Sample Babywise Schedules for your baby’s first month. Babywise newborn schedules to help you get baby sleeping and eating well. Starting early creates a great routine for your newborn.

The first month of baby’s life is the least scheduled overall in your Babywise journey.

You “take the clock and turn it around” as the book says. In other words, you don’t worry so much about times as you do getting the whole family more acclimated to life with a new baby.

There will never be a return to “normal.” There is a finding of a new normal.

Below are some sample schedules from the first month of life. This covers weeks 0-4.

These are baby schedules I used with my babies and also schedules used by you blog readers. Please feel free to add your own sample schedules in the comments.

Before you go further, please be sure you have read My Sleep Hierarchy For Newborns. You need to know what your primary and secondary goals should be for a newborn so you keep priorities straight. It will make your newborn life much less frustrating!

Babywise Baby First Month Overview

During this first month with your Babywise baby, aim for the following:

Feed your baby 8-10 times per a 24 hour period.
Feedings should be 2.5-3 hours apart typically.
Cluster feeding can be helpful for a very hungry baby in the evenings or for a baby who needs to get more feedings in the 24 hour period.
There will be a growth spurt around 3-4 weeks old. This will mean your baby will eat more often during the day and take shorter naps. It won’t last forever!
Baby will nap 6-8 times per day.
Naps should be around 1.5-2.5 hours long each time.
Your baby can go up to 5 hours between feedings at night. Some will wake up more often than that, others will need you to set an alarm and wake them up at five hours to stay on track.

For a full year overview, see this post: Your Babywise Baby: First Year Overview. Read the entire On Becoming Babywise book here (affiliate link).

Babywise Sample Schedules for Baby’s First Month

While the book says to not worry about a schedule during this week, we had one with all of our girls.

I am really big on “begin as you mean to go on.” I also found it hard to not do a schedule since that was ingrained into me by the time my girls came along.

You will find that once you have one baby, doing a schedule just comes naturally to you. So since we had our son first, a schedule was just a way of life with all three of our girls.

Another driving factor for me to stick to a schedule was that my girls didn’t wake up on their own most of the time.

I needed to wake them up so they would eat. If I left them to guide the way, who knows if and when they would have tried to eat.

My first focus with my newborns was on an “eat/wake/sleep” cycle idea. I was aware, however, that often for a brand new baby, “wake” and “eat” might be one in the same.

Newborns are sleepy and might just eat, sleep, eat, sleep, with little to no actual wakefulness in between. Newborn babies sleep most of the time.

For help on proper expectations for awake time lengths, see this post (including an infographic on waketimes!).

>>>Read: Adding Waketime to Your Newborn’s Day

Another big focus for me in the first month was having a consistent time of day that we started each day.

I started it when I hoped my baby to start as she got older. My babies did not all end up starting the day at my ideal start time, however. They were naturally inclined to start at a different time.

Adjust your expectations as needed. Some babies woke later in the morning than I preferred and some woke earlier.

Wake baby up at this same time each day to eat and start the day. If baby is waking up in the night close to this time, see my night wakings post for help to navigate that. This helps your daytime be the same from day to day.

I also really wanted my babies to be able to fall asleep independently from the beginning. I didn’t want to teach to fall asleep one way and then teach a new way later. My favorite way to do sleep training, a no-cry solution, is the Four S’s.

This is a good time to start a sleep routine. This is simply the pattern you follow before each time baby sleeps. This can include a diaper change, putting baby in a swaddle, turning on white noise, singing a lullaby, etc.

>>>Read: Sleep Routine Ideas to Get Your Baby Sleeping Well

I also focused on our last “day” feeding to be around the same time each day as well as our dreamfeed.

Wake windows are often very short for newborns, so don’t be surprised if your newborn schedule has basically no awake time. Remember that wake time length includes feeding time.

Here is an example of what to aim for, with naps starting basically right when the feeding time was over:

7:30–nurse
10:30–nurse
1:00–nurse
4:00–nurse
6:30–nurse
9:00–nurse (dreamfeed)

Then you would have baby waking twice during the night to eat.

To summarize my primary focus points during the first month, they are:

Focus on an eat/wake/sleep cycle. Recognize that a newborn likely won’t be awake much longer than for a feeding and diaper change.
Start each day at a consistent time. Feed baby at the same time each morning.
Establish a sleep routine.
Focus on letting baby fall asleep independently as best you can.
Keep your last feeding of the day at the same time each day. This way, bedtime can be consistent.
Have the dreamfeed at a consistent time each day.

Now let’s move on to looking at some real schedules.

>>>Read: When To Move Baby To Own Room

Week One

Here is a breakdown of what my third child’s first week was like:

Night One:
McKenna ate at 10:15 PM, 12:00 AM, 2:15 AM, 4:45 AM, and I woke her at 8:15 AM. What a night! Why so many feedings? One, she is small. She is under 6 pounds, so I definitely wasn’t going to try to hold her out at all if she was hungry. Also, my milk was still colostrum and I don’t think that was holding her over. Finally, she had awful gas pains that night, so she woke frequently.

Night Two:
McKenna ate at 9:50 PM, 1:30 AM, and 4:00 AM. I got her up at 7:45 AM. This was much better. She did have a gas pain situation this night, also, though.

Night Three:
McKenna ate at 9:50 PM, 1:45 AM, and 4:45 AM. I then woke her at 7:45 AM. This was the night that I first had to wake her for a night feeding. I woke her at 4:45. I could let her go up to 5 hours, but I want to keep morning waketime as consistent as possible. I also need to have at least 8 feedings in her and she does better with a longer schedule in the day–resulting in needing two night feedings right now.

Night Four:
McKenna ate at 10:15 PM, 2:15 AM, and 6:15 AM. I woke her at 8:15 AM. I woke her for all four of these feedings listed.

Night Five:
McKenna ate at 10:00 PM, 1:35 AM (she woke for this), and 5:15 AM. I then woke her at 8:00 AM.

Day/Night Confusion:
Day and night confusion is very common for newborns. If you find your infant wants to stay awake at night and is very hard to wake in the day, you have a very normal baby. Read how to Fix Your Baby’s Day/Night Confusion here.

Week Two

The same rules and goals of week one apply to week two as applied in week one.

Here is the baby sleep schedule I used with McKenna (my third) as a newborn:

7:45–nurse
10:30–nurse
1:00–nurse
4:00–nurse
7:00–nurse
9:30–nurse for the dream feed. This actually can vary from 9:30-10:00 PM.

I then went to bed. She typically woke on her own somewhere around 2 AM. I then woke her around 5:30 AM so she would still be hungry enough to eat at our first feeding in the morning.

Week Three

This is when you might run into a growth spurt. If so, feed more often. If not, stick with your basic rules. Always follow baby’s hunger cues. Breastfed babies and formula fed babies have growth spurts.

If you haven’t started yet, this is a great time to start tummy time during at least one of your awake times.

>>> Read: How To Do Tummy Time Even if Baby Hates It

Overcoming the Mental Load of Motherhood

Chronicles of a Babywise Mom Book of Logs

Week Four

If the growth spurt didn’t happen in week three, it will at four weeks of life. Feed as often as your infant needs this week.

Here is a sample of my fourth child at week four:

7:30–feed
8:20–nap
10:30–feed
11:20–nap
1:30–feed
2:20–nap
4:30–feed
5:20–nap
7-7:30 (time varies here)–feed, then bedtime
10:00–dreamfeed
then night feed(s).

Here is a sample newborn sleep schedule from a reader at one month old:

6:00am Bottle
6:50 Nap
9:00 Bottle
9:50 Nap
12:00pm Bottle
1:00 Nap
3:00 Bottle
4:00 Nap
6:00 Bottle
6:30 Bath / Bedtime routine
7:00 Bed
10:00 Bottle
2:00 Bottle

Get your Babwise books here

Sleeping Tips for Newborns

Some parents like to keep their infant in a bassinet in their bedroom for a long time, but others move baby into their own room sometime in the first month. Your newborn baby can sleep in her crib in the nursery if you feel like she is ready for it.

Everyone, including infants, has sleep transitions while they sleep. For a newborn, there will be a sleep transition about 45 minutes into each nap. If baby cries out at 45 minutes, wait a bit before responding to the cry. Baby will likely go back to sleep if you give her 5-10 minutes.

You won’t really get long stretches of nighttime sleep at this age. They can be longer than the stretches between feeds in the daytime, but a newborn still eats quite often even through the night-time.

Read Further Sample Schedules as Your Baby Grows

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