Recommendations needed for an EASY tweek

[hatshetsut]

Hi! My DD2 is almost 5 weeks old, but she was born about 3.5 weeks early, so she is gestationally like a 2 week old. We have a pretty good EASY going, BUT, (and there always is, isn't there  ) we are OT at night. She will go to sleep, then wake 40 min later or so and be almost impossible to get back to sleep. She puts herself to sleep for all her naps with minimal fussing, so I know it isn't that she doesn't know how to sleep. I think she is just OT/OS.

SO.... Our EASY is below. She manages about 45 minute A times before a yawn. Then we swaddle, sit, and into the cot. I think the problem is the cat nap area, I can't seem to get that part right. Also, is breast fed for the most part, we do a bottle of extra collected milk at 6 before the bath.

7 eat
8 sleep
10 eat
11 sleep
1 eat
2 sleep
4 eat
5 cat nap
6 - bedtime routine
645 - bed
10 DF

Our bedtime routine is: a bottle of collected milk, bath, the BF top off, and into bed. I think the extra bottle is hurting the bedtime routine. I was doing it to try and cluster a feed there, but it takes 15 min or so for her to take it and she is yawning by the end of the bottle. I think that makes her OT/OS after the bath.

SO, after this long winded post: Should I drop the extra bottle and just concentrate on the feed so that she isn't so OT/OS for bed? Or, should we forget the cat nap and just let her sleep until her 7 pm feed and try to figure out another time for a bath?

Thanks for the recommendations!

H

[*Liz*]

What you are doing looks just great on paper and TBH I think I would stick with it as I suspect that in a few short weeks she will have grown into it  .

Perhaps try without the extra feed and see if that makes things easier until you get to that point - you could perhaps give a bottle for the DF instead if you want to keep a bottle in there (says a Mama who has a LO who refused a bottle and had a dreadful time getting him to accept one later - not all babies of course - but we are shaped by what we have suffered  ).

I also think some LOs will get tired and fussy in the evenings no matter what you do or don't do. They just seem to be programmed that way. It is worth cutting the A after the CN to check for it all being OT though.

HTH 

BUT I still think that is a FAB start to an EASY routine