Newborn Care

Why Scheduling with Your Baby Isn’t the Solution

Scheduling a newborn’s sleep… sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? Knowing when baby will be hungry, sleepy, or awake. Being able to plan your day with things other than just baby care. I think many, like myself, love a predictable schedule and being able to get stuff done.

But as a new mom, you’re sleep deprived, on-call 24/7 (night vs. day doesn’t exist for baby), overwhelmed, and exhausted. You can’t get anything else done other than feeding, pumping, and baby care. So, the idea of scheduling can sound especially fantastic.

However, pediatricians, lactation consultants, and child psychologists largely agree…

Scheduling for newborns is not a good idea – it can actually be harmful.

Scheduling appears to be born of the idea… If baby waits longer for the next feeding, they will be able to drink a bigger volume. Which leads parents to think they can create consistent periods of time between feedings and baby will still be getting plenty of milk when feeding.

This is not how human biology works.

First, let’s talk about the harm of scheduling from a lactation consultant standpoint…

Your body and baby’s body are designed to work in unison with each other.

Your body only knows how much milk to produce based on how much milk is taken out (via baby or pump). Baby is meant to be put to the breast every time they start showing cues that they’re hungry. When they do and take out all the milk they need, every time they need, that signals your milk making cells to make even more milk for next time. While some feedings will be short snacks and some feedings will feel like they’ll never end (like with cluster feeding), they all help with overall volume of milk produced.

Follow ALL of baby’s cues and your milk supply will grow to match.

A baby’s stomach size has a natural capacity.

We cannot make baby’s stomach “stretch” to accommodate a larger feeding. And we certainly don’t want to teach this, even with a bottle. When we make baby wait for an allotted amount of time to pass, that results in giving baby less milk than they asked for (the feeding is not guaranteed to be a larger intake). Instead, we just missed a feeding for them.

For example… If baby needs 12-14 feedings (at 2 ounces per feeding) to get the right amount of milk that day and we only nursed baby 8-9 times to accommodate the schedule, then baby got at least 6 ounces less than what they were asking for. This also applies to milk production – you’ve now accidentally told your breasts to make at least 6 ounces less milk. Do this regularly for enough days and your breasts will downregulate how much milk is produced.

While this is especially a problem in the first 8 weeks or so as your milk supply is establishing and regulating, I’ve often seen this happen with older babies. Some families have told me about “wake periods” and “sleep periods” as they try to make things more predictable with their 4 or 5 month old, but then come to me for help when baby is no longer gaining weight as well and mom is noticing a drop in overall milk supply.

But remember… Just because it happened to a friend, doesn’t mean it will happen for you.

I’ve had rare occasions where sleep scheduling happened naturally for parents. This usually came down to mom having very large milk supply/storage capacity and baby being able to get a lot of milk fast when nursing (therefore staying fuller for longer). It ended up being more of a routine that baby fell into, rather than parents needing to “do something” to make it happen.

Now, let’s look at things from a child psychologist standpoint…

Feel free to meet ALL of baby’s needs.

Scheduling not only teaches parents NOT to respond to an infant, but it teaches baby that no one is coming to the rescue (whether with food, love, hugs or security) or to question whether someone is even coming to help. Keep in mind, little baby humans cannot meet any of their needs on their own! They can’t even self-soothe until around 10 months or later.

Child psychologists are finding that babies whose needs are met quickly and easily seem to meet developmental milestones quicker than babies left to cry on their own. When babies are left to cry it out, they may experience increased stress (and cortisol levels), which can be hard on their bodies.

Don’t worry, you can’t “spoil” them by meeting their needs. Rather, you’re teaching them that someone cares and someone is coming to help. Reacting to baby and trying to meet all their needs builds trust and leads to healthy attachments that last a lifetime. Yes, eventually you will start setting limits as they get into toddlerhood – how often you breastfeed when they can start eating snacks, how you react when they can start to touch/grab dangerous things – but you can’t harm your newborn by breastfeeding every time.

I often like to put it in terms of us as adults denying requests from other adults. Imagine asking for a hug from a partner and they respond with, “Well, how many hugs have I given you today? You only get a certain amount.” Or perhaps a friend comes over and asks for a drink or snack, and you respond with, “Well, when was the last time you ate/drank? You’re only allowed to eat/drink a certain number of times a day.” If this sounds weird to do to another adult, then we shouldn’t do so with a newborn.

Baby will eventually learn the difference between nights and days.

Typically, around 6-8 weeks of age, we start seeing longer stretches of sleep happening at night instead of during the day. However, this takes time, exposure to light and darkness, and the development of baby’s own circadian rhythms. Whether you schedule baby or not, it will start to happen. While it doesn’t come about as quickly as many of us would like, they all do eventually get there!

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself…

“How can we, as parents, learn to cope with the crazy amount of eating, holding, diaper changing, tummy time, and parenting we have to do for our little one?”

As much as possible, let non-essential tasks go.

Baby doesn’t care if you’re making gourmet meals, if sheets are clean, if there’s dust in the house, if dirty dishes are in the sink, or if laundry is overflowing. Their needs are immediate and everything else can wait. But your need for sleep is also immediate too, so if there’s a choice between napping and cleaning, the nap should always win (especially for those with a baby under 2 months of age).

I promise this will get easier, just not yet. You’ll have to put yourself in survival mode (“How can I get just enough sleep to survive these overwhelming newborn days”) and as baby gets older, you’ll start to notice a routine emerge. But keep in mind, this too shall change and will continue to do so for at least the first full year since baby’s brain is developing and changing at a rapid rate.

The newborn baby phase is intense but these chaotic, insane, sleep-deprived newborn days don’t last forever. And while scheduling might sound like the answer, it often works against baby and yourself. Find the best ways to manage these times that won’t affect your milk, how much baby is getting, and helps set up health attachments for your sweet new baby.