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11 months is a tricky age because you’re about to run up against a lot of milestones, like switching to milk. I wanted to share this 11 month baby sample schedule to show what worked for us when my son was 11 months old. It might seem a bit strange compared to other schedules, but it turned out great for my son. I think it’s a great example of how you have to do whatever works for your family. It’s also worth noting that we’ve adjusted this 11 month schedule for our second son to better fit with the toddler’s schedule. Without further ado, here we go!
7 AM – Wake up
Full disclosure: My son didn’t always wake up at seven. Sometimes, he woke up at six. Sometimes, he woke up at five. But we have a pretty firm rule in this house that we don’t get him up until he starts crying. So, if he’s up at six in the morning and he’s chilling in his crib, we just leave him. Once he starts crying (which was usually around seven anyway), then we get him up.
7:15 AM – Bottle – 8 oz
After we got him up and changed his diaper, it was bottle time. He would drink an 8 oz bottle to start the day. He wasn’t great at feeding himself (he could; he just didn’t want to), so I mastered feeding him with one hand and working on my laptop for my job with the other. The trials of a work from home mom.
7:30 AM – Playtime
As a working mom, I had to come up with ways to make space for my job beyond naptime. So, we bought a massive playpen with a foam mat and filled it with safe toys. The goal was to create a completely safe space, so I could focus more on work. At 11 months, he was starting to outgrow it, but he would still play independently for a good hour or so. So, he would go in the playpen, I would work, and then when he started getting fussy, we would play together.
9 AM – Breakfast with 4 oz of formula in a cup
One thing I wanted to do was wean my son off the bottle and formula pretty much immediately once he turned one. Between the formula shortage and being sick of washing bottles, it made sense to wean him off ASAP. Giving him formula in a cup during meal times was one of the ways I worked towards that. My son had been using a silicone training cup since he was around four months old, so he was pretty good with it by this point.
So, to prepare him for drinking milk in a cup at mealtimes, we just started with formula at mealtimes. Regardless of the type of cup your child is using, I would recommend doing this for the switch to milk.
9:30 AM – Nap
After breakfast was nap time. I’ve read they need time between meals and naptime, but it never caused any issues. Even now, he has lunch right before a nap, and he’s down immediately. Once again, unless he was crying, we would leave him in the crib until wake-up time.
11:30 AM – Wake up and snack w/ water
Once he was awake, he was back in the high chair for a snack. Typically, we did fruit in the morning, like a banana, and then some Cheerios. We would also give him some water, typically 2-4 oz in the silicone training cup.
12 PM – Play time
This is honestly a repeat of the first play time. He would play in the playpen until he started to get bored, and then I would stop working and spend some one-on-one time with him.
1 PM – Lunch with 4 oz of formula in a cup
Once again, he’s drinking 4 oz of formula in a cup to get him ready for milk. For lunch, we would often do leftovers from dinner last night. It’s stuff like pasta, veggies, and eggs.
2 PM – Nap
At this age, my son was still doing two naps a day. He didn’t transition to one nap a day until around two. This is the one naptime when I would get him up as soon as he woke up. I wanted to make sure there was sufficient time between snack time and dinner time for him to get hungry again.
3:30 – Wake up and snack w/ water
We always do a vegetable snack in the afternoon, typically a Beech nut veggie pouch unless I had cooked veggies from the night before.
5 PM – Dinner with 4 oz of formula in a cup
Around this age, we were trying to have him mostly eat what we ate. Sometimes, he couldn’t really eat what we were eating because of too much sodium or because we would order out or something. When that was the case, we would make cheesy eggs, peanut butter applesauce, or Greek yogurt with fruit mixed in.
6:30 PM – Bottle – 8 oz
Because he was having formula at meal times, we stuck to two bottles a day, making his total formula amount 28 oz a day. To make sure he had staying power throughout the night, we did a final bottle before bedtime.
7 PM – Bedtime
To be honest, we’ve never really had a bedtime routine for our son, and we’ve never sleep-trained him either. We’ve only just started to have a bedtime routine now that he’s nearing two and a half. But at this age, he would have a bath, we would put him into his pjs, and then he would go in the crib. It might take him a bit to fall asleep, but he would really just lay in bed and talk to himself until he got tired enough to sleep.
Yes, I understand this makes me extremely lucky. However, we also put in the work to make sure his day was structured enough that he understood when it was time to go to sleep. I used to work at a daycare, so I worked through things with that mindset. Obviously, what works for you and your child might be different.
When my son neared one year old, I ended up doing a bunch of research into what the best 11-month baby schedule was. I looked at so many 11 month baby sample schedules. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. I ended up combining multiple schedules into one that I knew would work best for our family. That’s what I recommend doing for your child. Figure out what makes the most sense for your family and what’s going to best meet your child’s needs. Create a connection between their current schedule and the schedule they’ll be adjusting to. Then, give them time to adjust because it might take a few days.
Got questions? Leave them below!
Erin Lafond is a writer, website creator, and mom. She survived new motherhood by Googling things a lot, calling her mother, and embracing trial and error. Now, she shares her knowledge with all new moms. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two sons.
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