The Routine

Establishing a routine with Dexy became an absolute necessity. We quite honestly couldn't do anything away from home before we started it and I was forever forgetting when he was last fed (no idea how I would have coped at all without a notebook and my milkband.) So I started thinking about how we could bring a little more structure, and therefor sanity into our lives.

For about two weeks, I had been writing down all of his feeds, sleeps, and nappy changes in a notebook. Partly to keep a track of all the craziness, but also so I could show it to a nurse that was popping in every now and then. I was reading through the notebook to see if I could recognise any patterns and found one straight away. Dexy was generally feeding every 4 hours, and having a longer sounder sleep after an evening feed. I was so excited when I saw it. And from there I was able to establish our routine.

Daytime
7am - Morning feed and medication (usually accompanied with a dirty nappy not long after the feed)
11am - Lunchtime feed (after this feed we go out if we need to)
3pm - Afternoon feed.

He very rarely sleeps during the day. If he does, it's either in his bouncer, on me in a carrier, or in the pram.

Nighttime:
7pm - Bedtime feed and medication (followed by bedtime routine)

• Bath
• Massage
• Nappy change plus pilcher
• Story
• Lullaby
• Sleep

11pm - Midnight Feed
3am - Early morning feed.

It's works okay. And gives us at least some kind or structure to work with. Night times are difficult, because he can difficult to settle. The four hour thing really seems to apply to Dexy. As we found last night he we tried dream feeding...

Dream Feeding;
Last night I tried giving him a "Dream Feed". This is when you give bubby a feed as your going to bed in an attempt to get him to longer between feeds thus giving Mummy and Daddy more sleep. You get them out of bed very gently, being careful not to wake them, then you give them the bottle/breast and hope for the best! (One, that they take the bottle. Two, that they don't wake up!). Well, it didn't work for us. I gave him his dream feed at 10pm, put him back to bed. But then he woke up at 2am very hungry and difficult to settle. Thus throwing everything out of whack. I haven't given up just yet though.