I agree that establishing a routine is a must. Even at such a young age, the baby benefits from it but it doesn't always work the way it's supposed to. Like mrslunar said, some babies are easy and some are high needs. My son happens to be a high need baby. I knew about establishing a routine even before I gave birth so I had plans, my baby just didn't cooperate. The routine is always the same, but Matthew had other ideas. Sometimes he slept 2 hr stretches, and the next day he on slept 1 hr. Sometimes he even woke up every half hour. This was one of the reasons I was getting discouraged at the time. I was feeling like a failure until I found Dr. Sears and his books. I was introduced to the term high-needs and life became great.

Like I said, both easy babies and high needs babies will benefit from a routine but having a routine is not an 'end all'. Babies are like grown ups. What works for one doesn't always work for another, through no fault of their own.

This is really great, and were I just a mom of 1, I'd say this was right on target. I think this neglects, though, parents who have struggles with sleep issues and non-easy babies. Your baby sounds like my first.......she was a dream. But  this can be discouraging for parents of more high needs babies. Babies who sleep this easily are GREAT! But it doesn't mean parents who aren't blessed with those kids are doing anything wrong. Sometimes all that routine stuff just doesn't work for all kids.

The shifts idea is GREAT, but also there are single parents and there are moms stuck with husbands who don't do that for them.

Our son starting waking up once a night around 10 weeks, he goes to bed around 8:30, gets up at 1:30 and then sleeps until 6 or 7. The biggest thing for us was having him regular so we can loosely plan our sleep schedule around this to make sure we get enough. My wife and I can alternate night feedings because we're bottle feeding him breast milk (our kid just would not drink from the breast) so it works out pretty well. Schedule's are a lifesaver.