Help - need to change routine to fit with nursery!

[Laura B]

Hi everyone - hope someone can help. My DS is almost 6 months and already on 3 solid meals a day. His feeding routine is something like this:

7am - 7oz milk
8-8:30am - breakfast (a banana or about 6 icecubes of fruit puree)
11am - 7oz milk
12:30 - 1pm - lunch (6 icecubes of veg puree)
3pm - 7oz milk
4:30-5pm - tea (6 icecubes of veg puree)
7pm - 7oz milk after bath, story, then bed

We've just this week dropped the dreamfeed as he is well established on solids and everything is working well for us.

HOWEVER... we've just been to our first 'settling in session' at the nursery he will be attending full time as of two weeks time and their feeding times are different. They're happy to do milk feeds anytime, but solids are:

Breakfast 8:15am (this works fine)
Lunch 11:30am
Tea 3:15pm

So firstly I guess I need to start gradually moving the milk and solid feeds earlier to match them, but I'm wondering the best way of doing it. I don't want to give him a milk feed at say 2pm, tea at 3:15pm, then nothing until his 7pm bottle before bed - I don't think he'd last that long!!

Do you think it's viable  to split the afternoon bottle into two, so he has eg 3.5oz at 2pm-ish and the other 3.5oz about 5pm? Will this work and keep him happy until his pre-bedtime bottle??

I have no idea why they do lunch and tea so early, but since he's going there 5 days a week, I figure it would be easiest for us to all be on the same times!

Any bright ideas would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Laura.

[tylersmommy]

Can you post back with his typical nap times? Thanks!

[Laura B]

Nap times are currently:

8:30am ish Sometimes 45 mins, sometimes an hour
Sometimes 30mins about 11am if we go for a walk in the pushchair
1:30pm ish usually for a long 1.5 hour one
5:15pm ish for 45 mins - we get him up at 6pm so as to be awake for a bit before bath and bedtime at 6:30pm!

These nap times are obviously going to totally chnage once he gets to nursery too as they'll be lots of new stuff going on. Also they said they wait until the babies fall asleep before putting them in the cots which I'm not keen on, but there's not much we can do about that.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Laura

[suca]

I may be wrong..but reading between the lines you are not entirely happy with this arrangement (with feeding and sleeping)...is this definitely the nursery you want? - have you tried any others that will be happy to fit in with your routine?

When Caleb started nursery the one we went with was happy to follow his routine (where possible of course!)

[Liz R]

Hi,
Jake has been in nursery for about 6 weeks now.So I totally sympathise with your dilema!
I am quite annoyed for you, that they want you to fit a young baby in with what is the older babies routine!
What time will you have to pick your L/O up? I am wondering if he could have all his milk feed at nursery at 3 ish, then his tea at home with you ?
I have to say though I would ask for a bit more flexibility while he is still little.Just because he goes to nursery doesn't mean all your hard work goes to waste. I would insist on him not being held to sleep(as I did at Jake's nursery- took alot of nagging but eventually they got the message!)
This is gonig to be a huge change for him, and the closer they stick to your routine, the better for him.
Don't be worried they will think you being fussy, you're paying them for a service.
Good luck,
Liz x

[Laura B]

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm OK with changing the feeding routine in a way. They said they could stick with our routine if we wanted, but I didn't think it would be fair on DS to eg watch all the other babies have their lunch at 11:30pm, then wait another hour for his! I've worked out a new milk feed schedule to fit which goes:

7am - 6oz
10am - 6oz
2pm - 4oz
5pm - 4oz
7pm - 6oz

It's a couple of oz less than he's currently having, but he's often sick after his larger milk feeds anyway.

I will check with them again next week about the sleeping thing though. I suppose it's understandable that they don't want to try and put a tired grumpy crying baby in the cot room where other babies are already asleep, just to have them all wake up, but then again I don't want him getting into bad habits! It's so difficult 

He's going in full time, Mon-Fri, 8am - 6pm so I'm hardly going to see him during the week