9wk probs with first part of sleep

[randomv]

Hi
I'm fairly new to BW and have been trying to get my 9 wk old LO onto a 3 hour EASY routine for a couple of weeks.  Things are going pretty well and I'm even able to put him down awake for naps using ssh/pat - works at least half the time so pretty encouraged so far.  The biggest prob I'm having however is in the evening,..I have a bath/bedtime routine and I try and get him down by 7pm but he won't stay down..nor can I get him back down. He then gets quite cranky - hardly surprising as is overtitred - combined with some wind/gas issues which prevent him from settling - and wants to feed (mostly comfort) on and off til about 10.30pm when he will go to sleep.  I try towake him a bit so he is not completely fed to sleep.. Once asleep now he will sleep thru to 6 or 7ambut how do I get him to sleep between 7 and 10pm?  Or am I expecting too much too soon?
Anybody got any top tips?

Vicky

[lilac83]

Hi!

Could you post what a typical days routine looks like? Perhaps we can do some tweaking so he doesn't end up OT and difficult to get to sleep.

[randomv]

Hi

Thanks for replying!

Now this is what yesterday looked like.  I'm shooting for a 7am-7pm day and until the last couple of days he has generally woken up at 7am. But ultimately I want to move this earlier, I guess in tandem with the earlier bedtime.

E 5.30am (only if misses DF)
S 6-8.30am
E 8.30am
A
S 10.00am
E 11.30am
A
S 12.45
E 2.30pm
A
S 4.30pm
E 5.30pm
A 6.15 - bath time
E 7.00pm

After this is should be bedtime!  But what happens is that he will not settle and just wants to feed/comfort on me for as long as possible! Last night this went on until around 9.15pm, sometimes it is as late as 10 or 10.30pm. Obviously when this happens I don't give him a DF. I am trying to avoid feeding him to sleep so I will wake him a little so he is not asleep when I I put him in the crib and then I sssh/pat till he is away.  I have tried to give him a dummy but he isn't interested and in fact it usually makes him cry when I try and give it to him.

I'm just starting to get some success with the ssh/pat way of putting him down, but it definitelydoesn't work all the time just yet!  Also he has a cold at the moment so I am really focussing on him getting enough sleep and fluids, irrespective of AP. Guess that means I'll be back at square one next week! However I still will have this prob of him not sleeping in the first part of the night.

Thanks for letting me know what you think.
Vicky

[lilac83]

Is he sleeping up until his next feeding time? If so he's definitely getting good nap lengths, so that's a good start. What I would do, since you're aiming for a 7-7 is make sure to wake him at 7:00am (or as near to there as possible) every morning. Treat this as the starting point then with a feed some A time and down for first nap. It looks like his A time is about 1.5 hours so that would mean around 8:30 he's down for his first nap. The first part of his morning seems a bit off with him sleeping in until 8:30 since that would mean bedtime wouldn't technically need to happen until 8:30pm.

Once he's over the worst of his cold, going back to using sh/pat shouldn't be too hard as he's already experienced it. I hope he feels better soon!

[JB160706]

Hello! I would say that so far you are doing a really good job, and that perhaps baby just needs to sort out his little wind problems in the evenings. The cold won't help but I'm sure it won't put you back much in the long run. The evenings are a typical time for the wind problems to rear their heads, as it's an accumulation of the days food and it's a little hard for new babies to deal with.
Sounds like you're doing a great job. I would just continue as you are, and maybe just accept that for now baby is just sorting out his digestive system. Sounds like it won't take long as it's not too bad.
All the best with it.

[randomv]

Thanks for the replies.

He isn't sleeping for the whole nap time - they seem long as I am including the time it takes to get him to sleep in that, so most naps are probably 45 mins but I will try and get him to take one longer nap per day.  I am guessing that I will extend the A time as time goes on and spend less time settling him for naps (we have to be optimistic, right?!)  Until recently he was waking at 7am and then I would put him down for first nap at around 8.45 or 9am, following his cues. Later in the day though he seems to do his first yawn around an hour or hour 15 mins after waking, so i do try and take him for his nap as quickly as possible after that.

So I think myplan is, when he is recovered from the cold, start to get him up at 7am, follow the 3 hour routine from there and eventually it should click into place and he'll go down at around 7pm rather than 10.30pm or whatever he is doing now?

Thanks for the encouragement -thissite is really awesome!

Vicky

[lilac83]

Yes, continue to follow the 3 hour routine. At his age a 45 minute nap can mean either OT or UT, so just continue to follow his tired cues the best you can. If he wakes early from a nap unhappy he was probably OT, I would try to resettle him at that point. If he keeps waking happy however, try increasing A time by 5-10 minutes and see if that results in a longer nap. Have you ever tried Mylicon or some other infant gas drop to see if that helps him in the evening? For awhile I had to give my DD a dose of that before every bottle.

[randomv]

I'm in the UK and we have Infacol which I give him before feeds - maybe it's the same thing or similar?  I did stop giving him a bottle of formula at night for this reason - was causing worse wind and probs passing bms so I think things are improving - just typical that it affects him at bedtime!
Re waking up, sometimes he is happy and sometimes grumpy so that makes sense!  We are making progress though and I do think he is generally happier now that we have some structure to our days so we plough on!
Thanks again
V