Routine vs Demand Feeding

I'm curious - who demand feeds and who sticks to a routine? We have allowed Joshua to set his own routine, with a bit of encouragement around night time from us and have now established a routine that suits us all and stops us having to wake him when he is sleeping. We bathe him at 5pm, then some cuddle and play time, then a big feed then sleep by 6.30pm. This gives mummy and daddy our evenings together Joshua usually sleeps til 12.30 or 1.00am, then a short feed, then sleeps til 4 or 5am, then another short feed then sleeps til about 8am. I get him up, feed, dressed, play and then back down again at 9.30am til about 11am. The rest of the day is pretty fluid - usually just round home and the odd short nap, or out and about where he will sleep in the buggy. I'm pretty happy with what we've established with us following his lead, but I would love to hear what others do/have done or plan to do

Clare - Was this routine started from when Joshua was a newborn? We would like to get our baby into a routine (rather than demand feed) but not sure from when or how or what is "reasonable" for a newborn.

Any advice from others would be great too

we demand fed both our girls for the first little while - of course keeping things real though - lol not feeding every 2 seconds - if they were unsettled and had just been fed then that was just too bad. after a week or so they both just fell into their own routine and we pretty much kept to that and as they grew and changed we adjusted too - but really good to remember that no more than an hour up at a time is all baby can handle - if you keep them up too long you can miss the tired signs and just get the cranky icky baby who then wont sleep, doesn't want a feed and thinks it's good to scream the house down. Not nice. a 1 hour turn-around time is all they need. lol.

to be completely truthful - i still demand feed at night cos i just can't be bothered trying to resettle ayja in the wee hours of the morning and have her screaming for hours when i have to get up for class or work etc.. but most nights she only wakes at 11pm and sometimes at about 4ish, other nights she sleeps right thru. thing is - we used to have to get up and give paris back her dummy and resttle her heaps when she was this age too - although i always thought that she slept thru, if i think about it she really was quite unsettled.

Demand fed and it worked well for us. She had her own routine of sleeping for 3 or 4 hours then having a feed and back to sleep for a while though.

Oh and one more thing, the book "oh Baby..." by Kathy Fray is great for a middle of the road, common sense approach to sleep. Would thoroughly recommend it!

im with Becca, i demand feed for the first 4 weeks, then once i was on bottle i went straight onto a four hourly routine of feeding and have been there every since

That's great. Just keep in mind that this pattern will change with teething/sickness etc as he gets older

I found that Jake took ages to get into a settled 1-2 hour daytime sleep routine. Even Taine doesn't sleep so long during the day. But we just continue putting him down at the same time. Jake was about 9 months and he'd have two naps of between 2-3 hours. When he was 14 months this went down to one sleep, but even now occasionally he'll need two. He's really good about having his nap now. I tell him it's bedtime - he'll get his blanket, kiss everyone in the room goodnight (this apparently took FOREVER at daycare), and lie down in his cot and go to sleep. He does this at night too. It's all about persistance.

With routine feeding newborns, say if it was 3pm for their next feed and they're asleep, do you wake them? Or just let them sleep. I guess that would put your routine out, but I couldn't face waking bubs if she was tired but it was time for feeding.

Ooh all so confusing!

baalamb - I always woke Hannah up when she was due for a feed. I would go into her room, open the curtains, unwrap her and then her wake up quietly in a few minutes - she always woke up happy like that!