How to increase feedings daytime to reduce night-time feeds within the EASY?

[L8TH]

I have a four month old boy, who I am breast feeding. I am planning to start using the baby whisperer routine including PU/PD, as I want my baby to go to sleep without me as a prop.

Up until now we have had an attachment parenting style, BW terminology would label that accidental parenting, but it has been a style that I believed in and used on purpose. However as I write above I can see that I am becoming a prop, which will be a problem when he is nine months and I go back to work. He so far is growing very well according to the charts and had a normal birth weight (7.05) and was full term at birth.

Our previous routine was not a four hour schedule, but more of a three hour schedule in the morning and then down to two hours in the afternoon. My baby has been napping well, a total of about four hours divided into three naps during the day, with one 2-hour nap, one 1-1,5 and one 45-minute nap.

At night he used to wake up about three and at some occasions four times between bedtime at 7pm and getting up around 6:30am. He immediately went back to sleep after feedings, so sleep was not disrupted that much.

I have just started trying to implement the four-hour EASY, and now he wakes up every other hour to feed in the night and has more trouble settling than he used to. I have chosen to feed him at night time after first trying to get him back to sleep by putting a hand on him which works one out of four times. I feed him on both sides when he wakes up.

How can I give him more to eat during daytime, to keep him from waking up hungry at night, without diverting from the schedule? Or should I do the three-hour schedule for the first couple of weeks and then go over to the four-hour since he isn't used to that much spacing between feeds.

Thanks,
Lotta

[Erin M]

Hi Lotta!  We believe here that the best parenting style is one that works for both parents and baby, so no worries about whatever you were doing if it was working well for you. 

That being said, I can understand with heading back to work that you might need to make some changes.  Let me ask - how often is he nursing during the day right now?  How many feeds is he getting in a 24 hour period (usually)?  Sometimes when you start spacing feedings further apart, they actually end up taking in more of the fattier hindmilk and more milk overall, which can help your nights (seems so counterintuitive, but it really is true for a lot of babies).  I'm wondering if that's the case.  However, depending on how often he's nursing right now, we'll need to think about transitioning in a way that works for him.