When to introduce a routine

[First Baby White]

Harry is now 6 weeks old and I was wondering when I should start to implement some sort of routine in terms of day time naps and evenings. At the moment he only power naps in the day for about 20-30 mins and this is at random times. Also his feeds are a bit random at the moment as I gave him 6oz bottles then he seems to need a top up about 2 hours later so now I make 8oz bottles and he feeds on that gradually over 2 hours so it is more feeding on demand again, I am not sure what has caused this change as he use to feed every 4 hours without fail.
He also has a sort of nightime routine but its not great, he goes to sleep at around 6pm, we wake him up to bath him then he either goes back to sleep or feeds and goes to sleep at 10 then wakes up at 2am for feed, back down at 3am, up at 5am back down at 6am then wakes to play and stay up at 7am so not much sleep inbetween the last few feeds at all.
I do bath him at about 9pm most nights but wondered what else I can do to try and improve it???

 

[Sage]

At this young age id just carry on with what your doing. I use to just feed on demand which use to be every 3 or 4 hours then at night id always bath him at 7, bottle then bed. when he was tiny he wouldnt always see it as bed time so if he really didnt wanna go off id play with him or cuddle him in his room until i knew he'd sleep then put him down. Eventually when he discovered there was such thing as night and day his bed time got easier and we stil do bath bottle and bed at these times now and he will always be asleep by 8. the rest of the routine fell into place a bit better when he was properly weaned, before then i would just play it by ear, do what i wanted and just made sure i had milk with me where ever we went!

 

[Sherlock]

Demand feeding is normal at this age. He could be going through a growth spurt so may want more food at different times. They have one around this time. I'd really just go with the flow tbh, even with bottle feeding.

And I'd not bother with trying to establish any real routine until around 3 months. Things can change overnight and you cannot get babies to set times and so on. They need to slowly adjust their bodies to day and night, its not something that just clicks with them or they recognise. They grow in to it and parents can help them adjust to it slowly as time goes on. Also if you try to be to strict it does cause problems then if you do something different on a given day. And can have a knock on effect for days after.

I'd look to slowly working on the evening/bedtime one and let your LO guide you for the rest for now. If he is tired, let him sleep, if he is awake, then go with it. FWIW I have a power napping baby and he's done this since he was 10 days old. Some days he only sleeps for 30 minutes total. As he has gotten older he's found his own pattern/routine and now sleeps longer in the daytime. I didn't force it with him, just let him find it for himself and he's happy as anything and it works for me. They don't have any concept of time or of day or night, it all has to be slowly adjusted to. Be patient and let him guide you