Not EASY in the afternoon!

[miss_squeezie]

I have a 12 week old who has kind of fallen into an EASY structure since I changed to formula feeding a couple of weeks ago. His day goes something like this
5.30-6am - wake
6am - feed
7.30am - sleep. This will usually last from 40mins-1 hour
The he is fed between 9am-10am, 12pm-1pm, 3pm-4pm. He'll usually sleep again after the 9am feed and sometimes after the 12pm feed. He can manage about 1.5hrs of awake time, incl 20mins of feeding before he looks tired.
Bedtime starts from 6.15 with bathtime, then final feed and bed. He's usually asleep by 7pm.

My big problem is that he will not sleep in the afternoon! In the morning I watch for cues then put him to sleep with rocking and a dummy.I know thiis is not ideal so I plan to try PUPD soon. It works OK in the morning but he will not sleep in the afternoon unless I take him for a walk in the buggy. By bedtime we have a very grumpy baby on our hands! He will normally go down Ok for bed though.
Is there anything I can do to get him to sleep in the pm? With PUPD, how long should I do that for before giving up? Or do I just do it for as long as it takes, even for naps?/

[deckchariot]

When you are putting him down for the other naps, do you use pat/shh?  I would try that before you try pu/pd.  He may be getting cumulatively OT throughout the day and that is why you're having a harder time in the afternoon.  Are most of his naps less than an hour?  If that's so, then he's definitely OT by the end of the day.  If he's falling asleep on you with rocking, that's the first thing to work on, he'll have longer and better naps, and not be so tired by the late afternoon.  Do you have any kind of a wind down routine? 

Also, if he wakes between 5:30 and 6, I'd move his bedtime earlier - you really want to try for a 12 hr day.

So maybe try:

E 6
A
S 7:30 (maybe even start winding him down at 7:20 or 7:15)

E 9
A
S 10:30 (again, move the wind down earlier if it takes him awhile to go to sleep)

E 12
A
S 1:30

E 3
A
S 4:30 (catnap til maybe 5/5:30)

A - low key, start bedtime routine by 5:30ish
E - 5:45/6 - aim to be in bed sleeping no later than 6:30 (try closer to 6)

I really would try to work on pat/shh for sleeping before going to pu/pd.

HTH
michelle

[miss_squeezie]

Michelle, I could kiss you! You are the only person who has actually given me a routine that I can work to! Most of the books etc say to put baby down after feeding but my LO doesn't like that - he needs some time to digest!
Anyway, yes most of his naps are less than an hour although he has been hitting the hour mark more recently. I can tell by the pm he is so overtired but I just can't get him to sleep any more. I've been trying to do a wind down routine - basically when I think he is due to get tired, I take him to his room and either lie him on his blanket and talk to him, or do cuddles on the rocking chair. Is that OK?
Would you mind running me through the best way of doing pat/shh? I've tried it when he's been in his cot (patting his chest gently and doing "shhhh") but it never seems to calm him at all.

Do you really think if we got him to bed earlier he'd sleep longer? He is always tired by 6pm but I didn't want to make it too early in case he woke even earlier than 5am - I think that's my personal limit for wake up!

[deckchariot]

    I feel so loved!

That's part of the reason I like EASY is because sleeping doesn't come directly after eating. 

If most of his naps are under an hour, then he's definitely OT by the end of the day, thus the problem with the last nap.  So let's see if we can work on that....

Does he use a pacifier?  Or does he have a lovey (a little animal or something to hold)?  At 12 weeks, I think we were starting to wean from swaddling with my dd - have you ever swaddled?  Abby sucks her thumb and has a lovey (Pink Bear) and we no longer swaddle.  Tracy has a wind down she calls "The 4 S ritual" which is what we used - set the stage, swaddle, sit, shh/pat.  What we would do is go in to her room, diaper change, (swaddle when we were doing it) close blinds, say "night night outside", sit in the rocking chair and talk a bit about naptime, sing a song, then shh/pat on our shoulder (we don't do this anymore), then when she's really drowsy, put her in the crib.

So cuddle time with your ds is a great part of a wind down, but he may need a bit more.  I'd start the wind down at least 15 min before you want him to be asleep.  So at about 1 hr 15 probably.  With shh/pat, we'd start on our shoulder, then we'd keep doing it while we walked to her crib, lay her down on her side a bit, so I could reach her back, then keep shh/patting until she went to sleep.  We had to shhhhhh pretty loudly, because she would often start to cry.  But she would eventually calm down.  In the beginning, we'd sometimes shh/pat for 30 min or more.  If she wasn't asleep after 40, we'd take a break.  Gradually, the shh/pat time got less and less, and eventually we stopped, because she learned how to put herself to sleep.  Some moms find that rubbing works better than patting.  Also, if she was really crying, we'd lean way over in the crib to be super close to her, to make sure she could hear the shhhhhh.   Does that help?

early bedtdime - yep, I think if he goes to bed earlier he will not wake earlier.  He's really tired.  12 hrs is about all he can handle in a day right now.  It will also likely help with his naps.

Also the 3-4 mos time is a massive time of transition, so that makes sleeping a bit of a challenge.  He may be getting ready to move towards a 3.5 hr EASY, and then at 4 mos, probably a 4 hr EASY, so it's a whole lot of routine tweaking at this stage of the game.  So hang in there.  It does get better.  I'd say try moving him more towards the routine (or something similar) that I posted and let's see what that does to his naps.

[miss_squeezie]

thanks again Michelle.
Yes, he does use a pacifier (dummy). I did used to swaddle and it helped for a bit  but I really think he is getting too big for it now, it dosn't calm him down now. We're trying to introduce a lovey - there's a soft toy called Bedtime Bear who lives in his cot. He's not quite at the stage where he reaches for and holds toys so I'm not sure what more I can do with Bedtime Bear at the moment.
I'll give shh/pat another go. I've been working on putting him down when he is not quite asleep. A few weeks ago we had to bounce him until he was totally asleep before putting him down but now we can just bounce until his eyes start to droop and then put him down and he gets the rest of the way by himself - usually! What if pat/shh doesn't work and he keeps crying?

I'll try and stick to the routine but it's hard at the moment as he's started waking in the night again. We think it's a growth spurt and he's hungry so we feed him but that throws the rest of the day off. So, today he woke at 2.50am, I gave him a bottle and rocked him back to sleep and he was down again for 4am. But then he slept until 7.30am and wanted his first nap at 8.50am so we're all out of whack already! Sorry, just having a moan really - it's nice to have a sympathetic ear!

[deckchariot]

growth spurts will indeed mess everything up...you kind of just have to ride them out!  Not only do they want to eat more, they often want to sleep more too, so hang in there.  It does really sound like you're doing really well.  This is just a really challenging age!

With pat/shh....if he keeps crying, I'd keep at it - for 30 min if you can, then take a 10 min break (rock with him, walk around holding him etc.), then either feed him (if he's hungry or it's about time) or re-wind him down (we always called it resetting) and do another 20 ish min of pat/shh.  If you can't extend him (with Abby, I almost never went past the 30 min), feed him, diaper change, and right back to the wind down for the next nap (otherwise the OT just builds over the course of the day).

Also, with Abby, if the day was really awful with no napping, I'd take that last nap and do whatever I could to get her to sleep (rocking, in the stroller for a walk etc) just so she wasn't so OT for bedtime.  Then I could start again better the next day.

You can always come here and moan!!!