Settling for a good night's sleep

[TashaM]

Hi, my little girl is 3 weeks old now and I am statring to have more and more success with EASY, which is a source of some relief.  However one significant hurdle I have is settling her down at night, after her bath.  she seems to be a bit of a touchy baby, thus very sensitive to light and can get overstimulated and overtired in an incredibly short space of time.  Each evening, after her bath she seems wide awake and enjoying her activity time, but as soon as she starts showing signs of tiredness I start her sleep/nap time ritual .. but we go through a cycle again and again of her almost surrendering to sleep but then becoming agitated again.  I often have to pick her up and soothe her many times and work really hard to avoid a meltdown.  These days, I get so tired and uptight myself that I eventually have to hand over to my mum to get her down.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, T

[Missy Lou]

i'm glad to hear EASY is helping. 

have you tried giving her a bath in the morning?  a lot of babies get too fired up at bath time and have a really hard time calming down.  and at 3 weeks, she shouldn't be up more than 35-45 minutes so i can see how a bath at night might be too much for her. 

also, if she's touchy, a morning bath might be easier for her.  especially when it gets cold.  since temperature has such a big effect on touchy babies, sometimes it's too cold at night for them to be naked and wet.  that may be a silly thing to think but that's how i did my lo when she was younger.  we didn't start night baths until later.

i also noticed that my lo didn't like baths very much when she was 6 weeks and younger.  we kept bath time very short.

i would recommend moving baths to morning.  making sure lo is only up 40 minutes.  this means clean diaper, fed, and swaddled by 40 minutes so that she's in her crib and ready to sleep by then.
hope this helps.  please post back with your thoughts.
melissa