When you get your newborn baby home, you’ll find that in their first few weeks of life that they are interested in two things, sleeping and eating. Well, three things actually, but you’ll learn about the third one soon enough. Though this sounds simple enough, and for them it is, it can be a twenty hour a day job for you.

Newborn babies know exactly how humans should eat and that’s small portions often. Newborn babies take this to the extreme, sometimes eating as frequently as every hour. In order to meet the needs of the baby, it is important that you get the baby used to a structured routine as soon as possible.

A structured routine in terms of eating and sleeping will be good for your baby, but it will be even better for you. Once the baby gets a routine established, they will be more predictable and you will finally be able to plan your day and hopefully allow yourself some time to relax.

Babies seem to always be hungry, but they don’t always need to eat. Often a baby will cry and then when fed, only take the bottle for a few moments. By getting the newborn on a regular feeding schedule, you can encourage them to eat full meals at each feeding and thereby give you some peace, if even for only a couple of hours. It’s sometimes hard for new moms to deny their baby when they are crying, but it’s necessary.

Once a good feeding routine is established, the sleep routine of your newborn should improve. Bedtime also needs to be an established routine. After their night’s final feeding, don’t let the baby fall right to sleep. Instead go though the routine of bathing and then a little reading, before finally putting them down to rest.

This will often buy you an extra hour or two before the early morning feeding. As baby gets used to the routine, they should sleep longer in between meals.

Newborn babies are not the same so don’t expect that the routine you developed with your first baby will work out perfectly with your second. The trick is to find the one that will work best for you and your baby and then to stick with it.