Holly Willoughby - Truly Happy Baby ... It Worked for Me - A practical parenting guide from a mum you can trust

Helpful hints As the weeks go by, you’re looking for your baby to go longer and longer between feeds. The first step is to try to get her to have a full feed where she empties the bottle or breast every time, so that she can last longer before she is hungry again. Then when she does feed again, she’ll be hungry enough to complete the next feed so that she doesn’t need to snack in between, and so on. The idea is that if your baby has had enough complete, regular feeds during the daytime, she’ll get to a point where she doesn’t need to wake for a feed during the night.

At this stage, your baby is still so young so, again, don’t put pressure on falling into a routine. Sometimes it’s tough to make your baby go longer between feeds, and the best piece of advice I can give you is that you should ask yourself a few questions, just to be sure you haven’t missed anything before you feed your baby earlier than necessary. Is your baby really crying because she’s hungry? Does she need a nappy change or just a cuddle? Did she have enough to eat at her last feed or is she hungry now because she fell asleep after a few minutes and you didn’t wake her to finish the bottle? After the first six weeks or so, if you continue to feed your baby every time she starts to cry you’ll find she only ever takes small amounts as it’s more of a snack than a full feed.

Helpful hints Since your baby arrived, you’ve probably been feeding her on demand, perhaps expressing some feeds or giving her formula. However you’ve decided to feed your baby, try to get to a point where you’re leaving three to four hours between feeds. This is the way you teach your baby to fill up enough at a feed, to sleep longer between feeds and ultimately be able to sleep for long stretches through the night without needing to wake for a top-up. By the time all of mine were three months old, whether breastfed or bottle-fed, they were on a four-hourly feeding schedule, but that’s just what worked for me. You’ll end up forming your own schedules to suit your life. And don’t be downhearted if it takes you and your baby longer to get to grips with a routine – everyone is different and that’s how it should be!

Think of the four-hourly routine as a helpful framework for you to work with – if nothing else, it will give you a rough idea of when you last fed without having to keep writing it all down. It may not always work – some weeks your baby may be hungrier than others and, if you’re breastfeeding, may want to cluster feed through the night. Cluster feeding is when your baby wakes for lots of feeds much closer together than usual. Young babies do this a lot, and no one really knows why. It could be your baby’s way of encouraging you to produce more milk so that there’s more to fill her up. This can be exhausting for you, and you’ll often feel like it’s never going to end and you’re destined to be this feeding machine for the rest of time! Just know that it won’t last forever and the good news is that it will lead to you producing oodles of milk to satisfy your baby – think how much sleep you’ll both get then!

Always be guided by your baby. If you have a baby who wakes at 6am every morning, start your 24-hour clock from then. I just found that the 7am routine really worked for me. Your body gets used to a routine very quickly and you’ll be shocked how you check to see what time it is and discover it’s 11am or 3pm on the dot and feed time. Your body instinctively gave you a little prod. You probably won’t even need to look at the clock!

By having a set timetable you know when the next feed is – you remember the four golden numbers 7, 11, 3 and 7!

One of the best things about getting my babies in a four-hourly feeding routine – in my case 7am/11am/3pm and 7pm – was it finally meant I stopped having to ask myself or Dan when I last fed the baby! Baby brain is definitely not a myth – whether it’s down to all the hormones or just lack of sleep, you can have finished a feed an hour ago, and then forget immediately what time you began the last feed and completely lose track of time.

Be adaptable The four-hour feeding routine is all about trying to find that key balance between being too flexible and not flexible enough! Being too flexible with your baby might mean you struggle to set a feeding and sleeping routine further down the line, but not being flexible enough is likely to stress you out. It’s about bearing the guidelines in mind, but adapting them to suit you and your baby.

Helpful hints This routine will seem like a dream before you get there. An unbroken night’s sleep! Perfect! Exactly your goal. Having said that, if your baby is a bit more stubborn, don’t give up. She’ll get there eventually and so will you. If your baby is still waking at night, don’t be discouraged. Just ask yourself those troubleshooting questions I gave you in the Pre-routine Hintsto check you’re doing all the right things during the day to prepare your baby for a good night’s sleep. Weaning (see here) can help with that as solids don’t get digested as quickly as liquids, keeping your baby’s tummy from rumbling for longer. Whatever your situation, perhaps this little piece of information might make you feel better – or more determined to get your baby into a routine. My mum will tell anyone who will listen how I didn’t sleep through the night until I was four and a half years old. Imagine that! Rather not? No, me neither! On the plus side, I can sleep for England now … or at least I could until I had babies!

Getting babies off bottles …

By the time your baby gets to about six months old she will naturally want to start copying you, even down to the way you drink. If she reaches for your water cup, let her try to take a sip. Your baby will want to move on as much as you want her to, so be guided by her newfound interest. Give her a beaker or sippy cup with a hard spout and lid at mealtimes so she can help herself and get used to drinking out of something other than a bottle.

When your baby is getting old enough for solid food it’s time to start dropping bottles. So to give you some idea, here’s what I did with Chester, from about six months:

Then I gradually dropped the 11am feed, so he was just having three bottles in 24 hours. At eleven months I dropped the 3pm feed, so he was on two bottles at 7am and 7pm. At twelve months I dropped the 7am bottle and he just had a sippy cup with milk at breakfast, but be guided by what you think your baby needs all the way along. I left in that 7pm bedtime bottle for a while, as that’s such a snuggly and cosy time and I really think it helped to settle him.

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Feeding solutions Hopefully your experience of feeding your new baby will go without a hitch, but there are a few things that can get in the way, particularly if you are breastfeeding. You might also learn that your baby has a medical reason for finding feeding tricky, such as tongue-tie or reflux, which I know all about having gone through them with Chester! These arise mostly in younger babies, and you’re likely to need medical help to overcome them. In this section you’ll find some of the most common issues you might face and some possible solutions to help you get on track. Never hesitate to seek the help of your GP or health visitor should you need to.