The Four Hour Schedule

Here I was, all wondering whether Zooey would ever move to a 4-hr. schedule, not trying to push it, trying to accept the fact that she might not (which would've been fine), and it looks like she's moving herself. I was reading up on Babywise, which says most babies can move to a 4 hour schedule sometime around 6 months; some babies actually go to one around 4 months. The Baby Whisperer, Tracy Hogg, says that most babies can and should move to a 4-hour schedule around 4 months. Zooey was not one of those babies. I was looking at Hogg's info. online, and she has a schedule in her book, "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems," on page 230 for moving from a 3 hour to a 4 hour schedule. I looked at it and realized that Zooey is indeed moving herself to a 4 hour routine. She long ago dropped her 4th nap, and the current schedule we have is smack-dab in the middle of the transition. Hogg says the change could happen over a period of 15 days, but I think it takes a little longer for some babies. Normally our routine is:

7:30 - wake, nurse, solids
8:40 - nap
10:30 - wake, nurse
11:45 - nap
1:30 - wake, nurse, solids
3:00 - catnap
4:00 - wake, nurse
6:15 - nurse, solids, bath
7:00 - bedtime

The last two days, however, Zooey seems to be stretching it more. Sarah & I took Zooey to the zoo, and she went 4 hours without a feed. She was happy as a clam, except a little tired. That was 2 days ago. Yesterday, she went roughly 4 hours without any pushing on my part, for all of her feeds. Our routine was like this yesterday:

7:15 - wake, nurse, solids
8:30 - put her down, but she didn't want to nap...fell asleep at 10:00
11:00 - wake, nurse, solids
12:00 - she was exhausted from missing most of her first nap and slept 3 hours
3:00 - wake, nurse
4:30 - nap
5:30 - wake, we had some things to do so we tried some puffs while I finished making dinner (she did ok, but I'm still not sure she's 100% ready)
6:00 - nurse, solids, bath
7:00 - bed

...AND, she slept all night to 7:30 this morning. I seriously thought she'd wake hungry in the night, but nope. Now we'll see if it was just a fluke incident from having her schedule thrown off at the zoo or if she's truly moving herself. What she did yesterday is actually the next step in Hogg's move to a 4 hour routine. I wonder if she will move to that, then slowly move to the ultimate goal? Time will tell.