3MO just started EASY, trouble napping w/o boob

[donnaR]

Hi all, I just started implementing EASY today with my 3MO ds. He has been a colicky baby until very recently, and what they call a "frequent nurser." Our day has looked more like this:

Wake in am.
E
A
E
A
S - morning nap 1 hour
E
A
E
A
S - afternoon nap, pu/pd for 45mns until I gave up and got him up to eat
E
S - having long nap now that he got a boob before sleep <sigh>

Will it just take him a few days to get used to the changes?

[newmom2635]

I would try to keep your LO awake after each feeding even if its just for a diaper change.  Once the association of eating then sleeping is gone maybe the he will be able to nap after his activity.  I would go  slow and don't expect much if you stick with it, it will work
Good luck

Christina

[Missy Lou]

i don't know much about nursing unfortunately, but have you tried distracting LO with playing when he seems like he wants to eat to snack?
melissa

[SweetAsHoney]

He may be too young for PU/PD, have you tried pt/sh?

Anna

[Kimberly®]

LO is deffinitly to young for PU/PD. What EASY are you one? 2,2.5, or 3 hour? Sounds like your LO is snacking and not getting a full feed. Can you give me an outline of your routine with times?

[donnaR]

I'm waiting for my book to come in the mail, so I am kind of winging it...... thanks for all the help offered here in the meantime!

Ok, here's the routine in a nutshell:

E  8:00am wake & bf 20mns
A  til 9:30am
E  9:30-9:40 snack
S  9:30-10:30am
E  10:30am wake from morning nap and bf 20mns
A  til 11:50am
E  11:50am snack before my lunch other he will have a meltdown since he's not getting undivided attention
A   til 1pm
E   snack bf 10mns before nap
S   nap 1 to 1.5hrs (sometimes only 40mns, sometimes wakes up every 10mns crying and won't really nap)
E   2:30 bf, depends on how the nap went whether this will be a 20minute one, or a snack.
A   til 4:ish, then I'll try to get him down again withtout bf, but eventually give in and bf
E   bf for 10mns
S   sometimes will nap, but is usually similar to the previous nap, hit & miss
A   5:00 activity while we eat dinner, but he's usually fussing, so I eat quickly and bf him again (10mns).
A   5:30 bath, massage with lotion, jammies
E   6:00 bf before bed 20-30mns
S   6:30 in bed for the night. Sometimes he wakes up several times over the next 3 hrs for a top up, and occasionally he's down for the night until midnight or so.

Last night was the first time I could get him to dream feed, he usually won't open his mouth at all, but I kept working at him until he opened and ate. It didn't get him any longer thru the night, he woke up at midnight, then 2am, then 5am, then up for the day at 7am.

I'm sure i"m doing this all wrong........ any tips? He was super colicky the first 3 months and we couldn't get any kind of a routine going cause all he would do is bf and cry.

[donnaR]

oh, and I did try pt/sh, and he doesn't seem to calm down at all with it. how long am I supposed to stick with that? 10mns didn't seem to help him calm down at all.

[SweetAsHoney]

depends on how worked up he is i've done pt/sh from 2 minutes up until an hour, and sometimes even if its not working its better than feeling helpless.

Anna

[Mrs. A]

I started my LO on E.A.S.Y. when he was almost 2 months.  He was BFing almost every hour and a half before that since I really wasn't sure how to read his cues.  It took about a week to extend the time in between feeds and get him on a 3hour routine.  If you know that your LO is getting a full feed then I would try pat/shh when he goes down for a nap instead of feeding beforehand.  Sometimes when I do pat/shh it takes a long time.  Only recently (as in yesterday and today) has it started taking 10 minutes or less and that's after trying for almost a month already!  There have been times when it's taken me an hour to get him to sleep.  Those were the times when I wanted to give up but I couldn't because I didn't know any other way to get him to sleep.  I'm glad I stuck with it because at this point he very rarely falls asleep while eating. 
So hang in there!  You'll get lots of great support here!   

[donnaR]

thanks gals, I'm feeling so confidant this will work, I appreciate all the advice and support 

Last night I did dream feed around 10:15pm and he woke up as I placed him into his crib, so I did pat/sh for about 10mns and he was asleep. The dream feed doesn't seem to extend his sleep much at this point (have only done dream feed twice), as he woke up at 12:30am, but I'm sure we'll get there. I printed off the 3hr easy schedule in the post "How to Start Your BAby on EASY" and am going to try to stick with that today.

Ok off to try a morning nap.

[donnaR]

Ok he's down. My question now is if pat/sh cuts severely into the nap time, should I wake him for next scheduled feed time? Or stretch out the day letting him nap for a whole 1.5hrs? Pat/sh took me 35mns partly due to a 2.5YO banging at the bedroom door and screaming "MOMMMMYYYYYY." Next time he will get a show to watch before I go into the room with the babe.

[Mrs. A]

I think that you're supposed to wake him up when it's the regular time to eat instead of letting him sleep longer and then if he seems tired maybe put him down a little earlier for the next nap.   

[donnaR]

i don't know much about nursing unfortunately, but have you tried distracting LO with playing when he seems like he wants to eat to snack?
melissa

yeah i'm kind of confused about his hunger signs. i never know if he's really hungry or just peckish, and since he was so colicky at first, i gave him the chance to eat all the time since it was the only thing that calmed him. my friend was over yesterday and she was feeding her boy who is almost 6 months. he was at it for almost 30mns, where I don't think my LO ever eats longer than 15mns. should he be eating for a longer time? maybe being on a definite 3hr schedule will help.

[donnaR]

I think that you're supposed to wake him up when it's the regular time to eat instead of letting him sleep longer and then if he seems tired maybe put him down a little earlier for the next nap.   

ok, will wake him at 10ish then and go from there. tx! will post back later with more updates and probably more Q's!

[donnaR]

So he woke up on his own at 10am, and we had to go out for an hour or so. WHen I take the kids out, my older son goes in the stroller and babe goes in the sling. He sleeps whenever he is in the sling. So even though he had napped from 9:15-10:00, he napped again from 11:00am-12:noon..... now how do I handle outings when he will always sleep? Is that considered activity? Or can moving sleep also be considered a nap? SHould I have gone out during a planned S??

Now we're messed up for the day:

E  10:00am
A  10:15-11:00am
S  11:00am-noon (in sling walking downtown& back)
E  12noon (10mns)
A  12:10-1:06pm  (where normally this should be an E)

I guess I"ll keep him up til 1:30 then put him to sleep til the regularly scheduled E at 3:00pm.

WOuld this be the right approach? Or what should I be doing?

[Missy Lou]

i think we need to work on his A time.  at 3 months, the average A time is an hour, 20 minutes to an hour, 30 minutes.  it looked like the morning A time was about an hour.  although the afternoon was 1.5 hours which is good.

try to make his A time a little more consistent if you can.  A time is eating, diaper change, playing and winddown.  i'd plan any outings to fall during naptime, preferably though during his catnap.  if he's used to sleeping in his sling, then there's really no sleep training going on. 

LO eats every 2 hours?
melissa

[donnaR]

i think we need to work on his A time.  at 3 months, the average A time is an hour, 20 minutes to an hour, 30 minutes.  it looked like the morning A time was about an hour.  although the afternoon was 1.5 hours which is good.

try to make his A time a little more consistent if you can.  A time is eating, diaper change, playing and winddown.  i'd plan any outings to fall during naptime, preferably though during his catnap.  if he's used to sleeping in his sling, then there's really no sleep training going on. 

LO eats every 2 hours?
melissa

i'll work on his A time, he has been an extremely fussy baby (some tell me colic?) until very recently, and to sooth his constant crying, i nursed him. often he'd eat every 40mns or sooner. lately with implementing EASY I've been able to stretch it out a bit, but when he starts to fuss, not much soothes him other than eating, so yes, we are more like EAEAS within a 3hr time period. i'm going to keep working on that though to get him to every 3hrs.

good tip on the outing. i'll make a point of doing it during a scheduled nap, cause otherwise (as I found today) it messes up the whole rest of the day afterward. Like today when he fell asleep during an A time, while i walked with him in the sling.

Another Q I have is about bedtime. Basically the evening routine has an E then S (bedtime). This is the one time during the day LO is allowed to eat right before sleep. Does this change at some point when LO is older so there is some A between E and S? I guess its ok for one time during the day for them to go in that order.

Ok, gotta go dream feed. Nite nite gals. This is great, thanks for all the help! I hope my book arrives soon....... I ordered the toddler one too.

[SweetAsHoney]

Do you use a pacifier?

Anna

[donnaR]

gosh, if i could get him to take it, i think that would be a lifesaver! He just won't have a thing to do with it. I keep trying though, maybe someday?? At 3MO is this wishful thinking?

[Mrs. A]

my friend was over yesterday and she was feeding her boy who is almost 6 months. he was at it for almost 30mns, where I don't think my LO ever eats longer than 15mns. should he be eating for a longer time? maybe being on a definite 3hr schedule will help.

 
Being on a 3hr routine helps for sure, but you also have to watch your LO and let him tell you when he's finished.  I discovered that my DS is an extremely efficient eater.  I kept trying to have him eat longer and he would get fussy.  He normally takes about 10-15 minutes to eat, sometimes less.  But I know he's getting enough because he makes it easily for 3 hours between feeds. 

[Missy Lou]

some LOs just don't like pacifiers.  if he doesn't like it, think of it as one less thing to possibly have to wean at some point.  he'll find his fists to suck on one day. 

what does your LO's routine look like in the afternoon, donnaR?  when my LO was still having a catnap, it would usually work out where we'd have A time and then eat because the catnap is so short that she wouldn't be hungry after waking.  So yeah, it's usually A, then E, then winddown and sleep.

melissa

[kc456]

My son (3.5 months) started liking and taking the pacifier at about 9-10 wks? We waited to introduce it because of breastfeeding, and started at about 6 weeks. He did not want to take if for a couple of weeks, and then warmed up to it. We use the straight nipple one -- Soothies brand.

I've just recently started implementing a "routine" -- I've only recently found EASY, but I started by reading a book on infant sleep, and my first step was to make sure he does not stay up past 1.5 hrs (his limit at the time). So, I'd say keeping the duration of awake time consistent is key. Although I differ with EASY on the first A time -- the sleep book (Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child) mentioned that the first period of wakefullness is brief, in our case it was 45 min-1 hr.

Another thing I started doing after getting advice on this forum is to keep his meal times consistent. I don't know if it's due to my efforts or just that he's getting more mature, but he started to space out his feedings quite a bit, now they are at about 3+hrs (big improvement from 2 - 2.5 hrs). It also looks like he's taking more at each feeding. I work the naps around the meal times, but I don't wake the baby for a "scheduled" meal, just feed him as soon as he wakes up.

And (again not sure if I can take credit for it), he dropped his habit of wanting to snack before the bed time. I'm guessing that now that he's not overtired when going down for naps, he does not need the soothing of breast to calm down.

Finally, I'd suggest that you dedicate a week of (yes) staying home, so that you can be consistent about awake times, nap schedule. I was going crazy cooped up at home while I did it, but it was worth it.

Good luck! I'm sure it's a lot more challenging with a baby who'd been colicky.

[Missy Lou]

i have also seen a lot of the moms here mention that the morning A time is shorter like kc456 mentioned.  it seems so weird to me since LO just woke up from the night but i notice it with my LO also.

melissa