Our sweet William is turning 7 weeks old this week! While I am already feeling all the emotions about him outgrowing his newborn clothes, I’m very excited about his longer stretches of sleep and more consistent schedule.
One of the best parts of having a blog is being able to reference my old schedules with my babies and see what I was doing before. It’s amazing how quickly you forget! Even your 4th time around.
I never shared a schedule this early but I wish I had because I think Will is ready to next schedule and I can’t remember when I did that with the others! So here is what are days look like (mostly) and hopefully it will be a good reference for some of you! (we reference Moms on Call)
6:30/7: wake and feed
8am :nap
9am: feed
9:30 am: tummy and play time
10/10:30am nap
12pm: wake and feed
12:30/1: tummy and play time
1/1:30pm: nap
3pm wake and feed
3:30/4: playtime
4pm: nap
5:30: feed (he is generally most alert after this feeding)
7:30 catnap
8:30 bath and bedtime feed
9pm: bed
Will wakes up once a night between 1-3am. The main difference between this little guy and my others is that he is strictly formula fed. I made a decision about a month or so before he was born that I would do this simply to make life easier with the other kids. I didn’t want to be tethered at home and not be able to resume the normal routine for everyone else. ALSO, I had PTSD from Jack’s transition to bottles. It was so bad that at one point, he was eating less a day than Will was consuming at 1 week old. I knew I had to get Will on bottles immediately to make myself feel better.
That being said, I think formula has been contributing to his long stretches early. The only thing that drives me a little crazy is that it takes him a half hour to eat a bottle. Even 45 minutes there for a while! So getting up once a night still felt like a doozy because between feeding, burping, changing, and paci pong (pacifier pops out and you have to pop it back in), we would be up for 1-2 hours. Now he goes right back to bed and it’s a blessing.
I’m also fortunate that Will is a chill baby. He doesn’t fuss much. There is no witching hour with this one. The witching hour is consumed by the other 3, ha! He only cries when he is hungry, needs a diaper change, or wants to be held.
We are going to move to the Moms on Call 8 -16 week schedule soon. The main difference is that he’ll get to bed an hour earlier and have one less bottle feeding a day. This is supposed to expand their sleep but it always takes a day or two to adjust!
Will is often on the go as the 4th child, but luckily, that middle of the day and afternoon nap are pretty consistent since we are home anyway with the others! The key to keeping this schedule is waking the baby to feed at each of those intervals and keeping naps shorter than 2 hours.
It isn’t perfect everyday, and that’s okay. I sometimes have to adjust by a half hour here or there to manage everyone else, and it works!
