Our 1 Month Old Bottle Feeding Schedule (4 To 8 Weeks Old)

Our Daily 1 Month Old Formula Feeding Schedule

Our schedule from 1 to 2 months old wasn’t much different from our baby girl’s newborn bottle feeding schedule. The biggest differences were that she began to extend her overnight sleep significantly and we dropped the late night (10:30pm) feeding. We basically still gave her a bottle every 3 hours throughout the day followed by some awake/activity time and then put her down for a nap until the next feeding time.

To help train our babies to sleep well in their cribs and learn to sleep through the night I always give them a little bit of time to cry and try to settle themselves when they are laid down for each nap. At this age I also always kept our daughter swaddled to prevent her from waking due to her startle reflex. In general our daughter did very well taking naps in her pack n play from 4 to 8 weeks. However, she did hit a wonder week (or developmental leap) close to week 6 that really disturbed her sleep. For several days at the peak of that wonder week I had to hold her through naps and let her suck my finger. (We don’t do pacifiers for a variety of reasons so she often sucks my pinky finger instead.)

Note: If you’ve never heard of wonder weeks they are fascinating! They’re basically big times of development in your baby’s brain that can make them extra clingly/fussy for a period of time. You can check out my post with more details about our experience with wonder weeks and some resources to help you track them here.

By 5 weeks our daughter began going stretches of about 5-6 hours between bottles overnight. Then magically around 6 weeks old she started to sleep 9-10 hour stretches between feedings at night! (My other two never slept this long this early! So don’t get discouraged if your little one takes a bit longer to get to this point.) After her 7:30pm “bedtime” feeding she would sleep until close to 5-6am. We would then feed her without turning on any lights or unswaddling her and we would burp her, diaper her, and lay her right back down until her 7:30-8am wake time for the day. We would make sure not to talk to her and to stimulate her as little as possible just to make clear that this was still night time and time to sleep, not to wake and interact or play etc.

Around 5 weeks old we did stop waking our daughter to offer her a 10:30pm bottle. It was becoming extremely difficult to wake her for that feeding and keep her alert enough to eat. She just so badly wanted to keep sleeping and would take forever to take a full feeding, so we gave it up. Once we did it actually seemed to help her sleep longer! Soon after we dropped that bottle she started giving us the 9-10 hour overnight stretches between feedings. I think we were doing more harm than good by disrupting her sleep after 7:30pm.

Our daughter drank about 5 oz. per feeding for most of this time period. Sometimes her first morning bottle was a little less (4 oz. or so) if she had just taken a full bottle after 5am and every now and then she would drink up to 6 oz, but in general she drank about 5 oz. each feeding.

We still changed her diaper after every feeding during this time period. However, she did start to poop less frequently – usually about twice a day instead of in almost every diaper like she had in her first 4 weeks.

Below are the general feeding, awake times, and sleep times that we followed with our daughter from 4-8 weeks.

(If you read our 0-4 week schedule you will notice that we moved the first morning feeding to 8am rather than 7:30am. This was just to allow me a little bit more time to ready my older children for the day before needing to sit and feed the baby since our older children start the day at 7:30.)

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Our 1 Month Old Bottle Feeding Schedule (4-8 Weeks Old)

8am – wake and bottle

8-9am – wake time. I usually just gave her tummy time, cuddled with her and “talked” to her, or by about week 7 she spent most of her wake times playing on her toy mat with hanging toys.

9-10:30am – nap time. She took most naps in her small pack n play upstairs with white noise on. I always gave her about 15 minutes to fuss and settle herself. If she wasn’t asleep by then I would hold her for the nap or do whatever was needed to help her sleep so she didn’t get overtired. If she woke from her naps early I would also give her a little bit of time to see if she could resettle and then if she couldn’t I would hold her and try to keep her sleeping longer.

10:30am – wake and bottle

10:30-11:30am – wake time

11:30-1:30pm – nap time

1:30pm – wake and bottle

1:30-2:30pm – wake time

2:30-4:30pm – nap time

4:30pm – wake and bottle

4:30-5:30pm – wake time

5:30-7:30pm – nap time. This was usually her worst nap of the day. She often had trouble settling for this one and had to be held. It did start to improve by 7-8 weeks though.

7:30pm – wake, bottle, diaper change and right back to bed for overnight. We did not have any wake time after this feeding other than to take care of her essential needs since we considered this her “bedtime” feeding.

4-6am(ish) – After the 7:30pm feeding we let our daughter sleep until she cried overnight for a bottle. She typically cried for a feeding somewhere between 4-6am during this time period. We would feed and diaper her with as little stimulation as possible and lay her back down to sleep until her morning wake time.

A few additional notes…

Our daughter’s wake times increased slightly this month. For her first 4 weeks of life she only stayed awake about 45 minutes (if that) in each feeding cycle. This month she extended her wake times to closer to 1 hour each. However, there were still some days and feeding cycles where I shortened her awake time or she could barely stay awake post-feeding and I would put her down almost as soon as she ate and was diapered. I watched her cues and yawns.

Around 7 weeks old our daughter also began to enjoy her toy mat! It made her awake times a lot more fun since she actually had an activity to do! She LOVED kicking the piano portion of the mat to make sounds and music with it and enjoyed watching the hanging toys overhead even though she still wasn’t great at swatting them. We have a mat like this one that you can purchase on Amazon.

I hope that this schedule was helpful to you as you work on establishing a routine with your own little one!