Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Schedules

So many parents are so set on having their baby on a schedule by 2 months, but I feel like the baby will find their own schedule.  The only thing we ever scheduled was that our baby would get a bath every night.  Yes we give our child a bath every night because he is so "chunky" that we need to make sure we get all the crud out of his rolls.  He has set his own schedule which is awesome, I like that we are following what his body does naturally, that way we aren't constantly fighting him for naps or bed time.  He does get everything within his day as a baby on a schedule it just means we're more flexible and aren't restricted to home to keep his schedule.  Don't get me wrong I do like to be at home just because we have everything we will need right at our finger tips and with a baby you can never ever perfectly plan for every situation no matter how hard you try, we are always wishing we had something when we aren't home.
I would go crazy if I followed a schedule that I planned, I tried it for 2-3 weeks and was just about having a nervous breakdown.  Now I realize that not everyone has the opportunity to stay home with their children and so there needs to be some type of routine to make the day flow easier but honestly from my 7 months of experience I feel like it's better to be flexible and adjust to what the baby wants instead of wanting the baby to adjust to what we want.
I know we are anything from perfect and we could probably fix certain areas of our child rearing but we are doing the best we can, I mean we've never done this before so we're just doing what we think is best.  Honestly that's exactly what everyone should do, just do what you think is best and try to ignore other people's opinions on how to raise your children, including your parents sometimes (mother doesn't always know best).  The key to good parenting in my opinion is to enjoy your children every day.


3 comments:

  1. I'm glad this is working for you!
    I feel like at some point it's a double-edged sword. If you don't establish a routine when they get older then you have problems with not getting adequate sleep for school, etc.

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  2. I guess I should clarify that he does have a schedule now, it's just we didn't set a specific one at first to try to get him to stick to it. He gets up at nine eats breakfast, takes a nap between 10:30-11, eats lunch around 1 takes a nap around 2:30-3, then has dinner at like 5 or 6 then takes a nap at 7 and a bath at 8 and is asleep by 9.
    I totally agree with you Sara it is a double edged sword sometimes but this happened to be good for all of us and has worked it's way into a routine.

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  3. his schedule naturally mimics ours, which is pretty steady, but with added naps whenever he gets tired.

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