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Hi everyone. I'm Melissa, welcome back to Cloudmom.com. Talking today about one of my
favorite topics, baby feeding and sleeping schedules. Today I'm talking about the schedule
for a baby who is between 9 and 12 months old. So, hopefully at this stage, your baby's
doing some very nice long stints at night, and in fact many babies will go a full 12
hours at night. Love that! And your baby's day is likely structured around 2 naps, because
your baby has now made the transition from 3 naps to 2. So, when are those naps happening...sorry,
when are those naps happening? Let's take a look. Your baby's first nap generally doesn't
change much when she switches to two naps. Assuming she wakes up at around 7 a.m., she'll
go back down around 9:30 a.m. Some babies will go earlier at 9 a.m. Of course, if your
baby is an early riser, some babies are up at 6 a.m., that morning nap might be happening
from 8-10 in the morning; and the afternoon from 12-2 or something in that area. One thing
to keep in mind at this stage which helped me tremendously, and it's advice actually
received from my doctor, was that it's very helpful not to have your baby sleep past around
3 p.m. in the afternoon or 4 hours prior to your baby's bedtime. I found that very helpful,
because when I did keep my babies napping much later than that, I had a hard time getting
them to bed at night. So keep that in mind. Okay, so what do your baby's feedings look
like now that your baby is 9-12 months of age? Let's take a look. According to this
schedule you'll now be giving your baby milk 4 times during the day. At 7 a.m. when she
wakes up; after each of her naps, at 11 a.m. and at approximately 3:30 p.m.; and at 7 p.m.
at bedtime. And hopefully then your baby's sleeping from bedtime until the morning. Let's
hope! Okay, now how about solids? At this point hopefully your baby has fallen into
a steady routine with eating solids at least 3 times a day. I know that's what my doctor
recommended. Check with yours. And here's how you can incorporate solids into this schedule:
I was still focused at this stage on getting baby enough milk, because my doctor told me
that was the most important part of his or her nutrition. And then I would schedule the
meals after she'd had the milk, other than with the evening meal. So, you might do breakfast
at 7:30 a.m., after your baby has had his or her milk. Lunch after milk, after the morning
nap, at around 11:30. With dinner though, I would try feeding her
the food first so that her milk is the last thing she has before she went goes to bed.
That really worked well for me. If you find that your baby's too full after the milk feeding
to want the solids, talk to your doctor but maybe you wait 20 minutes or so and then give
your baby the solid. Okay so now we've got the naps, we've got the milk and we've got
the solids. Let's pull it all together and come up with a nice little guideline for your
baby's daily routine at the age of 9-12 months. Here goes: 7 a.m., wake up, milk feeding.
7:30 a.m., a solids breakfast, yummy! 9:30 a.m., morning nap.
11 a.m., milk feeding, after the morning nap. 11:30 a.m., a solids lunch. 2 p.m., your baby's
going down for his or her afternoon nap. 3:30 p.m., milk feeding. 6 p.m., solids dinner.
7 p.m., milk feeding, and then bedtime. One thing to keep in mind with babies at this
stage, is that it's helpful not to have them sleep too late in the day if you want them
to have a nice, early bedtime. So, in this routine, I'm recommending
not having the baby sleep past 3:30 at night because the bedtime is at 7:30. The general
rule is not to actually have your child sleep later than 3, with the assumption being that
your baby will go down to sleep at 7 p.m. This I really did follow and it really worked
for me. And I found that on days when my baby slept quite late in the afternoon, that I
would have trouble getting them to bed on time. So there you have
it. I hope this is helpful for you. If you have experiences or tips you'd like to share,
please share them on Cloudmom.com. Thank you so much for watching my videos, and I will
see you next time.