Do you wake your baby up?

[JamesFrancisMama]

Sorry if this has already been addressed elsewhere -- I'm still learning to find everything on here

The BW book seems to recommend waking babies up to keep them on the 3-hour schedule. I can see the reasoning behind it, but do any of you actually do it? I haven't yet because, well, I'm a little scared I'll trigger an overtired meltdown!!

Thanks

[trimbler]

Yes and no If baby takes forever to get (back) to sleep and has only slept 30mins, say, when 3h comes along, I'd give them some flexibility, say wake at 3.5h if they're on a nominal 3h schedule if still asleep. But I wouldn't do that for all cycles, for us, short naps would mean there were always some shorter cycles too, so one longer one would just help to balance the day. On the other hand if you know baby needs, say, 6 daytime feeds and seems to want a long nap over 2h, then it's usually better to wake them to keep more of the feeds during the day and to distinguish day from night. Hope that makes sense?

[weaver]

A lot depends on your personality and your LOs.  I liked to always start the day around the same time - so I generally got LOs up around 7am, that kept things on a similar pattern most days. 

Likewise, for feeding in the first six months, I would generally WU near to feeding time, if need be.  15 mins here or there doesn't matter, but I liked to have things happen around the same time, and it turned out that suited both LOs really well.  Also for LO1, he needed to gain lots of weight in the early days so we had to do 3 hrly feeds very consistently.   If there are no such issues, then I wouldn't mind too much if WUs vary, I would just be careful not to have too long a gap between daytime feeds - you want those long stretches to come at night!

At the same time, you're unlikely to have every day the same, you'll need to go out sometimes so somedays feeds and naps might get a bit jumbled.  Don't worry about it too much. 

You're very unlikely to get an OT meltdown if baba has just had a nap of over an hour.  If for some reason, LO was unable to get to sleep til say 30 mins before a feed is due, I'd try to squeeze the feed in early, and then get the nap.  The nap is likely to be better with a full tum. And it's ok to fall asleep feeding every now and then!