4mth old ready for 4hr in terms of E, but not A help

[weatherlyn]

hi everyone, i warn you this is going to be a long post........
 my DS is 17 weeks old and a touchy angel. he is very quiet and placid and his touchy side comes to the surface re eating and sleeping. eg he wont eat if he is the slightest bit tired , nor will he eat just for the sake of sucking on a bottle. he will either take a full feed or completely refuse the bottle. he also wont eat if we have just come home from being in the car etc. he also has a touch of reflux so we have major spit ups. as for sleeping, if i am two mins late getting him down its  a real battle and he needs a lot of intervention. as he is so placid and quiet sleep signs are non exsistent. no yawns, no crying no eye rubbing nothing. he might grizzle a bit, but its the same grizzle if he is fed up from being on the playmat etc. so i have to watch the clock.

anyway, seb is ready to go on to a 4hr easy re his feeds, but no way is he ready to go two hours in terms of A time. i also have a problem with naps as he has a very strong moro reflux . he jolts really badly, has since 7 wks even though fully swaddled ( coming out of swaddle now also affecting sleep in  a big way ) and i have to go in at 35 min mark and HTTJ and nearly always results in a round of PUPD. only three times in the last two weeks has he managed to transition to second sleep cycle with no jolts and no help from me. i also have a very spirited toddler in the house.

anyways, EASY is all over the place, and i would love some advice or just some words of encouragement.
i am trying to go first to 3.5 hr EASY extending morning A time first and keeping rest of naps at 1.5 hrs A, but not really working.
here is a typical day at the mo.
Wake at 6.15am
E 06.45( 220 ml he never ever feeds straight on waking flat out refuses bottle even  gone right through without a feed. i dont do DF)
S 08.00  -09.30 1.5 hrs (woke at 30mins went in and PU 3 x sh pat back down)
E 10.30 (100ml even though 4hrs between feed didnt want more and didnt want to eat before)

At this point he was up for an hour before he would take a feed and he cant make it more than 1.5hrs A time so by half way through feed he is tired.

S11.00 - 12.45 1.75 hrs (took me forever to get him down PUPD way OT woke at 30 min mark pupd again )

E13.50 220 ml
same as before E is now at the tail end of the cycle instead of at the beginning.
S14.30 -16.00 he was in the cot for 1.5hrs but woke after 30 mins OT had to go in and do PUPD
E17.10 220ml
Bathtime at 18.00
top up of 90 ml before bedtime and asleep by 18.30

this is a good day ha ha. sometimes the naps are only forty mins long and i have to try and put him down again twice in the same cycle to get to 3.5 hrs between feeds. sometimes his feed and his nap end up being due at the same time. If i try and feed earlier in order to get him down for a nap not OT,  DS flat out refuses to eat earlier and sometimes refuses a feed in a cycle!

i know that i have rambled and i hope that it all kind of makes sense. i am so sick of doing pupd and HTTJ at nap times (been doing it since he was 7 wks old) any idea when the moro reflex says bye bye? my oldest son is spirited text book and even though he was a handful awake he was a dream on routine and naps etc. little DS is just so touchy that the slightest thing throws him off, and i am really floundering. any ideas would be welcome

thanks again for all those that took the time to wade their way through this post.

xxx

[*Ali*]

IMHO it's not the end of the world if your routine looks more like EAEAS rather than EAS. The main this is to avoid feeding to sleep so as long as you have some A (even a 15min burp and nappy change) after the feed before he goes down to sleep that is fine. It will probably only be a month or two before he can handle 2hrs awake and if you can get a 2hr nap out of him that will get you back on 4hr EASY.
I don't know about Moro thingy (is it reflux or reflex BTW?) sorry. Hope someone else can help with that.
We did wake to sleep to extend 45 minute naps to 2hr or 2hr15mins recently and it worked for us. Could you try this?

[Kiwi_one]

I just looked it up and the startle reflex disappears around 4 months. They can still flail, of course, but your baby may not have a problem with that I swaddled my spirited DD until she was about 6 months, moving to the Wrap Me Up swaddle when she outgrew the Miracle Blanket.

We're major clockwatchers too, so don't let that get you down. You do what you have to do. It must be more tricky with another LO toddling around. It sounds like you're doing great considering! I'm afraid I don't really have any advice to give as my DD, like your older bub, is great as long as I get her A times right. I agree with the PP about the routine though -- if AEAS is the only way things will work, that's fine and is a phase a lot of us ride out for a while. Babies have very little concept of time so I'd say, even if the gap between E and S is only 5 minutes, if it's clearly seperate from the pre-nap routine it shouldn't cause problems.

[Chicane]

Hey Lynsey love

I agree with pps - IMO its okay to do EAEAS or AEAS - we do that here as ds doesn't like to eat straight after waking either. Like pps said as long as there is a gap between eat and sleep so the association is not made then I don't think that's a prob.

Are you sure he's not a grumpy instead of a touchy? There is a grumpy support thread going...

What do you think is waking him up so much that he can't transition? Is there noise, is the room dark enough, is it the moro relfex (which should go soon but some LO can still jolt a bit for a while) or is it just the way he is???

Is he still STTN?

I am always wary of suggesting people start stretching A times in case it goes terribly wrong but perhaps you might want to try stretching that morning A by 5-10 mins and see if that effects that first nap? If you decide to experiment with stretching that first A then I would so it very very slowly as he seems to react strongly to any changes...

Here are some links about the 3 - 4 hour transition and doing it in 5 min increments http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=120362.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=120362.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=64158.msg476652#msg476652

only three times in the last two weeks has he managed to transition to second sleep cycle with no jolts and no help from me

I know you are frustrated (and all the other emotions too) but this is a good thing no? Could you have made this statement a month ago?

Sending you hugs and let me know what you think...I might ask for some more eyes on this one.

mwah x

[weatherlyn]

thank you everyone for all your help .you have all made me feel way better about the AEAS. the only trouble is late afternoon when E too close to S and he doesnt want to feed and we end up practically skipping the feed. Kiwi, glad to hear the reflex thing starts to dissapear around about now, i have noticed a slight diff already can leave one arm out for night sleep,but def not for naps. danni, if i do the personality quiz he comes out angel with a bit of touchy. he has the sweetest nature and nothing fazes him lots of laughs and smiles, he really touchy about his milk (bit of reflux, but accord to the paed not bad enough to warrant meds) and really short A time for his age. i am working on stretching morning A time, have got it to 1.75 hrs but by third afternoon nap usually have to have him down by 1hr 25 mins max and he never wants more than 20ml of the feed in that cycle cause he is too tired. So i am working on morning A time but at mo no hope of stretching afternoon A time. he went down for morning nap like dream today after 1 hr 50 mins and didnt wake at 40 min mark, slept 1 hr 25 mins total (and you are so right could not have said that one month ago). the second and third naps are the prob he is usually OT (even 5 mins too late and it is a struggle luca wasnt like that) and still wakes at 40 min mark unless i HTTJ and that is not a dead cert for nap no 3 usually a bit of pupd there)
oh ps room very dark and he sleeps with rain cd on the ipod. have noticed when go in at 35 min mark to HTTJ that sometimes he starts crying in his sleep at this point and that is what wakes him? what is that about? another thing luca never did!

[Chicane]

Hey love

Perhaps you should keep the morning A at 1.75 for a bit longer and maybe try stretching it out in a another week or two by just 5 or 10 mins....see what you get if he gives you a short nap then you'll know that 1.75 is his limit for the moment. I think also its cool to keep the rest of the days As short (maybe even a bit shorter then they are now?) so that you don't get that OT at the end. What about fitting in another feed earlier in the day so that he gets a little more calories and then its not such a problem that he only takes a little later on?

My DS does funny little cries too. I've never paid attention to the time they happen...I guess its at the end of a sleep cycle...he kind of cries out a few times then stops, sometimes its a really loud wail that lasts maybe 30 seconds...Its pretty standard baby behaviour to cry out in their sleep...my niece is 6 and she still makes so much noise when she's asleep...how would you feel about seeing what happens if you don't go in at that cry, maybe he would get back down? (I am always so nervous about trying new things in case it goes terribly wrong, always have to psyche myself up for it)

I feel like I've been tweaking our routine for the last 8 months (since the beginning) Some bubs just get it quickly, some adapt really well and others, like ours, just keep changing. I also find that I am unable or sometimes unwilling to stay home all day for days on end to get the routine right...its a choice I make consciously and therefore am prepared to deal with the consequences (OT mostly) I am slowly accepting that its okay that we haven't got a perfect routine, I follow the BW philosophy but i don't always get the routine right, as long as my baby is happy, growing and content and not being subject to distressing situations or being kept up way too long...then so be it.

i can see improvement in Seb since your first posts...yep, he is way different to Luca, you're still getting to know each other, won't be long now before you feel as confident with him as you did with Luca.

mwah x
d

[weatherlyn]

Hon, i did the whole staying home thing with luca running home for nap times etc etc and while i ended up with a great routine i also ended up with a little boy that couldnt fall asleep in his pram or in the car as he was so conditioned to sleep in his cot with the whole wind down thing that when we did have to stay out he was miserable and ot and it was the one thing that i vowed not to get worked up over with no two. because when they get to four years old like luca is now, you cant see the evidencethat they had every nap the first year like clockwork. luca now falls asleep on the couch sometimes and in the car and i wish he had started to do it sooner rather than only when he got to about two two and a half. sometimes with seb lately i can feel myself getting sucked back in to the whole oh its nap time thing and i have to give myself a mental shake and think no lynsey dont you do it....... i want to take luca to the beach this summer and seb is just going to have to learn to sleep in his pram under a sun brolly i cant expect luca to stay home day in and day out.  also, all that work with luca and i can still count on my one hand how many 'perfect' days i had in terms of perfect nap length and night wakes etc and then they get to toddler age and its all a distant memory anyway. i swear its like childbirth too awful to remember so you block it all out! thats why i am so clueless about the whole EASY thing now!! ha ha ha

i am going to stop stressing about getting onto a 4hr routine  and just go with my babys flows he is a really touchy eater and so i have to go with that. his reflux also seems worse this week dunno why with huge acidy spit ups even hours after feed. no wonder little guy is only interested if he is starving hungry and then he gulps and its all a vicious cycle anyways...
how is isaac doing with the sep anxiety at bedtime?

[Chicane]

I was just thinking about that today...I've got him so good at going to sleep with no props and in his own room that now I am afraid he will never be able to sleep on restaurant chairs like I used to when I was a kid! However, we have traveled a lot with him and he's been fine so hopefully its ok...I've got a lot of traveling coming up again from Jul till Sept so that will be another test for us...including a trip to Oz on my own with Isaac (eek!)

I love BW but sometimes I wonder if perhaps it feeds my obsessive compulsive side a little too much...kwim?

The SA at bedtime is better...tonight was totally fine. Once I figured out what it was it made it really easy to work out how to help him with it. Tonight I just made wind down a lot longer and he was cool. Oh my, he is such a doll, I am so in love, its crazy! This morning he woke up laughing - too cute.