UPDATED JAN 2020
I wrote this post originally when my firstborn (who is now almost 8!) was just a couple weeks old. At that time, I was a brand new mom looking for some stability and predictability in my own life. I really clung to routines as a way to do cope with the drastic change of going from child-free to being responsible for keeping a tiny human alive.
I painstakingly wrote out my routine here in this post and hit publish. It became a super popular post, but it was also a wall of text to read. So, I’ve revamped it as of Jan 2020. I hope it’s helpful for those of you who’ve found it.
I strongly believe in something called an interval routine. I think the best time to start focusing on building an interval routine is around the 1 month mark.
An interval routine means doing the same activities in intervals of 2-3 hours. The gaps are filled with baby stuff like tummy time, or mom stuff like running errands.
Also, before I get to the routine, I created a 2 page download that summarizes the entire routine for you. It has space for you to setup your own newborn daytime interval routine, too. The download walks you through that process. You can grab it through this form:
Okay, now let’s get to the routine.
Morning – 1 nap & 2 feeding sessions
Early morning waking – at the first early morning wakeup I always fed or soothed my kids back to sleep. The key here is if you don’t want your day to start at this time… then don’t let it. Feed or soothe your baby back to sleep. This first wakeup happened with my kids usually around 6:30 or 7:00am. With all of them, I soothed them back to sleep so we didn’t start our day until 8:30 or 9:00. Today, all three of my kids will sleep in until 8:30 or 9am as a result of this.
Up for the day – Once we got up officially (around 8:30 or 9:15), I’d always feed my kids first thing once more. Newborns are slow feeders. Most feeds with my kids took anywhere from 20-30 minutes until they became more efficient, stronger, and their bellies got a little bit bigger.
Here’s a thing to know about newborns…Most newborns take 3-4 naps a day. And those naps vary in lengths. But the “wake window” (aka the amount of time that passes between waking up and going back down for a nap) is shortest in the morning and late evening.
This means the first interval and last interval before bedtime are shorter than the ones in the middle of the day.
So after my kids were up for the day, I’d change their diapers & clothes, play a little, etc… and fully expect them to be ready for a nap within 45-60 minutes.
1st nap of the day – With the interval routine, this nap happens 45-60 minutes after the official wakeup time. Nap times vary in length for newborns (newsflash: basically everything is going to vary in length for a newborn… When your baby is around 4-6 months, some predictability can be expected!) and can go anywhere from 60-120 minutes.
I spent this time catching up on chores, watching a little tv and, later, playing with my other little ones.
Early Afternoon – 1 more nap, 2 more feeding sessions
Up from first nap – I tried to set a routine / expectation with my babies that once they woke up from a nap, they’d get food. So, when my baby would wakeup from the first nap, I’d nurse or bottle feed him or her.
Now you should be getting a feel for this. Once your baby wakes up from this nap, make note of the wakeup time. This is the start of your next interval.
So if your baby woke up from nap at 10:30am and you’re doing a 2 hour interval, that means the next nap is 12:30pm.
Here’s why this type of routine is so amazing: once your baby wakes up, you know how much time you have to accomplish things. So if you have errands to run, you know you’ve got some time to go do that.
It also means you can stay flexible. If you notice your baby just can’t handle 2 hours of awake time… then shorten your interval. Or, as your baby gets older and can stay awake longer, lengthen the interval.
2nd nap of the day – Once you’ve reached the end of the interval, it’s time for the 2nd nap.
Around the 1 month mark is not only a great time to introduce interval routines… but it’s also a good time to start thinking about making some nap associations. These can be simple things like: turning on a sound machine, singing a little song, rubbing your baby’s back and so on.
Up from second nap – Time for another feed, and another interval to begin! As you get to know your baby better and better each week, you’ll start noticing cues from her or him.
Things like… your baby gets especially fussy after having been awake for X number of hours. Or… your baby starts rubbing his or her eyes after having been awake X number of hours. These are sleepy signs. Or your baby starts patting her mouth after having been awake for X number of hours, which tells you she’s hungry.
Make note of these! Take pics or video so you can help yourself remember. Do whatever you need to do to ensure you notice these cues because they’ll make your life so much easier as time goes on.
Late Afternoon / Early Evening –
3rd nap of the day – By now, your day should be into the late afternoon and approaching the early evening. This is probably going to be your baby’s last nap of the day.
With my kids, this nap was always the shortest. Most times I had to hold them throughout this entire nap because otherwise it would only last 25-30 minutes! Don’t worry, though, they figure this stuff out and things get easier. I promise.
Up from third nap – Once your baby is up from this nap, make note of the time. Will your interval get you through to bedtime? If not, you’ll have to squeeze in one last little cat nap. No worries. Again, your baby WILL figure this out! It just takes time – literally that’s all it takes. Your baby’s brain and body have to keep growing.
This time of day can be challenging. Prepare yourself for a little cranky baby. It happens. By this time of my day, my kids would usually cry off and on and be challenging to entertain. They just got tired mentally, I think… learning about the world is an exhausting process (heck I’m an adult and it still sometimes exhausts me).
Maybe time for a 4th nap – If your interval wasn’t going to let you make it to bedtime… now’s your time for a 4th nap. Otherwise skip this step.
Bath / Evening routine & bed time – Start this after the last interval of the day is ending. Maybe you’re thinking a bath isn’t necessary for a newborn… you’re probably right. You don’t have to do a bath! The purpose though, in my opinion, is to start building sleep associations for nighttime. We always bathed our kids at night and maybe it’s the superstitious part of my nature but… I felt like it helped transition them to nighttime.
Keep in mind that the interval will keep up throughout the night at first, while your baby is very small. It’s 100% normal for newborns to wake every 2-4 hours at night.
The difference with an evening interval routine, though, is that you’re not doing any activities in between. Keep the lights low (or totally off), only change diapers if there’s #2 in there or the diaper is super soaked, minimize talking, and focus solely on helping your baby get back to sleep.
If you’d like a handy little download of these tips, you can grab it right here –
Hey Amanda –
I just stumbled across your blog as I was searching for some typical “day in the life of a newborn” outline – (I’m such a virgo) – Even though I’m very aware that there is no such as thing as every day looking the same with a newborn, it just helps to get a sense of what an average outline is :)So thank you for this! Helps a lot!
Enjoyed exploring the rest of your blog and will continue to follow, as it looks like we have a lot in common.
How did your dogs do?
We have 1 dog – who is a bit high maintenance as he was a rescue and comes with some emotional challenges from a not so great past 🙁 … He gets anxiety with strangers coming to the house and other dogs especially, but he does ok when I have clients to the house – as I have a home office for my holistic healing business. So we are trusting and hoping he will adjust. He is very attached to me, so it will be interesting. I am hoping once he sees me taking care of baby, he’ll become my little assistant. I get the sense that will be the case. I’m a little nervous about when baby starts crawling and wants to “play” with dog – but we’ll deal with that when it comes. We are taking a dog/baby workshop coming up soon. If you have any experiences, pass on.
Thanks for your time and info!
Love & Light to you,
Jen
Hi Jen!
Thank you for your comment! I’m so glad this post could help you 🙂 I know what you mean… it does vary day to day for a newborn, but the bare bones stuff is always the same.
My Pomeranian did really well. I was completely shocked. Prior to Ezra, my Pom was my baby. He’s still my baby…just in a different way, haha. Anyway, I was worried he would not adjust well at all. But he surprised me and has done great since the day we brought Ezra home. We did a couple things, though, to help the adjustment. Firstly, we stopped letting him sleep in bed with us at night (which broke my heart!) and transitioned him to a crate. That was probably the best thing we did because now he has this little place he can retreat to when he feels stressed out. Secondly, we had someone bring a blanket that Ezra had been swaddled in while in the hospital to Aslan before we came home. He slept with the blanket in the crate so he could get used to the smell. Thirdly, we brought the baby in the house before Aslan was brought back into the house, so Aslan would understand baby comes first in the new hierarchy of our home.
Immediately, Aslan sniffed him and seemed to take to him right away. He has become pretty protective of him. He gives him kisses all the time now, which is sweet. We haven’t experienced any acting out, which I am so thankful for.
The cat, on the other hand, was scared for the entire first month and completely avoided the baby like the plague. He has since warmed up to him, though, and is back to being his normal, friendly self.
Good luck to you with your dog! I’m sure everything will work out just fine. I think what we forget about is that babies smell like the family… your baby will have a scent to your dog like your scent. So your dog, I bet, will immediately accept the baby as part of his ‘pack.’ 🙂
Thanks again for commenting! 🙂
I just stumbled on your blog, I know it’s old but you should check out csftl.org
Hi! Sorry for commenting on a really old post.. but as someone said above, I was searching for “day in the life with a newborn” blog posts and came across yours.
I am currently 18 weeks pregnant with a baby boy and while I am excited to be a stay-at-home mom, I was worried that I would go crazy since I thought I would have to spend my every waking second taking care of him and have no time to myself. But after reading this post, I feel a lot better knowing that you can actually make time for yourself (with your husband’s help) and even go to Starbucks! 😉 But I also didn’t expect the feeding duration to be almost half an hour each time, I was thinking maybe 10-15 minutes (silly me).
Anyways, this was very insightful and gave me hope 🙂 I will now go ahead and read a few more of your posts!
Love,
Shiho
Hi Shiho! I think I replied to this some time ago but my reply is gone (I’ve revamped my blog and lost some posts/data in the process). Anyway, YES by now you know this but for anyone else reading through comments you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see just how much downtime you get with a newborn! There would be entire chunks of time (a few hours) where I’d have space for myself to do whatever (watch a show, work on a project, etc)… Of course the more kids you have, the more precious your time becomes. But with the first kid… there’s no shortage of downtime while they nap when they’re little. Also, newborns take awhile to feed BUT they speed it up once they get accustomed to the breast/bottle, and their bellies get larger. So it eventually does go down to 10-15 minutes (sometimes even shorter if your baby is super efficient). Hope things went well for you, Shiho!
Hi there! I am a new mom of a three week old and have found this post extremely helpful! Just curious- do you swaddle Ezra during the day and/or night?
Hi Amy! My reply totally disappeared when I revamped my blog. I swaddled Ezra briefly during the day for naps, but mostly it worked at night. It didn’t last long for him, though.
Hi Amanda,
I have an almost three year old and a two and a half week old baby. My husband and i can’t get any thing done without having our newborn nap in our arms. This has gotten to be extremely hard especially for me since I’m with them as i an a stay at home mom and my back can only take soo much. E have tried a few things like waiting until baby is asleep for 15-20 mins then transfer him, different swaddles, noise machine, different bedroom to block the noise our toddler and dog make, etc. and nothing has helped him nap more than 15 minutes each try. Any ideas or suggestion on this. I dream of naps that can allow me play with my toddler without having y on me or just to do things around the house or just to get a break!