If you’re looking to get your 6 month old on a schedule, today I’m sharing our daily routine with you! If you have a younger baby, be sure to read our 4 month schedule. We gradually went from this schedule to the 6 month schedule so it was an easy transition. You’ll find your baby will give you cues and you’ll know when it’s time to adjust. So now to get to our 6 month old feeding schedule!
Wake time for us is around 7:30 am so if your baby wakes up earlier or later, just adjust the time slots below.
6 Month Old Feeding Schedule
Wake – 7:30 AM – NURSE/BOTTLE
Breakfast 8:00 AM – Serve Oatmeal or Rice Cereal. I prefer oatmeal and mix it with pumped breastmilk.
Note: I always offered breastmilk or formula first. This is because breastmilk or formula is still the #1 source of nutrition for your baby still and food is still for practice at this age.
9:30 AM – Nap #1 (I do 2 hour wake times at this age)
10:30 AM – NURSE/BOTTLE once up from the nap (naps usually range from 30 mins to 1 hour at this age). This schedule follows the EASY schedule (eat, activity, sleep, you) and is helpful in ensuring your baby doesn’t rely on you to fall asleep by nursing to sleep. If you can, always try to nurse or bottle feed after your baby gets up from their nap. Sometimes this doesn’t work out due to timing, etc but I did my best to try to stick to this. If you are having trouble with your baby sleeping at night read our 5 ways to help your baby sleep through the night.
12:00 PM – Lunch – offer a veggie/fruit/meat option
12:30 PM – Nap #2
1:30 PM – NURSE/BOTTLE
3:30 PM – Nap #3
4:30 PM – NURSE/BOTTLE
6:00 PM – Dinner – offer a veggie/fruit/meat option
7:30 PM – BED with NURSE/BOTTLE (Start bed time routine between 6:30 – 7PM so baby is asleep by 7:30PM. This gives a 12 hour nighttime)
Note – I kept my schedule to offer nursing every 3 hours. As mentioned above, breastmilk or formula at this age should still be your baby’s #1 nutrition source. That’s why I did not extend the time between the sessions. If you find your baby is not accepting the sessions you can cut back and extend the time between sessions. I noticed my baby was not taking as much during some of the sessions but this is completely normal as he is was getting additional calories from his solid feedings.
Know that every baby is different. So if you find your baby needs to eat or sleep more or less often just adjust the time in between the schedule. At this age when you slowly introduce solids, you work your way up to 3 meals a day. We did 1 meal to start for a few days, then added lunch then slowly added dinner. This allows time for your baby to adjust.
If you’re getting into solid feeding, one of the best feeding tools we used was a Num Num Dip Spoon.
Finally, if your baby is still not sleeping through the night – see our 5 tips for getting your baby to sleep through the night.
Hi Kim,
What a useful and helpful article. Thank you.
What if your baby won’t go down for a third late afternoon nap and there is more than 4 hrs. between projected bedtime and the last nap? Do you scoot up bedtime?
Thanks!
Yes if they drop their last nap you’ll need to bump up their bedtime because they won’t be able to stay up for such a long stretch.
Hi! At this age do you have set wake up times or do you let baby sleep and adjust schedule accordingly?
I always let my babies sleep and adjusted if needed. But usually once you get into a set schedule they tend to wake up around the same time every day.
I pretty much follow this schedule times for food and naps but I can’t figure out how you drop our cat nap from 6:30-7. I feed mine at 7:30, that would make them be awake for 3 hours 4:30-7:30. Mine get cranky after 1.5-2 hour wake times
Instead of a cat nap, do an earlier dinner and bedtime.