EASY - finding it impossible to get into a routine

[Pommy99]

Hi, I really don't know where to go from here with my 9 week old daughter.  I am struggling to get any kind of daytime routine going, and I feel like I am making no progress.  The main issue is daytine naps but I don't know what is the catalyst for the problems.  She is pretty gassy and at the moment I am on day 11 of an elimination diet - no caffeine, dairy, wheat, tomatoes, beef, citrus, etc and this is so far not showing any results.   The only consistency is that she will easily go 3hrs between feeds.

I can generally get her to take her first nap of the day but she usually wakes after 40 mins and if I can't get her back to sleep, the whole day is spent in meltdown.  Even if she has had a good morning nap, I can rarely get her to nap for the rest of the day - her sleep will be a series of 10 min catnaps. Some days, she has only 2hrs sleep in a 12-hr day.

If I can't get her to fall asleep after her first 45min nap, her whole EASY routine is out because she will end up doing her A before her next E, and then of course she is tired straight after the E so we end up trying to sleep right after the eat - in other words, the day becomes EASAES.

It seems an impossible task to get on EASY if the naps are too short to fit in with the 3 hr routine.  What should I do in this case?

Also, at what point can I expect her to stretch out her nightime feeds or drop a night feed?  She is still waking every 3 hrs all through the night.

BTW, I think I have a touchy baby - my other DD was an angel (and I did EASY with her) so these issues are all new to me!

Our day goes something like this

E - 8am
A - 8.15 for 30 mins (wind, change, gentle play) then 10 min wind-down
S - 9am for 45mins
Then awake until next feed - either wide awake and calm or crying from tiredness

E - 11
A, S non-existant - I skip the A as she has been awake prior to the feed and try for the S but it rarely happens.  She will then fight sleep and cry a lot until the next feed.

E - 2pm
A - non-existant.  I'm so worried that she hasn't slept since 10am that I cut any activity and try and get her to sleep.  By 4pm she has reached breaking point and will spend the next 3 hrs fighting all attempts to settle her, until bath time, when she is just desperate to go to bed and will mostly fall asleep within seconds.

E - 5pm

E - 7pm
A - bath, massage
S - 7.30

E - 10.30 (dream feed)
E - 2am
E - 5am
E - 8am

ANy advice gratefully received!

[Sam's mum]

Hi

is it the gas that wakes her up?  Also what type of delivery did ypu have.  my dd was the sam, really gassy and would cause her to wake from naps ect.  in the end we took her to an osteopath.  basically she had a nerve trapped at the base of her head that affected hedr digestion and led to an over active bowel contractions causing really painfu; gas.  she was c-section but i was in labour for 22hours before that, also she was engaged from 30 weeks so overall pretty sqished when she finally emerged!  after a few weeks of treatment the difference was remarkable and the S started to fall into place (until a growth spurt but that's another topic!! @)

hope that helps, it is horrible when they don't sleep, I just felt like I watched her get more and more overtired until she would pass out from exhaustion or become so inconsolable there wasn't anything you could do for her .  It gets better, hang in there - with or without the osteopath!   

[Pommy99]

Thanks Sam'smum.  Sometimes she wakes up with gas, so I lift her and wind her, but in this case she is often pretty easy to put back down (presumably she is still tired).  Sometimes she just seems to not want to go back to sleep.  Once she gets overtired she is so difficult to settle and then I spend most of the day trying to console her.  Today was a reasonably good day (although she had immunisations yesterday so might have been sleepy from them).  She woke at 7.30 and was back asleep by 8.30 for 2.5hrs (miracle!!)  She then woke for 45 mins and slept again for an hour (until dd#1 went and woke her up  ).  I couldn't get her back to sleep so she was then awake from 1pm till I put her to bed at 7.30pm, save two 20-30min catnaps.  Twice during the afternoon i got her off to sleep, only for her to wake 25 mins later.  Surely a 9 week old needs more than 1hr sleep in a 6.5hr stretch!!?? 

She was c-section altho this was elective.  I was in hospital for 2 weeks prior to the birth due to an unstable lie - one day she'd be breech, next day she'd be transverse, next day head down, then breech again.  Eventually I got to 2 days before my due date (still in hosp) and she had gone breech again and it was decided to do the c-section.  She came out breech.  My friends joke about the fact that she only likes to be held upright and that must be why she kept moving into a breech position before she was born, but I wonder if there is actually an underlying reason.

She is breast fed and some days she seems to have probs latching on and bobs on and off all the time.  Sometimes I realise this is due to gas but there have been times where she has absolutley refused to feed one side yet when I switch sides she latches on immediately.  I am taking her to docs on Friday. 

I have heard about cranial osteopaths but had only considered that these were required by babies whose heads had been compacted by a rough ride down the birth canal!!  How many weeks was your dd whenh you took her to the osteo?

[Sam's mum]

hi

ours was 9 weeks when we took her.  This was following weeks of little to no naps during the day (not for lack of trying!) and lurching from one feed cycle to the next.  She has always fed really well but apparently one of the symptoms can also be diffiulty with feeding.  Here is a link with some more information, as I think elective c-section babies can be affacted as well.  http://www.labouroflove.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=82

We had pretty much run out of ideas with our lo and so for us osteopathy was our last desperate attempt to see if it would help with the sleeping.  I'd definitely take her to gp to make sure there isn't anything else underlying - we did the same - but in the UK osteopathy isn't funded by our national health service so the gp's don't know much about it or get any feedback.  We also had some friends with similar issues who took their son to an osteopath and highly recommended it to us.  It might sound like I'm being paid by the society of osteopths for recommendations  but we found it worked so well I would recommend it to anyone having similar issues to us.  Also with our next one (assuming we find the time to pass in the hallway long enough to make another  ) we won't wait so long if the problems crop up again, it wasn't cheap but worth every penny to see her pass gas without some much as a blink and sleep for longer stretches day and night . 

I can only imagine it's harder with a second baby who appears more difficult than the first - you're doing great, I myself don't know how others manage with more than one lo to think about!!  It will get better 

[lulu520]

Hi there!  Just wondering what you ended up doing regarding short/non-existent naps and then doing A before E (ex: SAES due to being overtired).  Most days I try to stay on schedule but like you said, sometimes from being overtired it's almost like S right after E but in my opinion it seems like she needed it so I just let her sleep and pick up on the next round of EASY when it's time.  Is your LO sleeping better now or how did you end up tweaking your EASY to fit this?

My LO NEEDS her naps... She is 9 weeks tomorrow.  I can't really go anywhere these days b/c when she doesn't sleep she gets SOO fussy and her awake time before meltdown is only like an hour at this point (minus 15 min for the feeding and 15 min windown) so that leaves me little time for A :-)

Hi, I really don't know where to go from here with my 9 week old daughter.  I am struggling to get any kind of daytime routine going, and I feel like I am making no progress.  The main issue is daytine naps but I don't know what is the catalyst for the problems.  She is pretty gassy and at the moment I am on day 11 of an elimination diet - no caffeine, dairy, wheat, tomatoes, beef, citrus, etc and this is so far not showing any results.   The only consistency is that she will easily go 3hrs between feeds.

I can generally get her to take her first nap of the day but she usually wakes after 40 mins and if I can't get her back to sleep, the whole day is spent in meltdown.  Even if she has had a good morning nap, I can rarely get her to nap for the rest of the day - her sleep will be a series of 10 min catnaps. Some days, she has only 2hrs sleep in a 12-hr day.

If I can't get her to fall asleep after her first 45min nap, her whole EASY routine is out because she will end up doing her A before her next E, and then of course she is tired straight after the E so we end up trying to sleep right after the eat - in other words, the day becomes EASAES.

It seems an impossible task to get on EASY if the naps are too short to fit in with the 3 hr routine.  What should I do in this case?

Also, at what point can I expect her to stretch out her nightime feeds or drop a night feed?  She is still waking every 3 hrs all through the night.

BTW, I think I have a touchy baby - my other DD was an angel (and I did EASY with her) so these issues are all new to me!

Our day goes something like this

E - 8am
A - 8.15 for 30 mins (wind, change, gentle play) then 10 min wind-down
S - 9am for 45mins
Then awake until next feed - either wide awake and calm or crying from tiredness

E - 11
A, S non-existant - I skip the A as she has been awake prior to the feed and try for the S but it rarely happens.  She will then fight sleep and cry a lot until the next feed.

E - 2pm
A - non-existant.  I'm so worried that she hasn't slept since 10am that I cut any activity and try and get her to sleep.  By 4pm she has reached breaking point and will spend the next 3 hrs fighting all attempts to settle her, until bath time, when she is just desperate to go to bed and will mostly fall asleep within seconds.

E - 5pm

E - 7pm
A - bath, massage
S - 7.30

E - 10.30 (dream feed)
E - 2am
E - 5am
E - 8am

ANy advice gratefully received!