To feed or not to feed after a short nap?

[lawylie]

Well, I have been doing EASY with my 8 week old for about a week. The problem is that he has started taking really short naps, i.e 30-40 min, since we started. I have spend an additional 45 min trying to resettle him. Sometimes sucessful, sometimes not. When these short naps occur and I can't get him back to sleep it has only been about 2 hrs since the last feeding. I have tried feeding him when he wakes up from these short naps but he is just not hungry and snacks. I do not want a snacker! He is only good to stay awake for 45 to 1 hr. If I feed him at the 3 hr mark he doesn't eat well because he is tired and often doesn't get a full feeding then either. So again snacking. When I am not able to get him to go back to sleep and he wont eat, I let him stay up a little while till he is tired agian and I am able to get him to go back to sleep but then I break the EASY cycle. So the question is when do I feed him after these short naps

[Shiv52]

I wouldn't. I would stick to 2.5/3 hourly feeds. It is totally on for your EAS  to look more like EAS AS EASAS when you are dealing with short naps.

[lawylie]

Thanks! I realized yesterday that he also was having some nipple confusion and using the pacifer as a prop. He would wake up everytime it would fall out. So I stopped using the pacifer yesterday and he is having better feeding session and has lengthed his naps to 1 hr to 1:15 today. I think that if I keep working on his feedings he will continue to lengthen his naps.
Thank you
Laura

[Shiv52]

Thats great hun.  Hope it keeps getting better x

[lawylie]

More questions.... So now he is waking up about 2 hrs into the 3 cycle. So if I wait and feed him at the 2.5 hr mark (at the earliest) I have switched the EASY to AESY. How do I switch it back? At the 2.5 hr point he is not ready to go back to sleep and if I wait and put him to sleep when he is tired it is right at the 3 hr mark so now I am feeding him when he should be going to sleep. When he wakes up at the 2 hr mark, he is not really hungry. This seems to be happening mainly with his first nap of the day and the last nap. At the last nap of the day I have tried to cluster feed but agian he is not really hungry at the 2 hr mark. So I have been delaying the feeding at least until the 2.5 hr mark. However, I would really like him to be closer to the 3 hr mark so that he eats better. At the 2.5 hr mark he doesn't eat as well as when we can make it to the 3 hr mark.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
LAura

[Erin M]

At 8 weeks, you really don't need to stress about whether or not you're getting EASE or EASAE -- the idea is to not have them fall asleep nursing (but even that is a near impossibility sometimes at such a young age).  If you're doing it some of the time, you're doing great!  8 weeks is still really, really little.   

Lots of distraction is what works the best for delaying feeds.  Move to different places in the house, go for a walk outside, look out windows -- just some nice, quiet, low key activities.