baby routine is it necessary once you come home from hospital with a newbaby? what is a routine ? a baby routine means sticking to a schedule for you and your baby. It could be a simple checklist on a memo board. Or an A4 list of jobs todo in the day. The jobs involve the care of a baby too as well as doing the daily household chores. What are the positive achievements for having a baby routine? Having a baby routine means by sticking strictly to a set of tasks allows for a happier mum / dad and a settled baby.
babies learning by having a routine
There is so much advice out there about getting your babies into a routine. The do’s and do not’s, the should’s and should not’s but noone ever really tells you why you should have one. Having your own reason to not just get your own children into a routine but to get yourself into a routine as well, is really important and is often overlooked.
What would it mean to you to have a successful routine that gives all involved security and comfort. That gives each person especially babies the knowledge or certainty of what comes next. That gives the parents or guardians time for themselves to breathe, to chat, to not have to be solely responsible for another just for a short time. The time and space where the adults know that they can get everything they want to get done done. That enables that achievement of balance.
Without a routine, life will happen to you. Bedtimes could take hours. You may very well get frustrated and overwhelmed and feel like you are in competition with your baby for time and attention. Stress will no doubt creep upon you and so it is in your interest and your babies interests to create a routine . As a result that will suit you and match your rhythms as closely as possible to remain in control.
In case you are not sure what I mean by rhythms, I will explain. Time does not actually come into it. Whatever our age, we all have pretty similar cycles. We wake up, go to the toilet, feel hungry, want to socialise, to connect with others, we want to play and achieve new knowledge and skills or master those we have already acquired. We may feel hungry again, thirst happens often and at some point we need to rest and so go to sleep. Some of us, perhaps the youngest or eldest of us sleep more often, but these are our natural rhythms.
As babies seem to nap a lot when they’re little, it is not surprising that the first kind of routine to establish is bedtime or naptime. It is also important to remember that your little one does not know what time it is, they only know in what order things will come once you have taught them. in turn babies learn by your example
If this routine is the only one you ever focus on, that’s ok. It may be the only one you will ever need. It is also really important though to understand that babies need comfort, connection, love and reassurance. There are plenty of people that are led to believe that bedtime routines mean to let baby cry it out until they get used to being alone and will then ‘self settle/soothe’, this is a lie. Babies don’t learn to self soothe, if they are left to cry it out they simply learn that noone is coming so crying is pointless. Very sad really, when crying is the only ability a baby has to communicate with sound before they learn to speak.