3 Month Old Schedule Sample: Weeks 10-13 Daily Routine

This Babywise 3 month schedule sample starts at week 10 even though our daughter’s third month actually started at about week 9. Her schedule didn’t really shift until she turned 10 weeks old so I’ve included the details of her ninth week with her 2 month schedule breakdown. You can read the details of that schedule here.

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We built both of our daughters’ schedules through infancy and trained their sleep habits around the principals in the Babywise book. I know not everyone agrees with Babywise and that it’s not the right fit for every family. (If it’s not your thing but you’re realizing that you need help getting your baby to sleep you can get a free sleep assessment here from infant and child sleep consultant Dana Obleman.) I’m not here to say that babywise is for everyone. It’s simply the way that worked for us to to help our babies learn to sleep well and to structure their feeding, activity, and sleep time.

For anyone who is implementing Babywise schedules or wants to structure their 3 month old baby feeding frequency and sleeping times, below is the 3 month old schedule that our second daughter generally followed.

You will see on her 3 month old baby feeding frequency below that we also transitioned our daughter from nursing to taking pumped milk or formula from a bottle during this time period. As soon as she accepted the bottle we moved her to it exclusively while we gradually weaned her from breast milk and I pumped until my supply was done. The transition from nursing to bottle feeding really didn’t have much effect on her 3 month old schedule except that with the bottle it sometimes became more difficult to get a feeding into her in one sitting right at feeding time. She would often drink 3 ounces or so (enough to take the edge off of her hunger) and then I would spend the rest of her wake time slowly trying to get the full bottle into her so she could sleep well for her next nap.

This was the general Babywise 3 month old schedule that we tried to follow, but as all things with very young babies, it often didn’t go as planned. Our daughter still fought going down for naps during her third month (though not near as badly as the first two months) and she still often woke early. Sometimes she woke from a poop that caused her pain, sometimes from hunger because she didn’t eat well before the nap, or sometimes for no reason that I could really determine except that her sleep was interrupted.

I made adjustments as necessary.

If she woke only about a half hour early I would often feed her as soon as she woke, keep her wake time about the same length as usual and put her down early for the next nap in hopes that she would add time to that nap. If she woke earlier than a half hour or so I either tried to help soothe her back to sleep or I just let her be awake. If I let her be awake I then ended up feeding her just before putting her down again for the next nap in hopes that it would then be a very long nap. I just tried not to do this too frequently that it would become a new habit to eat right before a nap.

From 10-13 weeks our daughter essentially repeated a feed-wake-sleep cycle 4 times, which means that she had 4 naps each day. Starting at about 10 weeks old we cut out the scheduled 10pm feeding that she previously had and started putting her down for the night after her 7:30pm feeding. Even though she then did not sleep through until morning we did this to structure her to slowly extend her overnight sleep as she was ready.

She typically had 6 feedings each day in her 3 month old schedule.

Feeding, Wake, & Sleeping Times In Our Babywise 3 Month Schedule

7:30am – wake & nurse/bottle (as noted above we transitioned our daughter to take the bottle at about 3 1/2 months old while I slowly cut back pumping until my supply dried up. At 3 1/2 months she began taking both pumped milk and formula from the bottle for feedings. Prior to that she was exclusively breastfed.)

7:50 – 9:00am – wake time (at the end of her second month our daughter began holding and enjoying some basic baby toys as well as batting at hanging toys when laid beneath them – so her wake time became a little bit more engaging and fun! You can read about some of her favorite toys here. Also you can read more details about her wake times in this 3 month old schedule below. I started the month giving her too short wake times of about 50 minutes each – including feeding time – and ended the month with wake times for her closer to 90 minutes each as reflected in this outline.)

9:00 – 10:30am – nap

10:30 – 10:50am – nurse/bottle

10:50 – 12:00pm – wake time

12:00 – 1:30pm – nap

1:30 – 1:50pm – nurse/bottle

1:50 – 3:00pm – wake time

3:00 – 4:30pm – nap

4:30 – 4:50pm – nurse/bottle

4:50 – 6:00pm – wake time

6:00 – *6:30pm – nap (see notes on this below)

*6:30 – 7:30pm – wake time (see notes on this below)

7:30pm – nurse & bed

3:00-6:00am – she had at least one overnight feeding in the second half of her 3 month sleep schedule usually between 3-6am as her appetite seemed to ramp up for solid foods. (Sometimes she woke twice to eat overnight if she didn’t eat well during the day! However, that was not the norm.) It seemed like a step backwards in her sleep to have her waking for an early morning feeding since she slept 12 hours through the night for over a week early in the month, but by 4 1/2 months old she was sleeping through again. It really did seem like all of a sudden her appetite just increased and she could no longer stay full through the night until we introduced solid foods. It wasn’t hard to manage since she went easily right back to sleep as soon as we fed her each night.

*Evenings were frustrating and pretty all over the place in our daughter’s 3 month old sleep schedule. At 5:30-6pm she would sometimes seem to want to go down for a long nap, or we wouldn’t be able to get her to settle until significantly later and then she would sleep right until 7:30, or she would go down easily but barely take a nap. We kind of just kept the evenings really flexible knowing she was getting enough sleep in the rest of the day and sleeping a good 12 hours at night.

I really struggled with wake times during this period of our daughter’s routine. I think I had her wake time too short at 50 minutes (including eating time) at the beginning of the month. I worked on adjusting and struggled to find the correct wake time the whole month. However, by the end of the month the appropriate wake time seemed to pretty clearly be 90 minutes. As soon as I landed at the 90 minute wake time length for her, our daughter got sick for a week which caused her to be extra fatigued and wanting to sleep with almost no wake time.

This month was a period of big transition to our daughter’s wake time as she gained the ability to be happily awake and grew her alert time between naps. I would estimate that the appropriate wake time at the start of the month was close to 60 minutes (I had it too short initially) and that it extended throughout the month to 90 minutes by the end of the month. This is something that is probably different for every baby and requires watching their cues and figuring out what timing helps them settle and sleep well, but these are the times that seemed about right for our 3 month old.

Our daughter’s swaddle transition also happened during this time. Right near week 12 she really kept breaking one or often both arms out of the swaddle. We tried laying her down with both arms already out and it seemed to still cause her trouble. However, she would sleep through the night for 10+ hours with her arms out if she broke them out herself. We decided to still swaddle both arms in and let her break them out if she wanted until it seemed to be an issue to do so. However, just as we made this decision she began to roll over from her back to her stomach. When this happened we immediately began leaving both arms out for her safety. She had a couple of rough nights adjusting to the transition and suddenly rolling in her sleep, but after a bit she began to happily sleep on her stomach with both arms out.

Before beginning to roll over, our daughter started scooting around in her crib even with both arms in the swaddle during this time period. She then sometimes got upset that her head was hitting the side of the crib. We would just run in, turn her really quickly back to the center of the crib and walk out. She seemed relatively undisturbed by this and then able to sleep better since she wasn’t irritated that her head was hitting the crib slats! This mobility was a new development but not any kind of major issue. The rolling over was a more difficult adjustment. We were thankful for our video monitor to be able to catch when she had just scooted into the side of the crib before it really riled her up! Sometimes the video monitor was extremely helpful with her rolling as well because if she started to fuss and we could see that she had rolled to her stomach we could give her a few minutes to see if she could resettle instead of assuming that she was hungry or had another urgent need.

Babywise 3 Month Schedule

Read more of our daughters’ sample Babywise schedules:

Baby #2:

Newborn Sample Schedule #1 – Weeks 1-2

Newborn Sample Schedule #2 – Weeks 2-5

2 Month Old Schedule Sample – Weeks 6-10

Baby #1: 

1-4 Month Babywise Schedule Sample

4-6 Month Babywise Schedule Sample

6-12 Month Babywise Schedule Sample

You can also read more 3 month old schedule examples by moms with a variety of feeding and lifestyle differences from BabyCenter here. It was especially helpful to me with my firstborn to read the details of  baby schedules that other moms followed to help me find the rhythm for our own!

 

3 Month Old Schedule Sample: Weeks 10-13 Daily Routine