Well, the past 3 days have been much better and I'm WAY less stressed out. I did nothing to convince her to either stay awake longer or sleep longer or sleep less etc. If she wants to sleep, I let her sleep, if she wants to be up , I let her be up. I basically have been treating her almost like a newborn and just going with the flow. Our nights have been fine (she goes to sleep around 8, DF around 11, E around 3-4, WU for the day around 7) and she's been really consistant. (those few days she was wide awake at 4AM she was with me, sitting in a rocker, looking around and cooing) As far as napping during the day, turns out she still needs more than I was thinking she did. I guess it's maybe because she was a preemie and isn't quite ready for the A level of a typical 2 month old. Some naps are 30 minutes, some are 2.5 hours and I don't stress over it either way. For the past 2 days she wanted to eat every 3 hours almost EXACTLY. If she had only been aslo for 30 minutes and that 3 hours since eating mark was coming, she'd wake up on her own. If she ate and then wanted to fall asleep 30 minutes later, I let her, and she'll wake up after 2.5 hours when it's time to eat again.
Most of the day EAS is how it works out. There's one point each day (when it happens varies) that she is well rested enough and has a long A and then needs EASE so her belly is full enough to settle to sleep and it makes the next EAS 3.5 hrs. instead of 3, but that's ok.
The main thing is though, I didn't push any of this, it's just what she is doing on her own. I'm not logging and calculating how long she's been up, how long she's been asleep etc. The only thing I pay attention to is how long it's been since she ate, but she keeps track of that perfectly fine on her own LOL
I realize now that I was trying WAY to hard. Her WU time is consistent now and I do start the day then, turn on lights, change her clothes etc. She usually goes down for her first nap about 1 hr. after WU, but I let her decide, I don't push her either way.
I think the main thing here is that I was truly missing one of Tracy's main points - it's NOT a schedule. I was so focused on everything being evenly spaced and the same every day that I lost the reason it's supposed to be
easy and make life
less stressful lol. When I finally surrendered lol, things got much easier. The biggest kicker here is that she will even fall asleep completely on her own now! Because I put her down when I see that she's tired but still content and she'll look around for a bit and then slowly drift off. She's never getting to the point of OT because I'm not watching the clock. Through all this I learned how to read my baby's cues correctly
(I was misreading "tired" for hungry a LOT) and that's the whole idea. She knows the difference between day and night at this point and knows when she's hungry and tired, so I just
listen to her and our days run smoothly with WAY less crying and fussing and confusion that there have been for the past month.
SO, like you suggested, she does now have a consistent WU and BT, give or take a half hour. She's only up for about 1.5 hours before BT now instead of two (if it won't work out like that, I let her catnap to avoid meltdown before bt routine and OT afterwards). Thank you soooo much for all your help and time and encouragement
I think we're finally happy here now
, now that the control freak in me has relaxed lol
.
I'm sure I'll be back at some point lol looking for little tips and pointers, but I finally feel like a BW and I can honestly tell that my baby is more content too
Maybe Tracy looked down on me and whispered in my ear "
Relax luv"
