Starting EASY with 4.5 month old. Help needed!

[Laalaalaa]

I've been doing EASY with my 4.5 month old DS for a week now and have had great success with night time sleep (going from 8-12 hours sleep yay!) I'm struggling a bit with her naps in the daytime and wondered if anyone had any advice?  

This is how her day looks:

E: 7:00am BF
A: 7:15am - 9:00am (get dressed for the day, kick around on mat)
S: 9:00am - she sleeps anything from 30 min to 2 hours and if she wakes up early I'm finding it hard to settle her
E: 11:00am BF
A: 11:15am - this is where it starts to go pear shaped! I look for sleepy signs and whisk her upstairs as soon as I see them. When I get to her room and close the blinds, she goes mental because she knows what's coming. It is then really hard to settle her and i am usually there for 45 mins trying to get her to sleep. She seems to come out of the sleepy window and become really alert again so I bring her out of the room. I'm using shush pat with a bit of PU PD if she gets really agitated.
A: So we're back to A time even though I know she's OT. I try to make it quiet time if possible. We then have a cycle of me trying to get her to sleep in her cot. Sometimes it works, sometimes I have to resort to a walk in the pram. I know you're not supposed to do that but sometimes it's the only way to calm her down and get some sleep out of her.
E: 2:00pm BF - she doesn't seem to be able to stretch to 4 hours for this feed
A: I play with her on the mat or she plays under the baby gym
S: Same as above with limited success. If she's slept at both previous S times I don't push the CN and put her to bed a bit earlier, otherwise I'll keep trying for the full catnap time and usually give up after 40 minutes as she's super agitated by now.
E: 6:00/6:30pm FF
A: 6:30pm bath and ready for bed, read book
S: 7:00/7:30pm
E: 10:30pm Dream feed FF

She has slept through 3 of the 6 nights so far and on the other 3 woken once (I think this was due to a cold)

Even though we've been pretty successful at night time I feel like we're in a mess with the daytime naps. Anyone have any advice?

[Ima shel Alon]

Hun, it sounds like you are doing good. Really, you just started EASY and you already manage to separate A from S and get good night out of her. Good on you, mommy.
We would need to sort out what is the right A for her and to do that you would need to be more specific with the A and the S. Could you write, lets say, two days and mention the exact A and S that she had. For example:
7:00 WU
7-8:45 A
8:45-9:15 S
and so on.
The length of the naps, weather it's 30min, 45min or closer to 1.5h will tell us if she was OT or UT for each nap.
I know I am not much of help right now, but I just need a wee bit more info.

[Laalaalaa]

Thanks so much for your reply.  It's been a bit crazy here.  DD's cold got worse and I also got sick so we've got completely out of any kind of routine.  I think its back to the drawing board, although I have to keep telling myself that its nowhere near as bad as it was before I started E.A.S.Y.

The main issues I am having at the moment are:

- DD has learnt to roll from back to front and is still practising back to front.  I was putting her down on her front for sleep as she seems more comfortable in that position (she has mild silent reflux) but now when I put her on her front, she immediately tries to roll onto her back which wakes her up.  If I try laying her on her back, she becomes more alert and wants to play.  I try shushing and shielding her eyes to prevent her getting too alert, with no success.  I've also tried her on her side but she really pushes against my hand and gets agitated when I try to pat her.  It seems the only way to get her to stay where she's put is to put her down asleep which I know isn't the right way to get her to learn to self soothe.
- On the rare occasion that I manage to get her to nap, she only sleeps for about 30 mins.  I hear her surface from sleep and try to leave her to see if she settles but inevitably she will wake herself up and be too awake to get back to sleep when I go in to try to settle her again.  We then get into a cycle of being OT and not sleeping long enough at any of the naps.
- She is really resisting bedtime.  She had got really good at anticipating what was coming with the bedtime routine and was sleepy as soon as I finished the bedtime story.  Then she took maybe 10 - 20 mins to settle but would go to sleep at 7:30pm.  Now I try for at least an hour to settle her, before giving up and bringing her back downstairs and trying again half an hour later.  The past three nights, she has only gone to sleep at 10:30pm when we have given her the dream feed (falling asleep on the bottle)

It feels as if the root problem is over tiredness.  I know her cold has probably caused the routine to go out of the window but I just need some advice on how to get back on track. 

Here is a sample day from this week:

WU:  9:00am (her usual WU is 7:00am but she had had an unsettled night due to her cold)
E: 9:15am
A: 9:30am - 11:20am
S: 11:20 - 11:30am. Sh/pat and PU PD then S 11:50am - 12:20pm
A: 12:20 - 1:10pm
E: 1:10pm
A: 1:30 - 2:40pm
S: 2:40 - 3:20pm Sh/pat and PU PU with no success
3:20 - 5:00pm - walk with buggy to get her to sleep as she was super cranky by this point.  She slept for 40 min
E: 5:10pm (breast feed, one side so that she would be hungry enough for final feed before bed)
A: 5:30 - 6:00pm
E: 6:30pm
A: 6:50pm- 7:30pm bath and tried to put to bed.  After trying three times, she finally went to sleep after DF at 10:15pm.


Looking at the above, I can see that we probably need to start afresh as everything is out of whack.  What do you think?  I'm so frustrated that I seemed to have got bedtime sorted and now its gone wrong again. Maybe I'm doing sh/pat or PU PD wrong.  Hope you're able to help! 

[Ima shel Alon]

Is she still unwell? If she is then we can't tweak anything now because EASY just goes out of the window when LO is sick. I also can't say anything about the EASY you posted because the illness puts like a disguise on the EASY and I can't tell what is her and what is the illness.

The rolling is a developmental leap and can also effect sleep big time. I would give it a few more days before you change anything to let her go through it. I would give her as much time during the day to practice.
I was also afraid that not knowing how to roll back will wake him up or keep him awake, but I decided that I am just letting him learn to sleep on either side, so I was just shh/pat him when he couldn't turn.

Is her Reflux under control? This can also be a huge factor on sleep.

You are right that 30min naps are usually OT and it does sound like she is OT, was she like that before the illness?
IIWY I would take the next few days when she is still recovering and going through the milestone to AP and get as much sleep out of her as you can and let her catch up. Don't worry about A times so much, just get her to sleep. After those days you could start fresh and find out what is the right A for her.

With BT, is she crying the whole time you are trying to settle her? I think she accumulated OT and gets to BT OT and can't fall asleep because she is so tired. Hopefully, when you tackle OT you won't have a problem with BT anymore.

Tracey meant PU/PD to be a last resort after pat/shh didn't work. Your LO is in an age where pat/shh works much better IMO and if you are consistent with the way you are doing it and not rushing in when she is crying then it should work.

[Laalaalaa]

Thanks again for your reply. It's so reassuring to know that there's an expert out there to help me!

What you've said makes total sense so I am going to give it a couple of days until her cold is better and then give it a go again.

In answer to your questions, her reflux is under control with ranitidine and domperidone.
 which have made a huge difference.

At BT she nearly always cried in her cot until she fell asleep. Before she was ill, I used to be able to hold her until she was calm, then put her in the cot and shush pat until she fell asleep (she would be crying during this time but not an 'I need you' cry). She wasn't ever able to fall asleep on her own without me shush patting.

Since she's been ill, I've been holding her or feeding her until she's asleep which I know we need to change.  As I type she's sitting on my husband's lap seemingly wide awake (although we know different!) and we're waiting 40 minutes until 10:30pm so that we can DF her to sleep. Aaaaaarggh!

I'm going to read again about shush pat to make sure I'm doing it right but I may post again in a couple of days for more help once we restart!! In the meantime, do you have any tips on how to shush pat her when she's on her back. I don't swaddle her any more but she's in a sleeping bag and I find it really hard to keep her on her side as she pushes against me to roll onto her back.

Thanks!

[Ima shel Alon]

Thanks again for your reply. It's so reassuring to know that there's an expert out there to help me!

I am far from being an expert, I've just been here a while
I found it very difficult to keep him on his side and also to lean forward to shh him because of my back problems. I sat next to him, with him on his back, shh to the air and after a few days I had a good sleeper. This proved me that whatever we do will work as long as we are consistent with it. I was very strict with myself, I did the exact same thing for every nap, BT and NW. You really can adjust pat/shh to work for you and your LO, many babies for example don't like the patting (mine didn't, just a hand on the shoulder and after a while even that not) so just find what works for you.

Good luck, hope LO will feel better soon and let me know how it goes.

[Laalaalaa]

Hi again,

So, she's almost over the cold now and I've been trying EASY again for about 5 days now.  It's mostly going well - she is consistently going 4 hours between feeds and sleeping 10 - 12 hours per night but there are still some issues and I wanted to check I am doing this right........

Here is the EASY time for yesterday:

7:15 - WU
7:30 - E
7:45 - 9:30 - A (rolling on our bed and then under her gym)
9:30 - 11:15 - S
11:30 - E
11:45 -1:30 - A (under her gym)
1:30 - 2:45 - S
2:45 - 3:30 - A (I played with her under the gym)
3:30 - E
3:45 - 5:00 - A (bouncy chair)
5:00 - 5:20 - S
5:20 - 6:30 - A (sitting with me)
6:30 - E
6:45 - 7:15 - A (bath and book)
7:15 - 8:00 - took this long to get her to sleep then she woke up at 8:30pm and it took another 30 minutes to get her to sleep again.  I ended up feeding her as she seemed hungry (although I don't know how that was possible!  She took 2/3 of a bottle)
11:00 - DF

She slept until 7:00am this morning.

I was really pleased with her nap times yesterday but even with quite a lot of daytime sleep, it was still difficult to get her to bed at night time and she was behaving as if she was OT. 

I am laying her on her front and when she tries to push onto her back, I am gently holding her bottom and rubbing her back.  Eventually she is so tired that she stops fighting and stays on her front and will calm down quite quickly with the back rubbing.  I originally thought she wanted to be on her back but as soon as I let her roll over, she wakes up and becomes more agitated.  She definitely sleeps better on her front - I just think she is still trying to practice her newfound rolling skills.  I have given her sooooo much daytime practice but it doesn't seem to make a difference! 

So, I am getting quite good sleep out of her and I have to keep reminding myself how much further forward we are compared to a month ago.  The challenge I have is that she really resists sleep and every naptime and bedtime feels like a bit of a battle to get her to calm down enough to sleep. 

I am still having to hold her for quite a long time before I lay her in the cot and then we have the crying and rolling attempts for anything up to 45 minutes.  Sometimes I take her out of her bedroom to calm her and then take her back in to start all over again but she can get so worked up and its exhausting!  I can't imagine a time when I will just be able to put her in the cot, say goodnight and leave.  I've tried leaving the room when she's just doing fussy crying but she either rolls onto her back and cries or it just escalates to frustrated angry crying so I have to go back in and start the calming down again.

Do you think this is just a phase that she's going through since she learnt to roll or is there anything I can do to make that transition to sleep a bit easier on all of us?!

All advice welcome!

[Ima shel Alon]

Have you tried pat/shh to settle for naps and sleep? In the long run holding her will become a prop and pat/shh won't. Just a thought.
What is your WD before naps? Are you consistent with WD, with how you put her into the cot, with how you handle settling?
Is the room dark enough? Are you using white noise?
I am not quite sure why she is resisting the naps? Does she resist the first and the second naps as well?

Looking at your EASY it looks like she got to BT OT because her second nap was UT (1:15) and then there was a too long stretch to the CN. Could you try 2:15h A for the second A as well (I can see you did it for the first A) and then for the third A 2h?

[Laalaalaa]

Hi,

Just thought I'd post an update. Also, I've updated the subject heading as she's 5.5 months now!

Her morning nap is working fine.  She goes down after 2 hours 15 min of activity and sleeps for 1.5 - 2 hours.  I am still struggling with the afternoon nap and catnap but I think that may be because I have been out and about during the afternoon recently, and I have also started working from home and she has been with other people the past week.

My main challenge is still getting her to sleep at night and its really getting me down because it is such a fight.  My wind down routine is a bath, close blind, change into pyjamas, put in sleeping bag, read a book, 5 minute cuddle and into the cot on her front, then our version of pat shush (which is rubbing her back in a circle and shushing).  For naps I just do the blinds and sleeping bag and short cuddle and pat shush in the cot. 

The biggest issue is that she is calm when I put her in the cot but the moment I put her down she fights me, pushing upwards to try and roll onto her back.  It can take up to an hour to get her calm enough on her front to be able to even do the pat shush as she is pushing against my hand, reaching backwards with her arm to grab my hand, pushing her bottom up in the air etc.  Once she is calm, it doesn't take much time at all but it is so demoralising to fight against her until that time.  Surely its not normal? 

During the day she is a lovely happy little girl and is really easygoing, and she sleeps brilliantly at night, its just getting her to sleep that is so hard.

Could it be just because she is OT by bedtime do you think?  I'm not doing brilliantly with the afternoon nap and catnap and it has been hard to manage it this week as I've been working.  I wish I didn't have to but we need the money 

[Ima shel Alon]

It does sound like she is getting to BT OT and that's why she is fighting you so much.
If she wants so much to be on her back why won't you let her? She will eventually learn how to fall asleep either way.