Creating a schedule for your 1 year old.
When Pumpkin was an infant we just played everything by ear and since she was nursing watched her cues on when to feed her and put her to sleep. But as she got older we found that didn't work as well anymore and ended up with a baby who liked to stay up til nearly 3 am some days. It's then that I delved into research on baby schedules. We found Pumpkin really responded well to knowing exactly what was coming when but I was quickly over whelmed by all of the conflicting information I found online.
It takes a long time to find what works for your family and a schedule, especially a sleep schedule, doesn't happen overnight. We found it really important to get set times for everything especially once Pumpkin started eating solid foods and changing to milk.
Starting a schedule is easy enough. For us we started with one thing. Sleep. We decided what time we would like Pumpkin to sleep and started moving her bedtime to that time slowly. We did it in half hour intervals and gave her a week on each one. Originally we set it to 8 o'clock but after a bit found that was still too late for her and changed it to 7. She's been on that bedtime since she was about 8 months I want to say.
Next we worked on naps. Pumpkin took two naps for a long time which were set for 11:30 and 3:30 but around the time she started solid food she would only sleep for one of those so we moved it to 12:30 and she's been doing great. She naps for 2-3 hours every day. We did the same process with her naps as we did her bedtime and spent a few weeks getting those set up as well.
When she started baby food we began with morning and night only. Baby led weaning did not work for us (but that's another blog post coming soon!)
We started Pumpkin on real food after a couple weeks of baby food. and she took to it really well. we slowly upped her number of meals every couple of months until, by one year, she was on 3 meals and 3 snacks. At a year old we weaned her onto cows milk and slowly weaned off the breast. (if anyone is interested in a blog post on this process please comment below!)
Pumpkin eats as soon as possible after waking. She sleeps through the night now so is very hungry in the morning. I also find she sleeps better if she eats before hand which is why she has lunch immediately before napping and a snack before bed. Dinner for her is at 4:30 but we set this time when she was having two naps and I'm finding now it's a little too close to her 2nd snack time at 3:30 so next week we will be changing it to 5 instead.
We set her food times so she east roughly every two hours. with her meals coming four hours apart.
Here is our schedule all laid out, now this might not work for you but this is a good example if your curious.
7:30 wake up, diaper change, dressed for the day.
8:00 breakfast, milk, medicine.
10:30 snack, diaper change
12:30 diaper change, lunch, milk
1:00 nurse to sleep
3:30 wake up, diaper change, snack
4:30 dinner, milk
5:30 diaper change
7:00 snack, medicine
7:15 bath time, brush teeth
7:25 new diaper and jammies, lotion, hair brush
7:30 story time, nurse to sleep
If you have any questions please feel free to let me know in the comments!
It takes a long time to find what works for your family and a schedule, especially a sleep schedule, doesn't happen overnight. We found it really important to get set times for everything especially once Pumpkin started eating solid foods and changing to milk.
Starting a schedule is easy enough. For us we started with one thing. Sleep. We decided what time we would like Pumpkin to sleep and started moving her bedtime to that time slowly. We did it in half hour intervals and gave her a week on each one. Originally we set it to 8 o'clock but after a bit found that was still too late for her and changed it to 7. She's been on that bedtime since she was about 8 months I want to say.
Next we worked on naps. Pumpkin took two naps for a long time which were set for 11:30 and 3:30 but around the time she started solid food she would only sleep for one of those so we moved it to 12:30 and she's been doing great. She naps for 2-3 hours every day. We did the same process with her naps as we did her bedtime and spent a few weeks getting those set up as well.
When she started baby food we began with morning and night only. Baby led weaning did not work for us (but that's another blog post coming soon!)
We started Pumpkin on real food after a couple weeks of baby food. and she took to it really well. we slowly upped her number of meals every couple of months until, by one year, she was on 3 meals and 3 snacks. At a year old we weaned her onto cows milk and slowly weaned off the breast. (if anyone is interested in a blog post on this process please comment below!)
Pumpkin eats as soon as possible after waking. She sleeps through the night now so is very hungry in the morning. I also find she sleeps better if she eats before hand which is why she has lunch immediately before napping and a snack before bed. Dinner for her is at 4:30 but we set this time when she was having two naps and I'm finding now it's a little too close to her 2nd snack time at 3:30 so next week we will be changing it to 5 instead.
We set her food times so she east roughly every two hours. with her meals coming four hours apart.
Here is our schedule all laid out, now this might not work for you but this is a good example if your curious.
7:30 wake up, diaper change, dressed for the day.
8:00 breakfast, milk, medicine.
10:30 snack, diaper change
12:30 diaper change, lunch, milk
1:00 nurse to sleep
3:30 wake up, diaper change, snack
4:30 dinner, milk
5:30 diaper change
7:00 snack, medicine
7:15 bath time, brush teeth
7:25 new diaper and jammies, lotion, hair brush
7:30 story time, nurse to sleep
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