My Baby’s First Year series has been one of the  most popular series’ you can find on this blog. I love being able to offer practical information to help moms out, especially when it comes to their babies and their routines. Sometimes it can be one of the most stressful things to figure out in parenting, especially when every baby can be SO different. So even though Jude is baby number three, I still come back to offer recent posts because, like I said, every baby is so different!

Jude definitely fits this description because he has been SO different than my other two. He started off by being my only baby that ever needed to cluster feed during the evenings. His cluster feeding wasn’t forced at all, it’s literally all he wanted to do. He is my big eater still to this day.

So if you have a baby that needs to cluster at night, and you like to do later bedtimes like we do, here is what his schedule looked like as a newborn

Newborn Baby Cluster Feeding Schedule

6AM Wake & Nurse

6:45 Nap

9AM Wake & Nurse

9:45 Nap

12 Wake & Nurse

12:45 Nap

3PM Wake & Nurse

3:45 Nap

6PM Wake & Nurse

6:45 Nap

8PM Nurse

Begin Wake Time

8:30/9 – 30 Minute Cat-Nap

10PM Nurse & Bed

Jude would give us about a 4-5 hour stretch on average. So he would wake around 2 for his night feeding and then again at 6AM.

I continued to have him wake at 6AM and that middle of the night feeding stretched to 2:30, then 3, then 4. As it got closer to 5 I tried to limit him to one side to get him to start waking at that 6AM hour. He slept through the night for the first time at 5 Weeks. Afterwards it was hit or miss for a couple weeks, but he became pretty consistent in it by 7-8 weeks. Once that was consistent I didn’t have to wake him up in the morning anymore. By the time he was 3 months old he was sleeping in as late as 7 and even 8 some days.

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Why did we choose a 6AM wake up time with Jude vs the other two? Well he fell into the four hour stretch on his own, so having him wake at 6AM was easy. Also, with having two other kids, it was a good time to start to give me some time to wake up during those Newborn days and take it slow in the mornings. It was a nice way to wake up and not be thrown into the day right away.

With newborns, the routine is the most important part. I don’t usually start having them sleep in their cribs and away from everyone until they’re three to four months old. My main focus is just setting the pattern for eating and sleeping, helping them fall into a routine. So Jude slept in his dock-a-tot next to me on the couch the majority of the time. At that age, he can pretty much sleep through anything so it worked for us.

If you like this post, you might like some of the other posts in the Baby’s First Year Series. You can also find printable versions of these schedules and many more in my resource library. Just sign up for my newsletter, become a part of the mom tribe, and have access to these resources and more!