Gina Ford for working moms

I'm loosely following the Gina Ford routine and found it to be helpful for my two month old. The problem is I will go back to work full time soon and it is impossible for me to be back home, give the baby bath by 6 o'clock, and sleep by 7 o'clock.


I was thinking maybe I should set the sleep time from 8pm to 8 am and delay all the activities by one hour. Does it work that way? Has any working mothers tried that?


Thanks all!

Our daughter has been going to bed at 2000-2030 since she was about 18 months. No problems really. Delaying by an hour works fine.


My wife works 0630-1645, then comes home to be with the girls until they go to sleep (1900 and 2030), then logs in to put in a few more hours if necessary.


By the way it's really not necessary to give your child a bath every day unless they're really sweaty/dirty. A quick sponge bath or even just a crotch/face/hands wash is just fine. Full bath 2-3 times a week works for us. Gives you more time doing other things if you want to.

Thanks for your reply, axptuguy!


Can you tell me how shifting the schedule affect feeding? If the night feeding being pushed to 10:30 from 11:30pm, does the baby wakes up at 8 in the morning?


On bathing, our baby loves bath time so we enjoy giving him bath. It's also something my husband and I work as a team, so we'd like to keep it as a ritual. :)

"Can you tell me how shifting the schedule affect feeding? If the night feeding being pushed to 10:30 from 11:30pm, does the baby wakes up at 8 in the morning?"


Well, our daughters always woke up around 8. It seemed to depend on total sleep more than food intake. Our older would happily sleep 12 hours at a stretch when she was 3-4 months. Our younger is a bit more demanding. ;)


We tended to adjust feeding and sleep a bit separately. It works. Of course try to feed right before bed.


The first couple of months tend to be a bit wonky. But after 8 or so weeks we stabilized on the following:

1830-1900. Evening feeding.

0830. Morning feeding


At about 6-8 months food intake has increase to the point that you need to add a nightly feeding:

0330-0530 (whenever she wakes up) nightly feeding


With our older daughter, we did 2000 evening, then my wife would wake her at 0530 before going to work. She'd go back to sleep until 0830.


Your results may vary. We have never believed in "never wake a sleeping baby". Much better to wake them before they are ravenous. Moving schedules around is no huge deal (we did travel here from NY after all) as long as you don't do it all the time. Just figure out what works for you and baby and baby will adapt.


What we also noticed was the difference between nipple and bottle. Our first was born with a cleft palate so she couldn't suck and had to use a bottle with a special nipple. So she did a good 6-7 oz per feeding barring the first month.


Our second daughter can suck on the nipple, but we noticed that she just sucked for 5 minutes, then fell fast asleep. It's nice and cozy snuggled up to the breast after all! And some kids are just plain lazy. Then she'd wake up after 2-3 hours again and want more food. Annoying! So my wife expresses and she only gets the bottle. 6-7 oz per time and she didn't wake up again for a good 5-7 hours or more.