Hello,
My DD is 8 weeks old (today actually) and she has been on EASY since we brought her home from the hospital. We started with 2 ˝ hour EASY and at 4 weeks moved to 3 hour EASY. She is bottle fed breast milk and formula. She is our 2nd child, our first child is almost 4 and did EASY as well. She was C-section deliver at 38.5 weeks and was 7 lbs 14 oz at birth. At her 1 month appointment, she was 9 lbs 1 oz.
She seems to be a cross between Textbook and Touchy baby with more similarities to Textbook.
I am having 3 issues I would like advice on. I will put our routine below with some notes as well. I am going to provide as much detail as I can.
My DH also wants me to point out, “She is a fine baby, she is great most of the day. The issue is a few hours at night that make it difficult to have any Y time or go to bed early since we have another child.”
Routine:
E 7:00 – Wake to feed 4 oz.
A – diaper change, usually a poo and hiccups and laying on blanket looking at big sister or Mommy’s face. Usually have her sit up on my lap or somewhere during hiccups.
S – First yawn is usually at 8:00 so I start the 4 S’s of sleep around 8:05. She is usually asleep by 8:20 and will sleep until 10:00 when she needs to be awakened. When going down, she often starts to cry loudly in the “Sit” part of 4 S’s so I just stop sitting, sing, shush and put in bed.
E 10:00 wake to feed 4 oz.
A – clothing change, tummy time, play with gym
S – First yawn is usually at 11:05 so I start the 4 S’s of sleep around 11:10. She is usually asleep by 11:30 and will sleep until 1:00 when she needs to be awakened. When going down, she often starts to cry loudly in the “Sit” part of 4 S’s so I just stop sitting, sing, shush and put in bed.
E 1:00 wake to feed 4 oz.
A – diaper change, usually a poo and hiccups and laying on blanket looking at big sister or Mommy’s face. Usually have her sit up on my lap or somewhere during hiccups.
S – First yawn is usually at 2:00 so I start the 4 S’s of sleep around 2:05. She is usually asleep by 2:15 and will sleep until 4:00 when she needs to be awakened. When going down, she often starts to cry loudly in the “Sit” part of 4 S’s so I just stop sitting, sing, shush and put in bed.
E 4:00 wake to feed 4 oz.
A – difficult to have any A. Often fussy right after feeding is over and she starts to get tired.
S – May not yawn, if she does, it’s at 4:30, right after she is done eating. She is usually fussy at this time. I try to keep her up until at least 4:45 so she doesn’t go right to sleep after the feed. I usually start the 4 S’s of sleep at 4:50 and she is asleep by 5. This catnap is hit or miss. Some days she sleeps from 4:50 and we need to wake her at 6:00, and some days she sleeps for 10-15 minutes off and on and needs to be shush patted to make it to 6. The latter is tough since I try to cook & eat dinner during this catnap for my almost 4 year old’s routine. Her bed routine starts at 7 as well as the 8 week old so I try to have dinner started by 5:45.
A – Wake (or get if she didn’t sleep much or at that time) at 6:00 and be in carrier, bouncy seat or swing for a few minutes while we all finish eating dinner. She is usually fussy no matter what we choose even if we hold her. After one adult is done eating, she gets a bath and pj’s on before feeding.
E – at around 6:30, 4 oz.
S –right after bottle. See issue #1 below.
E – at around 8:30, cluster feed 4 oz. (hoping to stop this soon since she is 8 weeks and the EASY cheat sheet I printed said not to after 8 weeks)
S – right after bottle. See issue #1 below.
E – dream feed at 11:00. See issue #2 below.
Overnight – DD will wake one time during the night. Some nights 2:00, some, 3:30, some 4:00, some 4:30. We try the pacifier to see if she just needs to suck, but she refuses and eventually goes into hunger cry. We feed her 4 oz. Sometime she goes right to sleep after, sometimes she cries off and on for 30 minute after and sometimes her eyes are wide open as if she wants to play and we shush for what feels like forever. Depending on when this night feed is may determine her wake time in the morning, but we try to hold her off with the paci and shushing until 7:00 when her sister gets up.
Notes:
• We just starting feeding her 4 oz. 3 days ago. She was eating 3.5 oz., but I thought if we “tanked her up” and I added ˝ oz. to each bottle during the day she might not need that middle of the night feeding. So far it doesn’t seem to have worked. The first day, she wouldn’t take the extra ˝ oz. at any feeding. She would turn her head away or close her lips on the bottle, not suck and gag a little until we stopped. The 2nd day she took the 4 oz. at all feedings. The 3rd day (today), she hasn’t taken a full bottle yet (it’s 12:00 noon now), she took 3 oz. at 7 and 1 oz at 10. I am paranoid she has a slight case a reflux as a result of these events, but assume it’s too soon to tell.
• She slept in the bassinet in our room for all naps and sleep until she was 6 weeks. At 6 weeks, we started putting her in the crib for 1 nap at a time and she transitioned no problem. Two days ago we started using the crib for all sleep. There has not been a change on her night habits (see issue #1 below) and she goes in the crib willingly.
#1: DD is having a hard time going to sleep for night sleep. For the past 2.5 weeks especially, we put her down between 7 and 7:30 for the night and she will usually sleep for 30 minutes at first and then wakes every 5-15 minutes after that until after her cluster feed between 8:30 and 9. Or the last 3 days, she has awoken every 5-15 minutes until the dream feed at 11, which doesn’t make it a dream feed at all! When she wakes, she starts fussing, grunting or coughing the first few times. We wait to make sure she doesn’t go back to sleep, occasionally she does, but then 5-15 minutes later when she wakes again she will just cry and not mantra cry, because she won’t stop. We go in and shush-pat. Sometimes she escalates and we have to do it louder and sometimes she quiets right away and we do a full 3-5 minute shush-pat cycle once she quiets (slow down the shushing and patting until an eventual stop). DH and I think today we may try to E at 6:00 instead of 6:30 to keep the EAS order. I am not sure if that will help or not. We were going to stop the 8:30/9 cluster feed, but she seems to expect it now or gets herself hungry from all the crying/waking because she does do her “hangry” cry as I call it at around 8:15 if she hasn’t slept much after we put her down.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Is it something we are doing?
#2: DD is not really taking the dream feed. She really hasn’t taken a whole dream feed from when we started it at 4 weeks. We do it at 11. From the beginning, she will not take it all. We have offered 3.5 oz. (now 4 oz.) each night. Some nights she will drink 1 oz., some nights 2 oz. and some nights 2.5 oz. If DH walks around the room while feeding her it, she may take 3 oz., but a few of those times, she spit up a bunch shortly after. In the BW book, it said if baby doesn’t take dream feed to focus on that and forget about cluster feeding. So instead of just taking the cluster feed away cold turkey we took the cluster feed bottle down to 2 oz. thinking that would make her more willing to take the full dream feed at 11. She still only took 2 oz. at most 3 days in a row when we did that. We were going to just not offer the cluster feed next, but then she started showing signs of hunger as mentioned above at 8:15. I worry that this is related to issue #3.
The nights she is still awake at 11:00 because of issue #1, she will take a full bottle at 11:00.
Any advice on how to help this? Is this related to #3 below?
#3: As mentioned above, DD is still waking once a night and the time is different each night. Usually when she wakes, she will fuss or make noise and put herself back to sleep off and on for 20-30 minutes. Then, she’ll fully wake and escalate to her hunger cry. I have tried going in and giving her the pacifier in the crib. She may take it for a few minutes and then cry, but she often rejects it and cries and flails until I feed her. We feed her 4 oz. And as mentioned above, she may go right to sleep, fuss off and on for 30 minutes or seem to want to play.
Any advice on this? Should we do the 4 S’s of sleep overnight? I still shush-pat and swaddle, but I don’t sit and the tone is already set because we feed her in the dark.
I hope I provided enough information so that maybe someone can see something I am not seeing. Thank you!
