Starting out with E.A.S.Y. at 15 weeks

[mld25]

Hi,

I've been trying various ways of getting my LO into a routine (mostly with the aim of getting more sleep myself at night!), but I think I've been a bit haphazard about it - reading too many different books and trying to apply all the principles at once, even when they contradict each other!  Along with some illness along the way, the net result so far is that he rarely gets more than 1 1/2 hours' sleep betwen 4 and 7am, one way or another, and I'm getting more and more tired out trying to figure out how to "start the day at 7am"...

So I'd like to just stick to one type of routine now.  I think a 3-ish hour E.A.S.Y. might be the place to start, but I'm still a bit confused:

• This suggests that at 15 weeks, we should expect 8-10 hours sleep at night, but all the sample routines I've found suggest starting the day at 7am with a bedtime of 7pm-ish.  What happens to the other 2-4 hours overnight?
• This suggests a bedtime of 7pm, with a cluster feed at 9pm (for the 3-hour routine), and a dreamfeed at 10 or 11pm.  What's the difference between a cluster feed and a dreamfeed in the evening?

We're away next week, albeit with relatives, so not a great time to try to stick to a routine, but I figure there's no harm in trying!  I can really start in earnest then when we get back home again.

I'll try to remember to start noting down his E/A/S times, so that I really know where we are.  I suspect he's currently OT (usually 2x30 min naps + 1x1.5 hours), but at the same time I'm wary of putting him down too quickly for naps, as he already wakes up fully too early in the morning for my liking, and I keep remembering Gina Ford's comment about most early waking being due to too much daytime sleep...  but as we now have not enough daytime sleep *and* early waking, I clearly need to break that cycle somehow, but am not sure of the best point in the day to start tackling it.

Thanks,
Mary-Ann

[empowered mama]

hi there and welcome

I would say that your LO is quickly approaching the age where 10-12 hour nights would be more typical so you can aim more for the 7-7 day.

It may be easier to start your LO off on a 4 hour EASY routine instead of 3 because you are almost at the age where this begins and you could save yourself the transition from one to the other.  However, if your LO has a hard time making it to 4 hours for feeds, then perhaps you might consider the 3.5 EASY to start off. 

I believe the suggestion for cluster feed at 9 is only if they are going through a growth spurt.  It appears that this would be administered in the same way as the DF, as the LO is asleep by 7 - make sense?

Hope this helps and good luck!

[mld25]

Thanks for the reply. If my LO does 10 hours a night, though (which I suspect he may be), how can I aim for a 7-7 routine? Wouldn't I either need to aim for 9-7 or 7-5? I think we're roughly ending up with the latter, which is just wiping me out ATM!

More to the point, how can I aim for a 7am start when he usually wakes up ready for the day by 5.30?

Mary-Ann

[empowered mama]

hmmm....have you put your LO on the EASY routine?  If so, can you post it so we can take a look?  It is possible that your LO may just prefer 10 hr nights, but there may also be something we can tweak during the day to see if we can get him up to 12.

[mld25]

I started noting down his E/A/S times in some detail yesterday, but quickly realised that he was coming down with a heavy cold, so I think I'd better leave off being more insistent about routine until he's over that. I'll check in again in a week or so!

[empowered mama]

yes, that sounds like a great idea - best to just get him through the illness before starting any tweaking.

Hope he feels better soon - stay posted

[mld25]

OK, first some background.  He was the sleepiest baby ever (it seemed, falling deeply asleep anywhere and everywhere) until about 9 weeks, by which point I'd got him to roughly Gina Ford's 6-week-old routine (he always slept more than she suggested during the day), waking about 7am.

At 8 weeks, I remember noticing that he had got very wriggly during feeds (bottle-feeding by now, but that's another story) - head waving back and forth, and so on.

At 9 weeks, he got a cold, which turned into croup (with a fun night in hospital), which never completely settled down, leading a dignosis of a floppy larynx.  It didn't seem to bother him at all - he was happy through it all.  In terms of routine, with the cold, he would wake up coughing from naps and be wide awake.  He dropped a night-time feed during this, though, so he was down to 1, about 3-3.30am.

Once he was better, I started trying to find out how to get him to nap longer, as he was getting very tired by the end of the day and quite shouty.  I finally got round to borrowing the original Baby Whisperer book from a friend, and tried HTTJ, which seemed to do the trick sometimes, but it meant I got no 'Y' time at all during the day!

He went through a week around 12 weeks where he cut back from 30oz to about 24oz, just as we were trying to get him to eat more during the day to go longer at night!  It didn't make much difference either way to his night feeds, as it turned out.

Come 14 weeks, he had pretty much kicked the 30-minute nap habit, but we were often still stuck at 45-min naps, and very hard to settle back again.  I read up on PUPD, as he was now old enough, which I started on when he got another cold - with croup and a night in hospital again!  Apart from the odd coughing fit during the day now, he's just about got rid of it (apart from the noisy breathing from the floppy larynx, of course).  Once again, when ill, he actually went longer at night, starting a new habit of going through to about 5am.  but then he found it much harder to settle back to sleep, whereas previously he'd been happy to go back to sleep fairly easily after night-time feeds until 6.30-7am.

So there we are now at 15 weeks.  After a week of being all over the shop in terms of eating with being ill, he's now back just under 30oz per day. The pattern (I won't call it a 'routine' yet!) bbefore he got ill, which he's pretty much back to is as follows:

Early morning: Usually wakes around 4.15-5.30.  Eats a few ounces, then usually back to sleep for bursts of 45 mins until we give in around 6.15-6.45am and get him up.
E: We aim for 7am, but if he's awake much earlier, we might feed him around 6.30 if he's looking hungry.  3-5oz
A: 1hr30-2hrs - depending on how well-rested he is by the early waking pattern.
S: Usually goes to sleep fairly easily and well for 45 mins, then PUPD for 20-30 mins followed by another 45 mins that need me to stay with him or he wakes up every 5 mins.  Sometimes falls into a deep sleep for up to an hour before the next E time.
E: We aim for 4 hourly feeds; this one is usually 6-7oz.
A: 2hrs
S: As before.
E: Usually 5-6oz.
A: 1hr45-2hr15, depending on how long he takes to go to sleep.
S: 45 min nap - usually wakes after 45 mins yelling, so not really well-rested, but he needs to be up to give enough A time before bed.
E: 4-5oz
A: 1hr30-2hr30, depending on how long he takes to go to sleep.

So, here's today's E/A/S times, as an example:

E 3.15 (4oz) - very unusual.  Usually 4.30-5.30 ish.
A 6.45 - 8.40 (1hr55)
E 7.15 (3.5oz)
S 8.40 - 10.45 (45 mins + 25 mins of PUPD + 50 mins)
E 7oz
A 10.45 - 12.45 (2hrs)
S 12.15 - 14.35 (40 mins + 20 mins of PUPD + 45 mins + 10 mins PUPD + 20 mins)
E 6oz
A 14.35 - 16.45 (2hrs10) (Started win-down/nap routine from 16.05 after first tired cues, but kept acting wide awake despite that for ages)
S 16.45 - 17.20
E 5oz
A 17.20 - 19.25 (2hr5) (dozed off during top-up feed at 18.40, plus 40 mins PUPD)
Will also do a dream feed when we go to bed around 10-10.30 of 2-4oz.

He's never been the world's best eater - now at just over 15lb, he still struggles to eat more than 30oz per day, nothing like the 2.5-2.7 ratio I've read everywhere.  And he happily goes 4 hours between feeds.  Frankly, I suspect he's got 5 hours or more given half a chance - I haven't seen a hunger cue from him for weeks.  But he still can take 30-40 mins to get through 5-7oz.  He loses interest after a couple of oz or so.

So, any thoughts?

Many thanks,
M-A

[empowered mama]

oh - big hugs to you - you have been through a lot in only 15 weeks!

As I'm looking at your routine, the first thing that sticks out to me is the A times following a short nap.  If your LO takes only a 45 min nap, it is important to shorten the following A time to prevent your LO from getting OT (overtired) as the day progresses.  It's just not as restorative a nap to carry them through a full A time kwim?

You also want to apply this after the catnap in the afternoon, so if your LO prefers 1h45-2hour A time, I would shoot for maybe 1h30 after the catnap so he doesn't get OT before bed.

Honestly, the age of 4-6 months is just so hard regarding 45 minute naps.  They are still developing their ability to transition to the next sleep cycle so sometimes it may just take some time for him to get there.  My LO started taking longer naps just after his 6 month birthday, so it does get better.  You definitely can continue to try to tweak his A times to see if that helps, and HTTJ can be effective as well, though it is time-consuming and exhausting.  Your first A times look pretty good for his age, but you can try tweaking them just to test it out - maybe increase or decrease a little and see if it makes a difference.

Truly, I don't have much experience in the way of feedings so it might be worth a shot to post on the feed boards as well.  But as I look at it, it seems okay to me at the moment.

HTH hun....things will get better

[mld25]

Thanks for the response - that did turn into quite an essay of mine, didn't it?  Oops!  I may have been ambiguous about one thing, though - I do aim for a shorter A time after a short nap - the 2hr10 yesterday afternoon, for instance, was actually 1hr30 + 5 mins for wind-down (his usual wind-down time if I catch him at the right point) + 35 mins of dozing off then wide awake 20 secs later, yelling.

Also, if you shorten the A time, do you lengthen the nap time to let them catch up on their sleep, or just reset the clock and feed after at a shorter interval?

And after all the attention yesterday to making sure he napped enough, he was awake overnight at:
- 3.15 (presumed hungry, had 3oz.  Possibly not, in retrospect). Back to sleep at 3.30
- 4.30 (settled quite quickly with a cuddle)
- 5.30 (Tried to shush him back to sleep for a few minutes, but he was just awake and happy.  Left him to it for 45 mins, then he got insistent about attention about 6.15, so my husband got up to give me some sleep!

Then got sleepy about 7.30 and went to sleep happily at 7.35.

The one advantage of trying Gina Ford's routines was that, by keeping him awake more durng the day, he did at least sleep a lot better in the early hours of the morning.  He was more crotchety during the day, mind you.

Any thoughts on getting him to sleep better in the early mornings?

Thanks,
M-A