Help me form a routine!

overtonhayes

A posted on here a looong time ago about a routine, purely to prove to DH that yes, sometimes he will come home and the house will be a mess because I might not have time to clean. This time, it's for real. Baby's not here yet, but I would like to start a routine as soon as possible. I already struggle to stay on top of housework etc so I'd like to be already established in a baby-friendly routine before the baby arrives, so it's not quite as much of a shock when she's here. So I have some questions:

- For some reason, I have it in my head that a (breast)feed takes around 40 minutes. First of all, is that right? Does that include the time it takes to get baby to latch on; to burp baby, etc?

- Second, is that just a breastfeed? If DH was bottle-feeding baby (my pumped milk, FWIW), can we expect it to be quicker? Take longer? Be about the same?

- To any of you doing Parent-Directed-Feeding: I'm still just a little confused about it. I understand that it's about taking cues: i.e, instead of feeding your baby every X hours no matter what, you check every X hours to see if baby is hungry, and if she is, feed her. But would you say you still feed newborns every two hours or so? Is there any consistancy between feedings?

- I know every baby is different and every day is probably different, but just 'on average', how long is it between finishing a feed and changing a diaper?

For the sake of keeping this post brief, I've posted what I imagine my routine to be here, if anyone wants to take a look and give me some much-appreciated and much-needed input. Any times are a work in progress and open to change, of course, apart from things like when DH leaves for/comes back from work. Maybe I'm being ambitious with the times I've put in for now, but I have to start somewhere! Forgive me my rookie-ness!

Essentially, what I'm trying to do is get my existing routine as baby-ready as possible. If my routine can already allow time to feed/change/cuddle/check on baby, before she's actually here, then it will be much easier to adjust and somehow keep on top of everything when she's here... ...so I hope.

Thanks massively in advance, ladies, for taking the time to help out a total rookie.