I LOVE these seven guidelines that On Becoming Babywise shares on page 111.

I wanted Little Bug to be on a good eating/sleeping routine and these guidelines certainly helped us get there. I wish I had read these guidelines before Little Bug’s birth, but since I wasn’t introduced to Babywise until she was around 3 months old, I didn’t learn these guidelines until later on.

1. This is just a FYI point: The time between feedings is measured from the beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next feeding. (That is nice to know, thanks. Keep reading. It does get more interesting than that – I promise!!)

2. Between weeks 2-4 feed baby approximately every 2.5 to 3 hours. The routine feedings will help establish and stabilize metabolism. Now, since I started BW late, I took this tip to mean that I just needed to get Little Bug on a consistent eating schedule. It was true that once Little Bug got on a 3 hour feeding schedule it helped to stabilize everything – sleep and eating!

3. Wake baby to eat at 3 hours if they don’t wake on their own. This is a BIG HELP tip. Before BW, I would let Little Bug go 4, sometimes even 5 hours between feedings if she was sleeping. You know that whole saying? Never wake a sleeping baby. HELLO!! That was the kind of stretch I wanted her to do at NIGHT – not during the day. After I started BW, I woke her little booty up (that saying is a TOTAL myth!!) if we got to the 3 hour mark between feedings. Making sure Little Bug was eating every 3 to 3.5 hours during the DAY made all the difference for long stretches of blissful sleep for both of us during the night! This tip does seem like a no brainer but to the new mom, we so easily fall into the trap that you should never wake a sleeping baby. Not true. So not true – if you desire nighttime sleep for both you and your baby!

4. After the first week start a feed/wake/nap routine to encourage nighttime slumber! I’ve written an entire post already on the feed/wake/nap routine.

5. This tip seems a little redundant to tip #2 but here it is anyway: Between weeks 5-8 feed baby between 2.5 to 3.5 hours during the day. I guess the point here is that by 8 weeks baby could be ready to extend the eating schedule to 3.5 hours. I wasn’t doing BW at 8 weeks with Little Bug, so at this time I am sure our eating schedule was still random.

6. This would have been a good one for me to read: There will be times when your baby’s routine will change to fit your schedule and other times you will plan your activities around your baby’s needs. After I started BW Little Bug took 99% of her naps in her crib (or in a pack n play at her grandparents’ house). I was a stickler to the nap schedule. Which is good, to a certain degree. But I had this false belief that if Little Bug missed a nap in her crib, I would undo all the hard work I had put into sleep training her! BW Rookie Mistake! I could have, every once in a while, not rushed to get back home for naptime and instead let her fall asleep in the car seat/stroller if we were out shopping or something, but I would make sure to be back in time for naptime. As a consequence, I had a baby who would not nap unless she was in a crib! Actually, for my lifestyle, this wasn’t an inconvenience at all for me (most of the time) because A) I hate to shop. I never go out just to shop. It is always with a purpose to grab a certain something that I already know I need. and B) I am not certain Little Bug would have ever really learned to sleep on the go because of her extraordinary curiosity. If we were out and about, that girl was looking around, not wanting to miss a thing. I highly doubt she would have fallen asleep and stayed asleep long enough to get enough rest. and C) When Little Bug was a baby she NEEDED her naps or else things weren’t pretty for anyone! So, all that to say, looking back, I could have been a little less drill sergeant-like as far as naptimes went, BUT not much, because I had/have a baby who always lays down for her naps without a fuss, sleeps and wakes up happy and ready to go again and THAT is worth any kind of sacrifice it took for me to ensure she got good naps in. And like I said, given my lifestyle, it wasn’t much sacrifice at all for me. (I have probably jumped the gun on a post I intend to write called, “Respecting the Nap”. Coming soon!)

7. Oh, this one would have saved me A TON of frustration if I had only known this SIMPLE trick of the trade: Make sure you establish a first feeding time to help organize baby’s feed/wake/sleep cycle during the day. After reading this tip (well after I started BW – not sure how I missed this very vital piece of the BW equation!), I was finally able to establish a routine/schedule with Little Bug that was the same every day. And it was heavenly, because I like predictability and so do babies. I set Little Bug’s wake time at 7:30 and it was after that that we established set naptimes of 9am, 1pm and 5:30pm with a bedtime of 8pm. From there we just tweaked the schedule as she moved from needing three naps to two naps to one nap. Bedtime has done a little shifting too. It’s moved from 8pm to 8:15, to 8:30, to back to 8:15 to 8:45 (now) depending on Little Bug’s sleeping needs at the time. Wake up time shifted from 7:30am to my ultimate wake up goal of a glorious 8am! Setting that wake up time originally is when everything else fell into place. Such an IMPORTANT piece of Babywise!

Like I said…if only I known all this from the start…

- Elaine