Thursday, August 29, 2013

Baby schedules

I've been reading up on people's night time routines, wondering if and/or when babies have the ability to sleep through the night. Our night time schedule allows me to get plenty of sleep, as sometimes I don't even remember feeding Isa because she's so close and it's so easy to nurse her I barely wake up. Nevertheless, I was wondering if there might be a point in the future when I can put her in her crib late at night and not need to nurse her until the early morning. So I was looking into this and came across this whole parent-led versus child-led scheduling concept. I didn't even realize this was a thing.

Then I came to realize that what we're doing can be considered child-led scheduling, or in other words: no scheduling at all. Isa's sleeping, eating, and waking hours change each day just as mine do. Some days I get up at 7 am, some days 10 am. Some days I nap in the afternoon, most days I don't. Some days I eat lunch at noon and dinner at 7 pm, others I eat one big meal at 4 or 5 pm. The same is true of Isa. I guess I'm lucky in that I don't have to go to a 9 to 5 type job and therefore can care for Isa as she needs it and do my work in between. Am I missing the upside to getting on a better schedule? Is this something that will come more with time? I remember in Chicago people asking me what is her bedtime and I didn't even know how to answer that question. Bedtime? She sleeps when she's tired which, right now, is basically all day long. How often does she eat? Anywhere between every hour to every 4 or 5 hours, entirely dependent on what she needs at the time. Sometimes she wants to be closer to me or she's having a growth spurt so she eats little snacks all day long, other times she sleeps or plays for a good four hours or so before she needs to eat again. I just follow her lead. Should I be doing this differently? I don't know because I couldn't imagine it another way. 

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