Implementing E.A.S.Y - probably stupid question

[Laura33b]

Hello there

Thanks in advance for any help.  Our LO will be 4 months old on Christmas Day and after nearly 4 months of sleep deprivation and kidding ourselves that OUR baby didn't need a routine, we have realised how wrong we are.  We could write a rule book on accidental parenting and we have got every trick in the book.  It is our first time and it has taken us until now to figure out how much we've messed up.  So - we are having a great big re-shuffle and trying to sort the whole thing out.  27 Dec is marked as starting day, so we are gearing ourselves up for even LESS sleep over New Year.  Lovely!

Before we start, I just wanted to make sure we have our plan in place and there is one thing I don't understand.  My LO is breast fed.  She wakes generally every 1-2 hours and I have formed a habit of feeding her back to sleep.  Sometimes she is genuinely hungry, sometimes not.  During the day, she easily goes 3-4 hours without feeding, and then feeds well, so I feel reasonably confident about getting her on a good day time routine.  The trouble is, I haven't been able to work out a pattern to her night time wakenings so ... how will I know during the night whether to shhh pat/PUPD her back to sleep and when she is actually hungry?  I realise that ultimately the aim is just to dream feed and have her sleep through, but I just can't imagine how that can happen straight away.  Would it be sensible to perhaps set a feeding time of, say, 3am, and not feed her other than at that time?  So - try the shhh pat instead?  I have a feeling that if I do that I will be shhh patting a VERY angry baby between the hours of about 11pm and 3am ....

Any help with this is greatly appreciated.  Thank you all so much - and happy nearly Christmas!

[Ima shel Alon]

Hi there!

First of all, don't be so hard on yourself, even those of us who started EASY from day one had struggles. If you enjoyed your baby while AP then that's great!

I wouldn't expect her to go through a whole night without feeding after a DF. I had a FF baby who couldn't go more than 4h between NF till 5m.
IIWY I would set times ahead that I think she is hungry and feed only at those times. For a start I would probably space the feeds like they are during the day, so 3.5-4h would be reasonable, IMO, and the rest of the waking I would settle in the cot with Shush-pat.
She is a very young baby so I wouldn't go for PU/PD TBH. Many young babies find it upsetting and OS and in my experience it works better when they are much older.
Either way you need to prepare yourself that it WILL take some time and you do NEED to have patience. Ear plugs are your best friends!
You might face a couple of hard nights, but you will see that it slowly gets better and better, just stick with it.
And if you need any more help, we are here

[Laura33b]

Hi Ima

Thanks so much for your reply!  We delayed our start to today so we could catch up on some sleep yesterday.  My OH is shhhh-ing right now ...eeeek!

Anyway, we had a good night last night.  My LO has been sleeping in a side car crib since birth and I've realised I've been rushing in too soon to settle her.  We've kept her in our room, but moved her away from the bed, so she is in an independent crib, if you see what I mean and guess what?  She slept better!  I also took note of when she woke and when she was really hungry.  So, when she woke at 2 and it was only 1 hour after feeding, I knew she couldn't be hungry.  We did a sort of version of shhhhh pat and she settled in 30 mins - amazing!  Now - I have just one other question.  During the day, she easily goes for 4 hours between feeds, but at night it is more like 3 hourly.  This means that if we put her to bed at 7 she wakes for a feed at 10.  Tonight, should we try shhhh-pat at 10, and delay the 'dream feed' until 11?  I realise this might mean that we are actually holding a screaming baby for an hour and then do more of a nightmare feed at 11!  I know she is able to go for 4 hours without feeding though because, as I said, she does it during the day and last night she fed at 1am, was shhh-ed at 2 and didn't wake until after 5am for a next 'guzzle'. 

Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Ima shel Alon]

Great job mommy and daddy! You are doing it!

If you are confident that she can go 4h between feeds and you see that she is feeding well at each feed then I would say hold her for the 4h at night as well.
If after a couple of nights you have a feeling that she truly wakes up hungry after 3h then I would feed her, but that's me, I always felt really bad delaying DS feeds if he was genuinely hungry.
The other thing you could try is a DF which is done between 22 and 23 (you could do it at 22 if she wakes up around that time anyway). The DF one doesn't count how long it has been since last feeds, so it could also be 3h from last feed, yk?

[Laura33b]

Hi again Ima

Thanks for your support - it's fantastic!  It feels like someone is holding our hand through this. 

Ok, so me and OH disagreed on what to do about night feeds, but we compromised that if she woke more than 4h after dream feed that I would feed her.  I feel the same as you - the thing I feel most terrified about is denying her food if she is hungry.  So, we had a brilliant start - she pretty much settled herself to sleep at bedtime (amazing - I know) and we didn't have to resettle her even once.  We kept looking at the clock thinking 'I wonder when she'll wake' and it never happened.  I had to go and check she was still breathing quite a few times!  So then we did dream feed at 10.45pm which worked well.  She woke at 1 and resettled very quickly with some shhh-ing.  She woke at 3 and I fed her.  She woke at 5 and it was the hardest re-settling of the WHOLE day!  She showed no signs of hunger but did show lots of signs of being very tired.  It felt like we started over and I wondered whether, by feeding her in the night, I had undone all the good work.  I'm now wondering whether OH was right.  How does she know that if she wakes at 3 she'll get fed, but if she wakes at other times she won't?  Isn't it a slightly confusing message?

Anyway, strange thing was that she didn't even seem that hungry at breakfast time, which surprised me, as it is the longest stretch she's ever done without feeding!

Thanks Ima!

[Ima shel Alon]

What she will learn is that she is fed when she is hungry, not when something else is bothering her or when she doesn't manage to self settle.

The 5AM NW, which can also be looked at as an EW can have several reasons. The most common ones are OT or UT during the day. The next common reason is that the first nap the day before was too early (so actually UT as well).
Now that her days are more organised would you like to post your day in an EASY format and we can have a look at her A times and length of naps? Maybe there is some tweaking that needs to be done to avoid that NW.
And if there is nothing to tweak then the 5AM NW will go away in a couple of days, she also needs some time to get used to the changes.

But really great job, guys, you are doing great and your LO is so lucky to have such parents who care for her healthy sleep.

[Laura33b]

Oh thanks Ima!  Yes, we are seeing improvements already.  Thanks for replying ... as now that we are making some progress I'm starting to wonder where to go next.  In the BW book, Tracy says that when implementing the routine you have to be VERY rigid in the timings ... so that is exactly what we've done.  It has felt, as a result, that we have been forcing her to stay awake for longer than she wanted.  I'm wondering when we can move away from this approach and be more led by her.  So, here's how our EASY has gone:

E 7.30am
A she looks tired at 9.00am though and in the 'old days' that is when I would have put her to sleep
S 9.30am (only for 45 mins ... we try shhh patting her back but have never managed it for the morning nap)
E 11.30am
A she manages this A time easily
S 1.30pm (we have twice managed to extend this to 1.5 hours with a lot of help
E 3.30pm
A again easily manages this A time
S 5.25pm (naps for 30 - 45 mins easily
E 7.00pm
S 7.30pm (after pyjamas, cuddles and lullaby)
E 10.30pm dream feed
NW:
- usually 00:30 to 1.00 - easily shhhh'd back to sleep (within 5 mins)
- often another wakening shortly after - easily shhh'd back to sleep (within 5 mins)
- somewhere between 2.15am and 3.00am wakes and has long feed (15 to 20 mins)
- 5.00am to 6.00am often one more wakening but last night settled after 2 mins

So - basically I'm really happy.  This is an absolutely HUGE improvement from the several times a night wakenings of just four nights ago!  The biggest change is that when she goes to bed at night she stays asleep until I disturb her a little for the dream feed.  My partner and I keep going in and checking that she is still breathing (!) because four nights ago we would have gone in several times to re-settle her after we put her to sleep. 

My feeling is that she gets easily tired in the morning and actually could do with an A time of just 1h15 or 1h30 including feeding and dressing.  I also wonder whether she then only needs a short nap after that.  In essence, this would mean that her morning EAS time would be quite short and her next EAS time would be much longer - could that still work?  A few weeks ago, we did have a sort of routine which my LO had set for herself and that was sort of the pattern she followed.  What do you think?  Tracy doesn't say how/when to move on from the rigid EAS times and to just watch your baby for signs of tiredness and OT - I do feel we are ready to do that, but don't want to run before we can walk!

Thanks again so much everyone!

[Ima shel Alon]

If you feel that you are ready then I'd say go for it! You can always go back to rigid times when needed.
But another thing to remember about sleepy cues is that they are going to get more and more confusing when she is a bit older. So it's good to find the balance between watching her cues and looking at the clock. Sometimes she will seem very tired but was actually awake for only a short A so maybe there is something else bothering her, like boredom or teething (some babies are very sleepy when teething and need to sleep more during those days).

Was she awake from 10:15 till 13:30? That seems like a very long time for her to be awake at her age.

Some babies DO need a shorter A time in the morning then the rest of the days, so you could try and offer a shorter one first thing in the morning. It would be good to log what kind of naps you are getting from a shorter A time because right now you are getting what seems to be an UT nap (45min), but I can't be sure really.
But I would still aim for her to have 2 full naps (1.5-2h) and a CN in the afternoon. 2CN and just one full nap doesn't sound quite enough for such a young baby.

[Laura33b]

Hello there

Well, I'm back again.  I was about to post saying about all the success we've had with this, but then last night it all went wrong!  We are now on Day 9 of implementing EASY and things had been getting steadily better and better by the day (apart from the one MONUMENTAL regression on Day 5!)  So, yesterday was pretty much a perfect day of eating, activing and snoozing.  We managed one 1 hour long nap in the morning, then a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, then a 45 minute cat nap.  Bed time was amazing - we did the whole routine and I left her to settle herself for only the second time ever and she stayed asleep until the dream feed at 10.30pm.  Then she woke at 12.30, and 1, and 1.30, and 3, and 5, and 6!  Arrghhh?!  What's happening?!  Is there a second regression day at Day 9?!  I'm hoping its just a one off and we'll be back on track tonight, but I just feel so disappointed that after a day of napping and eating being more 'by the book' than ever before, we had the worst night since Day 5 regression.  Hmmmmmmm.

Thank you all!

[Ima shel Alon]

Wow, that's a great progress!

Sweetie, there will always be days that are going wrong. We all have bad days, right?
I wouldn't conclude anything looking at just one night. If it goes on like this then you can post your EASY and we can have a look at A times.
Just keep on doing what you did till now so you don't confuse her by doing things differently.