Developing your and baby's Routine
“I feel that one of
the most important discoveries in the field of paediatrics is that the newborn
baby is a human being.” John Lind 1979
On arriving to do a consult with clients, usually the first
words that are said even before a greeting is an apology around the state of
their house, which usually is 100% better than what I left behind on any given
day. I start chatting to the mom, taking a history. She then will take out her
phone and show me her baby’s exact movements how often it has fed, how many
nappies and what is due next. When I ask what baby does to show signs of these
events, the answer is not in the app or does not magically appear in the
notebook. These devices and aids are what have replaced our village. The structure
of our society is that we no longer have support. A parent is tasked with so
much to do, and with the expectation of needing to do all these tasks with
perfection. In the past, you breastfeed a baby on demand, slept with said baby,
likely carried baby around with you for a while, had older children play with
younger (or family) as they aged, they took on responsibilities and learned by
watching, you had help from other women to get what needs to get done. Now we
are isolated from this and it feels like we are thrown into it alone.
We know that a baby has basic needs that aren’t too
complicated, food, sleep, play and love. The challenge comes in of knowing what
your baby requires and when. As adults, we cope with our busy lives by creating
a routine of when and how things are done. This helps us cope with the more
challenging parts of the day because we don’t need to think about the routine
things. So, this sounds like a great way to deal with the baby. There are
countless books, articles, apps and podcasts that recommend various ways to get
your baby into the perfect routine. The problem is that I see so many parents
battling with sleep schedules, feeding schedules, stimulation schedules and so
on, all with conflicting messages, that they get so overwhelmed and anxious
that it brings them to breaking point.
So now we are at a place that we wanting a routine, but
can’t seem to get baby to actually comply. Back to our mother that has all the
information well documented but no solution. Lets journey back to the first
hour that baby arrived. Starting the ground work for our routine here.
As your baby is born place your baby skin to skin on mothers
chest, allow baby to follow the 9 instinctive stages. A baby in the right place
on mother’s chest will need no help to find the breast and start drinking. From
there allow mom and baby to have first sleep, while dad quietly observes his
new family. This is the very beginning of learning your baby’s routine. For the
following 6 – 12 weeks, keep your baby on a parent’s chest for as much time as
possible. This can be done skin to skin, or in a wrap that allows you to be
hands free. This is not spoiling a baby, but it is keeping this baby in a place
that it feels safe, warm and has easy access to source of food whenever it is
required. By doing this you are removing the baby need to be in survival mode.
When a baby is away from a caregiver ie in a cot or in a separate room, they
are not aware that they are safely being guarded by the latest monitor on the
market, they feel vulnerable, they go into survival mode, keeping themselves
safe from predators and other lurking dangers. This can give a false sense of
what their needs really are.
Baby in Kangaroo Mother Care is having all basic needs met,
this allows us constant observation of our baby in the perfect environment. We
can start to take notice how they look, sound and move when they are hungry,
windy, overstimulated and sleepy. This way we can respond to these needs
quickly and efficiently. We then start to notice that as the baby gets older,
patterns start to emerge around when these needs occur. This means that we can
start predicting when baby will want to eat, and sleep etc. Slowly we can start
creating our own routines around these events, tweaking them as we go. This
also allows for the human factor, on certain days baby may be hungrier than
others, maybe has a bit headache wanting some extra fluids through the night so
battling to sleep, or growing and teething, and maybe starting with a little
flu. We can also start to see our baby’s personality shining through, early
signs of their love language.
If we think about trying to get this baby into a preset
routine, that we think would work, based on what would work really well with
our current routine. I use a business change management strategy that is
applied successfully in many businesses. As a manager implementing a new
protocol, if you arrive in the office Monday morning, announce the new way of
working and shut you’re your office door and tell everyone to get on with it,
the chances of your new protocol working is very slim. If your staff have had
input and participated in developing the new protocol with your guidance, the level
of buy in and potential for success is much greater.
So what if we apply this principal to our babies. If we base
our routine on observed input from the baby, with a little compromise here and
there from both of us, surely there will be better buy in and less frustration
from both parties? I know you are frustrated by this article as a check box
step by step approach is what you feel would be easier, remember that a newborn
baby is just a little human being. If you don’t know what to do, think, I am a
human being, what would I like in this situation.
Samantha Crompton RN RM SACLC
The Baby Lady
