On a Sunday morning, I love to flick through the pages of the 'Sunday' magazine.  The combination of having a very short attention span and very little time,
usually means it's straight to the glossy 'Fashion' section to look at the ridiculously beautiful but unpractical 'Shoe of the Week', and a quick read of the 'What I do' piece.

However this week's cover story chronicled a new Mum's experience with Gina Ford's contended baby routines, and it got me reading it until the very end!  I could completely relate to the author.  Having had zero prior experience with babies before having mine, I too was putting in the hours researching what to do after my baby arrived.  I too turned to Gina Ford's best seller 'The contended Little Baby Book' and I too discovered very early on, that whilst I had read the book - my baby hadn't!

She had her own ideas about when she would be sleeping, feeding and playing! 

I remember in the early day's trying to follow Ford's routine for a four week old baby, she states that a baby of this age can stay up for two hours.  So we would try to keep her awake.  We would plough through a plethora of toy's to keep her aroused, and wondered why when trying to put her down she would not be the slightest bit interested in going to sleep and would scream the house down in protest.  I think we lasted about two days in attempting to following the routines - the resulting mayhem was not worth it.  I would just let her feed, play and sleep when she wanted too and surprisingly enough, after a while she would get into her own routine. 

Whilst this routine may not have been at the exact times specified in the book - and would vary from day to day, it worked well for us and meant we had our own contented little household!