Starting Easy with a NB

[scucci1979]

I am bottle feeding our new bundle of joy and am noticing she can do stretches between 2.5 -3hours between feeds. She was born at 6.6 pds and left the hospital at 6.1pds. I am wondering if I should be doing a two hour EASY ATM.
This morning has been like this:
wake 7am
E 7:15am 1.5ozs
A 7-8:06am (OT as toddler keeping her up)
S 8:06am and am planning to wake her up a 10am for a feed.

Now, here are my questions:
1. Should she be on a two hour EASY?
2. Do I let her sleep two hours if she does and move her feed a little later?
3. Should wind down begin at the 45min mark?

thanks so much
It's amazing how much you forget.

[*Liz*]

Tracy recommended a 3hrly EASY if your LO weighs 8lb or more AND they have regained their birth weight.

I would say her total A time would be 45 mins, so winddown 10 mins before that. I REALLY struggled with this with DD though as she was still far too windy to settle at anywhere near that sort of an A time - and so she ended up short napping a lot.

I would do a flexible 2-3hrly EASY for now - but certainly never try and 'hold off' a feeding to keep to a routine at this stage. I also wouldn't let her go longer than 3 hrs without eating as she is pretty small, and you need to get her feeding well to try and avoid things like too much weight loss and jaundice.

Smaller babies can be very sleepy though and waking to feed is easier said than done. Jacob was born 5lb 13, and dropped to 5lb. He was much sleepier as a NB than Megan who was 7lb 6.

Also remember that there are about a MILLION little growth spurts in the first few weeks - something like 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks and 6 weeks.

The first things I would really focus on though are getting her to feed well, and try to establish the difference between night and day.

Congratulations again Sabs - be flexible for now - it really is at 6ish weeks that you can start to get a decent 3hrly EASY going. But TBH Megan is only just getting there now at 11 weeks.

[scucci1979]

Thanks for the tips.
Now with her naps. ATM she is sleepy so she will nap well in the morning and do a few CN later on in the day. Do I let her sleep the full two hours if she wants it?

[*Liz*]

Yeah I would really - they get OT SO SO easily in these early days - I used to wake  to feed a lot but this time I let Megan be much more and I think it has helped her settle into her own pattern batter (with a bit of mama help  ).

You also need that extra time to tend to your toddler really anyway.