What are combination schedules?

Combination schedules are a mix between parent-led and baby-led routines.

With this approach, you set a timetable for when your baby will eat, sleep, play, and so on, and you generally stick to a similar routine every day (unlike with some baby-led schedules). But you have more flexibility than with a strictly parent-led schedule, and you look more to your baby's cues when deciding what to do next.

A nap can be pushed back if your baby doesn't seem tired yet, and lunch can be postponed if a trip to the store takes longer than expected.

What's the thinking behind combination schedules?


One well-known supporter of this parenting style is "Supernanny" Jo Frost, who stresses the importance of routines but isn't "a stickler for 'must sleep at the same time in the same place every day.'"

In her book Jo Frost's Confident Baby Care, she offers general schedules for every three months of your baby's first year. "Setting firm ground is about creating healthy routines of waking, sleeping, and stimulating play, as well as dealing effectively with crying," she writes.

Frost recommends starting a feeding routine when your baby is about 4 weeks old by moving from feeding strictly on demand to feedings every two to four hours. But Frost says to use your observations of your baby's habits to create the timing, and she cautions that illness, teething, growth spurts, and travel may disrupt your routine or derail it completely.

"Do the best you can and reestablish as soon as possible," she writes.

How to establish a combination schedule

Often, parents who opt for a schedule that's both baby-led and parent-led look to many sources for inspiration. Books, parenting classes, your baby's doctor, family and friends, and moms and dads in your BabyCenter birth club can all help you figure out a routine that works for you and your baby. You can also check out our sample schedules for babies of all ages.

Pediatrician Marc Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child is one book that has helped many parents develop a combination routine. He provides general schedules to help foster healthy sleep patterns, but mostly focuses on the parents' role in helping their baby develop the self-soothing skills needed to sleep well. The idea is that when your baby's well rested, the remainder of the day – eating, playing, and so on – will fall into place.

Weissbluth's method is all about timing and learning how to recognize your baby's signals that he's ready for rest. In the book, he teaches parents how to spot these sleep signals and "catch the rising wave of sleepiness before the child crashes into an overtired state." Weissbluth acknowledges this isn't a perfect science, so letting your baby skip an afternoon nap or soothing him to sleep by any means necessary is okay as long as it's not happening all the time.

The techniques of "baby whisperer" Tracy Hogg, who died in 2004, also provide a middle-ground approach. Her popular baby-care book, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, encourages parents to keep a consistent routine, but not one that has to be exactly the same every day. Hogg's E.A.S.Y. method – having your baby Eat, do an Activity, then Sleep (always in that order) — was designed to create a content, happy baby and a nice chunk of time for You.

Parents it works for

Beth Lydic used Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child and advice from several friends to establish a schedule for her son, Tommy, when he was 3 months old. She kept to a strict timetable at first to get Tommy used to the routine but has since mellowed. Now that Tommy takes fairly regular naps and has a consistent bedtime, she doesn't worry too much about when things happen during the day.

Lydic's combination schedule means that when the weekend comes, the family isn't bound to the house for morning and afternoon naps. "If we miss a morning nap, I just make sure that we're home for the afternoon nap," she says.

However, when it comes to bedtime, she holds firm. "Tommy gets extremely fussy if he goes to bed much later than 6 or 6:30 p.m. If we have evening plans, we get a babysitter so that he can get to bed on time," Lydic says.

Karin Wallace, mother of 9-month-old Michael, created his schedule with input from her mom, mother-in-law, and friends. She's also looked to her son for cues: "He likes to go to bed early and take his long nap in the morning," she says. But the big challenge for Wallace was considering the schedules of her two older children, and then figuring out how to incorporate everyone's needs into a single day.

"It's taken some ironing out," Wallace says. "Changing schedules now that my oldest is in school all day, and my middle child is in preschool two days per week, has been really rough on everyone. I have to get one kid here at this time, another somewhere else at a different time, and in between the baby has to sleep. I'm still trying to figure out things like, do I put him down for a nap before we pick up my older child from school or wait until we all get home?"

Despite the challenges, Wallace sees real value in having a schedule, even if she has to tweak, change, or veer off of it from day to day. "I didn't do a lot of scheduling for my first when she was a baby, and she was a poor sleeper for a long time. I see a big difference in how Michael responds to the consistency of a routine. And when we deviate from the schedule for one reason or another, I'm vigilant about getting back on it – especially for the baby's sake."

Michelle Cassady started her son, Owen, on a basic eat-activity-sleep schedule when he was 6 weeks old. "As a first-time mom, a routine helped me anticipate the needs of my baby. If he began to cry 30 minutes after a feeding, I'd know that it wasn't because he was hungry. But you have to follow your mommy instinct first and foremost. If Owen was crying and seemed hungry, I would feed him! Flexibility is really the most important factor."

Advantages of a combination schedule

Fans of this approach say it's the best of both worlds – there's structure and predictability as well as flexibility. Your baby learns that certain things happen around the same time every day, but she's not completely thrown when a caregiver deviates from the plan here and there.

Disadvantages of a combination schedule

When you're not looking strictly to your baby's cues or the clock to determine your daily routine, you might find yourself entering a gray zone of uncertainty. This can leave you second-guessing yourself and set you up for trouble later on.

For instance, you put your 7-month-old down for his afternoon nap, only to have him scream and cry for the next 15 minutes as he fights sleep. You figure it's not worth the trouble, and take him out of his crib. But by 5:45 p.m., he's falling apart. The next day he makes the same protests, and you're left wondering when he'll nap, if at all.

Which parents do best with this schedule

Parents who see the merits in structure and flexibility. They like the option of changing things as needed but also value a routine that helps both parent and baby know what comes next.

This type of schedule is often the default for parents of older children, who need something flexible enough to accommodate everyone's daily needs. Also, combination schedules can be a natural settling place for parents who find their baby-led routine becoming more structured or their parent-led routine becoming more lax.

Which babies do best with this schedule

Babies who like routine and follow predictable patterns – that's most babies – but who don't get rattled if on occasion a morning nap happens on the way to the store rather than in the crib or when a playdate runs 20 minutes into the usual nap time.

Books that can help

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Marc Weissbluth


Jo Frost's Confident Baby Care: What You Need to Know for the First Year From America's Most Trusted Nanny, by Jo Frost

The American Academy of Pediatrics Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5, by Steven P. Shelov and Tanya Remer Altmann (Editors)


Tell us: What kind of baby schedule works for you?
