Need suggestions for starting easy with a 6month old

[eilla05]

Hi everyone! I just need suggestions on how to tweak this as we are already doing a form of Easy I think.

What do you think?

6-7:30 Wake and eat 6-7oz
most times he wants to go back to sleep for another hour if he wakes at 6-6:30 so then he doesnt get up till 8. Should I make him stay up?
8-10 solids and activity
10-12 nap most times he sleeps at least 1.5 hours
12:30 eat 6-7 oz
12:45-2:30 activity
2:30-4-4:30 nap
5:30 solids
bath routine around 6:30
bed at 7
eat at 8 6-7oz
*usuallly sleeps till morning. We have been having some issues with him waking after going down and not wanting to go back to sleep for an hour or so.

We have had eating problems with him since birth pretty much he never would latch to BF and bottle feeding has been a nightmare up until a month ago when I stopped trying to get to eat so much. He has reflux and is on meds for it. Eating 3-4 times a day works for him. He is eating enough for him even though he doesnt eat the standard. he weighs 16 1/2 pounds and is 28'.

So is this a form of easy? Can you suggest any tweaks as he has been fighting going back to sleep lately after waking for that feed.

[vadensmommy]

hey there eilla05!
I think your routine looks pretty good as you aren't feeding to sleep, and he is sleeping pretty good through the night.  Sounds like your two problems are early wakings, and being hard to put to bed/stay asleep once he's been put down at night-does that sound right?

If so, that may indicate that he needs more A time during the day to be properly tired at night. 

Most 6mo are doing about 2.5-3hrs of A time on average (some have much more, and some have much less).  My dd was pretty average, and could do 2.5hrs for the first A time, and then usually 3hrs a time after a good nap.   

The early wakeup can make things a bit tricky, and 6mo is also the age where many babies transition from 3 naps a day to 2 naps a day.  His first nap is really more extension of his night time sleep, but all in all he is getting 4 to 4.5hrs of daytime sleep, and that is probably why he is waking up soon after bedtime and wanting to stay up, as well as the early waking. 

Is there any way you can hold off feeding him that early?  What I did fairly early on was try to set a really firm first E time of the day no matter what the wakeup time was.  So if your ideal wake up time would be 7 or 7:30 I would do my best to wait and feed him till that time either.  The idea being that if he doesn't eat when he first wakes up that early that he'll learn to be hungry a little later, and hopefully sleep a bit later   Doesn't always work that way, but it did help us a good bit.

So a typical day for us at that age once dd had dropped the catnap was this:
E 7 milk
A 7-9:30 solids here
S 9:30-11

E 11 milk
A 11-2 solids here
E 1:45 -this was really the 3pm bottle split into some before pm nap and some after - I found dd started waking early from the pm nap at this age due to hunger, and this helped prevent early wake up from nap
S 2-4

E 4 finish the rest of what would have been her 3pm bottle
A 4-7 solids
S 7 for the night

DF btwn 10-11

Hope that gives you some things to think about that you might want to tweak.  Let me know what you think!

[eilla05]

Vadensmommy-
Those are my 2 problems! Once I can get him back down after waking that time he will stay asleep till morning.
I had considered that maybe he was not up enough between his naps and bedtime. But I thought I would try overtired first and put him down a bit earlier. We have done this for a week and still the same thing. so now I am going to try keeping him a bit longer between naps to see how it goes.

So would trying the routine you posted above be better? I think I might give it a go for a week and see how it goes. the only thing is when he wakes in the Am. I do hold him off till at least 6:30 but by then he is getting really upset and crying and I know that particular cry is I Am hungry! Feed me now. Maybe I could try 5-10minutes at a time so see if we can get it to 7.

A few weeks ago he was sleeping till 8 every morning. In the last week (since being put to bed earlier than 7) he is waking at 6. So I am confused if he is not getting enough A time or not getting enough S.

I am going to try and keep him up longer between naps and make sure he is up at 4pm and down at 7 for a 4-5 days to see how it goes.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

[eilla05]

Oh forgot to add I cant do a Df with him as he then starts to wake again wanting to eat in the middle of the night around 1-2am whereas if I dont feed him that late he sleeps.

[vadensmommy]

I saw that on the post to FP1 that you had weaned the dream feed, and that is no surprise - there are a lot of moms that the DF gives them fits.  Ourselves - we cut it out too late probably at 8.5mo, because dd was doing much the same - a few night wakings and some EW's too.

So there's no real issue with not doing the dream feed if he is doing well otherwise  

As far as the early morning stuff - have you tried giving him just water, or really watered down formula?  I never really tried it, but other moms swear by it.  Gets their tummy full of something, but they're still hungry when they wake.  It's a thought?  I agree with you that since you've tried the OT route and given him more opportunity to sleep, and you're still dealing with these screwy sleep issues that he is probably UT and needing a bit more A time.  Some moms will take a more gradual approach to stretching A times - do 15min more every 3 days till you get to your ideal A time.  We always did it cold turkey - dunno why, but dd did better that way.  So whichever both you and he can handle is good   Let me know how things go with more A time!!!