercare which we kept
in the dining/kitchen area, absolutely fab, car seat was or in the car or on
the pushchair only.

You really are having problems with that cot, you really don't have to spend
money to do something about that, I'd rather put a baby swaddled on the
floor than fight with them over a cot (as I type there is a 2 week old baby
at my foot swaddled and sleeping on pillows).

Throw away Gina Ford, I didn't read her, I read Ezzo, but I think she is
just an English version of Ezzo, which is BAD, her scheduling of feeds has a
serious risk of damaging your milk supply and the babies end up dehydrated
or on formula.

Cheers

Anne

On 17 Dec 2004, H Schinske wrote:

Feeds never were predictable with him at all, and I never counted them
or supposed they ought to be any certain length apart. I just figured I'd be
interrupted to nurse pretty often, and that was that.

Especially in the VERY earliest days, I kept a log of feedings (duration,
which side, anything odd) and diapers (contents) because I was so
overwhelmed I couldn't remember from one minute to the next what had
happened to tell the doctor, and when I was on antibiotics, I was supposed
to space feedings for at least 3 hours, I think , from the time I took the
prescription. I wasn't trying to schedule anything so much as give myself
some confidence that yes, something's going in, and something's coming
out, regularly!

Sarah Vaughan wrote:


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child manage??

Good jesus is it like that everyday? I had the odd day like that with my
newborns, usually on growth spurt days, but they were very few and far
between. That kid eats all day long! Are you sure he's hungry? It may
just me his squeaking is because he needs to be near you or needs to be
held by someone rather than hungry. You sounds like the perfect sling
candidate, a sling or a backpack may let him sleep on you while you do
your bits and bobs around the house.
That is quite a demanding wee baby you have there if it's like that
everyday, I feel for you.

Andrea

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??


Probably by lower expectations by a lot and realizing that babies,
newborns particularly, are absolutely not 'scheduable', their patterns
vary day to day and week to week such that trying to recognize any sort
of pattern will only frustrate you in the end. With a newborn you
should expect to spend most of the day nursing (and reading or watching
TV or movies or resting), carrying baby around while you do household
things in a sling or front carrier, resting or napping while baby naps,
and thats about it - a few errands maybe. As he gets older maybe
between 2-3 months, the feeds will likely space out and the naps will
take on a more 'scheduled' feel.

cara