I will be starting the process of moving my daughter to a 4 hour EASY on Monday, she is 15 weeks and has mild reflux and her soother is a prop. I really zoned in on her routine today that we have set in place from day 1 (we have a 3 yo as well so sometimes we get off track) and plan to continue recording every detail for the next two days before we get started. She has yet to go more the 3-4 hours at night and that is why we decided to move to the 4 hour - as well as the reflux, I need to up her intake.
Today she was only able (barely) to stay awake for 1hr 15mins - this includes her feed of 25mins. But somedays she can make it 1.5 hours. For both nap and bedtime her wind down is very quick, she doesn't like me to sit with her, she will fuss if I do. Our wind down is less then 5 mins - we go into her room, swaddle (lower half only now), give her soother, I'll hold her while I turn down the lights, lay her down in her crib, turn on her white noise and leave. She is usually great about going off to sleep on her own - unless on the odd occasion we miss her sleep window or if she knocks her soother out before she's dozy enough to care. She typically wakes after 1 hour during her naps but will go off to sleep again with her soother. I don't rush in when she wakes, I will always try to see if she will fuss/whine and settle back to sleep but she has yet to do that, her cries will always escalate and only her soother will settle her unless she really gets going and I have to shush/pat. She was quite responsive to the shush/pat for a while but recently she gets so angry when I start and it's just a fight, I feel so discouraged and I'm concerned about how I will teach her to self sooth and extend her naps to move to 4 hour. Any advice on where to begin?? The case study re: PU/PD in "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems" sounds so similar to my situation but there's conflicting info on this site about using PU/PD at 3.5 months so I really don't know what to do..
I should also mention that a few days ago for naps we took away her soother, she was really angry crying for her first nap but the rest of them were fine. She went down easily for bedtime at 7pm but woke at 9pm and put up such a fight I gave her the soother back. We noticed she has such a huge suck reflex and due to her age and reflux are not comfortable with taking it away just yet. How do we manage this prop with things? Is there a way to retrain her paci use?
