LILY’S EATING AND SLEEPING SCHEDULE: 12 MONTHS OLD
Writing 12 months old in the title is the craziest thing ever. How did we get here? Shortest and longest year ever, right?!
So tomorrow Lily is turning 1 and I haven’t done a feeding + sleeping schedule since she was 8 months old. As you can imagine (and have seen from Instagram), so much has changed, hence the constant request for this blog post!
If your babe is younger than Lil, you may want to check out these posts instead:
I’ll share below what her schedule looks like today but first I want to talk about two things, the 12 month “regression” and transitioning to homo/whole milk.
Lily experienced her 12 month regression in mid-April, so around 11.5 months, when we were still living at DC’s parent’s house…lucky them, lol! As you probably know, a “regression” is more like a progression because it means that your baby is going through a major developmental leap where they are learning and mastering new skills. Their brains are on overdrive which often leads to poor sleeping, eating, crankiness, etc. I’m obviously not a child development expert but that is is my very simplified explanation for the regression. If you need more, check out a resource like The Wonder Weeks.
Her 12 month regression lasted for about 1 week. Every night, like clockwork, she would wake up at 3:30 am whining or sometimes full out crying. We left her for the most part because she would fall back asleep but there were definitely a few nights I went in and we had a few sleepovers with her in our bed. She was also getting up around 5:00 am. We would try and leave her in the crib as long as we could but pretty much got her around 6:00 or 6:30 am. Her naps were also shitty, lasting around 45 mins. Her eating and mood were not affected. So aside from this regression, the below schedule is a normal day for her.
For the transition to homo milk (or whole milk for my non-Canadians), our pediatrician told us we could introduce it as early at 9 months. We decided to wait until a few days ago and I would say we’re in the middle of transitioning right now. The first time we offered it, it was an 8oz night time bottle and she downed it in a few minutes. So that went well 🙂 We still have some formula opened so we will now try and get through that and then we will fully make the switch to homo milk when it’s all used up. You’ll see the bottle schedule below.
7:00 am – wake up – if she gets up before 7am, we try and leave her to play until 7 in the crib. Since it’s been lighter out, she’s definitely been getting up earlier, like 6:30/6:45 but she is usually just talking or whining a little and sometimes falls back asleep. We try to get as close to 7 as possible.
8oz bottle formula/homo milk – we’ll offer the bottle a few minutes after she’s woken up and had a diaper change. Like I said above, once the formula is finished we will fully switch to homo milk. She doesn’t always finished the 8 oz, she’ll typically finish something between 6-8 oz. Now when she wakes up she says “botto” and it’s SO cute.
8:00 am breakfast – we try and wait until an hour after her bottle for breakfast. She refuses to let us feed her so now her usual yogurt breakfast has been an issue. We need to offer foods that are good for self-feeding like these pancakes, toast, muffins, etc.
9:00 am – nap 1 – we basically keep nap 1 at 9am no matter what time she wakes up. If she happens to sleep past 7, we will make sure she doesn’t go down before the 2 hour mark but we find 9 am has been pretty consistent on a daily basis.
10:30-11:00 am – wake up – nap 1 is normally 90 mins – 2 hours. Sometimes she sleeps longer than 2 hours. We experimented with waking her after the 2 hour mark but have found it has no effect on her second nap so we just let her sleep. Our general rule of thumb is for all naps she needs to be in the crib for at least an hour, even if she gets up before.
Pre/post lunch snack – we are still trying to figure this one out. Our end goal is to transition her off the post nap 1 bottle and make sure she eats a good lunch. So we are playing around with when/if to give a snack. As an example, yesterday she woke up at 11, I gave her lunch at 12:30 and then I could see she wanted a bottle at 1:30, so I gave her 4oz homo milk before her nap. So we will see with this, keep you posted!
12:30 pm – lunch – this post is a good indication of what she eats for lunch and dinner. Ignore breakfast, as most of those foods we can’t do anymore since she refuses to let us feed her. Such a diva!
2:00 pm – nap 2 – in the afternoon, we try and put her down as close to 2pm as possible. We go by the 3-3.5 hour wake window which pretty much always ends up being around 2pm. This nap really varies. Sometimes it’s 45 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. I would say for the most part, it’s normally 90 minutes. This is one where there are lots of little wake ups and we leave her and she normally falls back asleep. The only time we will ever wake her from this nap is if she’s still sleeping at 4 pm. Hardly ever happens though.
Pre-dinner snack – we got rid of this bottle a few weeks ago and now she just gets a snack when she wakes up from nap 2. It’s usually a pouch or sometimes banana, a string cheese, muffin, something she can self-feed of course 🙂
5:30 pm – dinner – this same post shows what we give her for dinner. Her preferences change every day so it’s impossible to predict what she will like one day from the next. One thing we quickly learned is we have to hide fruit from her siteline until she’s eaten if we want her to eat anything other than fruit. The girl can down a pint of raspberries in 5 minutes.
6:45 pm – bottle – this is an 8oz bottle of formula/homo milk. Some days she’ll finish, other days she’ll drink 5 oz. Just depends what she ate the rest of the day and we don’t worry too much if she finishes.
7:00 pm bedtime – knock on wood, 95% of the time she sleeps through the night, minus teething, regressions, etc. Hope I’m not jinxing this by writing it down!!
So that is your 12 month update! I will keep you posted on the post nap 1 snack/bottle to see what happens.
I’m honestly so happy you guys request these types of blogs because when I read the old ones, there is NO way I would remember any of it now. So this will be super helpful for baby 2 one day, when I will definitely have forgotten everything.
If you have any others Q’s, you know where to find me!
xoxo