When to start with a routine?

Question

My baby is exactly a month old and up until now we were all over the place. Just surviving really 😅 We didn’t have any routine besides bath every other night and one walk during the day, not always at the same time, also depends ln the weather. There is really no bed time because he naps on the couch during the day and when we go to bed, we just take him with us to the bedroom. 
I will not be doing sleep training or anything like that but should I already start with bringing some organization and if yes how? 
How did you start? One at the time? 
Also I have maternity for 18 months so I won’t be going back to work that’s why it doesn’t really have to be that strict. I don’t like the idea that he has to take a nap at 11am exactly but maybe around that time. 
Thankful for any kind of advice 🙏🏻💕

Answer

We never had a schedule for the first 5 months of our babies life and I found it very hard to set boundaries with family and friends who wanted to come by, and also found they would be frustrated or annoyed if they came to visit and she happened to be napping during that time. I felt like after we set nap times/bed times/feed times life got a lot easier for me and I stressed less. With our next baby, we will try to set a schedule around the 2-3 month mark (month 1 is a gong show no matter what you do).

Answer

We started a very rough routine at 6-8 weeks. Set a wake up time (ie woke them if they slept past 7am), followed rough wake windows and had a bedtime routine after their last appropriate wake window (which at that age was about 8/9pm I think). It really really helped, and both babies have been great sleepers since

Answer

There’s no one answer that works for everyone! Some people love schedules but they haven’t worked well for us personally. I like the flexibility of being able to do whatever during the day since my husband comes home at a different time every single day. We personally only “schedule” that bedtime is around 7pm but that’s flexible too since if he has a late nap I’ll push it back so I don’t know if it counts 😂
We also do not and will never sleep train but I don’t think that means you can’t have a schedule if you want one ☺️

Answer

Yes I say go for it. Wd didn’t  with our first until 6 months. With our second she got into our routine that we had with our oldest and it made things so much easier!

Answer

Whether you go back or not it’s just good to get them on a routine schedule. It helps both you and them adjust. It’s great you don’t have to go back to work so quickly, and sleep training I’d recommend but not until they are older and their internal clock is developed. Right now is still so early so my biggest piece of advice is sleep when they sleep and just adjust to their sleep and wake schedule up until about 3/4 months. If their wake time is from 3:00am-7:00am make that your wake time too. Definitely don’t force them to try and sleep at that time because it won’t happen and you’ll just get aggravated and be exhausted. For us we had the luxury as well to not have to work right away so we did feedings and everything according to how our daughter wanted it and let her nap when she wanted to. The one thing I always made sure I kept in our routine was our walk, tummy time, and bath time every night with a lotion soft massage, suck boogies out, comb her hair and relax her for the night. The walk and tummy time would vary because of weather and other things too. So didn’t have a specific time but at least did it once a day. But bath time was everyday at the same time. Once her internal clock developed is when we started sleep training. She still took her naps during the day and we’d put her down  starting at 11pm and worked our way down the clock. She is now 27 months old and has a schedule down. It helps her so much. She wakes up about 
7:30-8:30 
Breakfast 
Morning walk/Play time 
Snack
Learning time
Lunch
Bath( if she’s all dirty) 
Naps 1-3 1/2 hours
Snack
More outside play time 
Learning time
Dinner
Watch a little TV
Chill time
Bath Time
Story Time
Bedtime 8:00-9:00pm
She doesn’t wake up through the night anymore and does a great job. Getting on a consistent schedule as they age (you’ll adjust it) will be the best thing for both of you guys. Good luck with finding what works best for you guys

Answer

For the first few months I basically went off my baby's routine. I learned their habits on when they liked to sleep and eat and based a routine off that. So for instance say baby mainly goes to sleep at 7, I'd do a bedtime routine leading up to that and call that his bedtime. I didn't really start a true routine until about 6 months though.

Answer

I have honestly never implanted much of a routine with my daughter and she’s 18 months now. We do bath time around the same time every night. She usually falls asleep for bedtime around the same timeframe and usually takes naps about around the same time everyday. Some days she wakes up later, or goes to bed later, or naps later, or takes 2 naps, or whatever. I like having less of a routine with her because then I don’t have to do the same thing everyday at the same times. I always went with her natural sleep times and eat times. She’s also been kinda easy about sleeping though so I could just be lucky.