A couple of questions about moving to 4 hour EASY

[SJN71]

Hello all,
I'm new to the BW Forums but not to the BW Books - have been a fan for years despite only just having had my first baby at 45!!

Anyway my Bub is 17 weeks today and will be four months on Sunday.  I have had him on a (flexible) EASY routine for quite a while now - I did feed on demand for the first few weeks because of BF issues, but he's been on the 3 hour for a while now. 

I think he's about ready to move to the 4 hour because he is not too interested in feeding at the 3 hourly marks anymore, but there are a couple of things which don't seem to be working to do that.

Firstly at the moment there's no way I can extend A times in the morning.  He just about makes it an hour after waking up before he's wanting to go back to sleep again!  (He's a good night-time sleeper - last night was in bed at 7.30pm and woke at midnight and 5am for feeds then back to sleep till 7 - I don't do dream feed as I found it made no difference to his night waking).  I am not waking him up at 7 he just waking naturally between 6.30 and 7, not eating very much and then being tired after about an hour.  Some mornings I've pushed him out to 1.5 hours but then his naps actually seem shorter (this morning he went back to sleep after an hour and he's now been asleep 2 hours).

Secondly, when we get to the "catnap" stage in early evening, sometimes he won't go down at all (last night) and so we have to do an EBT or other times he sleeps on longer than the 40 mins and I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be waking him.

Thirdly, even though he's not hungry at 3 hourly intervals, he doesn't seem to be able to do 2 hours awake yet or 2 hours sleeping so perhaps I should be doing a variation on EASY - EASAE???

I am wary also that I think he's in the middle of a developmental leap at the moment and things are a bit all over the place anyway, so perhaps I should wait until that is over before I start making major changes or worrying about the changeover?  I have been following a bit of a baby-led EASY routine over the last week or so because of this - what do you think?

I have looked at various other threads to see if any of them answer my questions but while some are similar none of them quite match up (a bit like babies!).

Thanks in advance

[creations]

Hello and welcome to BW forums

Sounds like you've made a great start

If LO is not ready to eat at the 3hr mark and is not feeding well at that time then you can just extedn to 3hr 15, or 3hr 30 if that seems more suitable. There is not need to extend right up to 4hrs rapidly not is there a need to extend the A times. it just means that there is going to be a bit of A between S and E so it will look EASAEAS rather than EASEAS. Hope that makes sense.
As you plod on through the day you might find one of the E is going to clash with a nap, if so just adjust that one E time so it will fit in better, either feed a little earlier (maybe at 3hr instead of 3hr 30) or a bit later (if it was to fall in the second half of the nap time then the chances are LO will just sleep until end of nap and then eat, this could make E time more like 4hr but not necessarily all day, just for that one cycle because he was asleep).

If you are comfortable with the A time you are on and it is leading to good naps there is no need to change it. Being flexible to the individual needs of your LO is great.

I don't think you need to wait until a developmental leap is over before slightly extending times between E, but I wouldn't force LO to go longer if he is hungry either.  Some LOs don't move from 3hrly until closer to 6 months.

hope this helps
Please feel welcome to ask more EASY questions or to post on any of the relevant boards.

[SJN71]

Cool - thank you! :-)

[creations]

You are welcome.
Do ask more questions if you have them.