Author Topic: concerns about starting easy with 13 week old  (Read 890 times)

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Offline lalouse

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concerns about starting easy with 13 week old
« on: July 18, 2014, 18:33:52 pm »
Hi everyone,

I was just introduced to E.A.S.Y this week and I just started trying it with my 13 week old. Before this we were on a completely baby-led schedule, but she had started settling into a general routine on her own. here are my concerns after just a couple days, let me know what you think.

1. Feeding
baby is exclusively breastfed but she is a snacker. She is very efficient, and my milk lets down very quickly, but she likes to eat for 5 minutes and then eat again before she naps. she had been accustomed to eating then sleeping, so she has to suck to fall asleep. I'm obviously trying to stop this and move to words EASY. I've been giving her a pacifier to help with this but I don't think that she's eating enough when she wakes from her sleep (since she snacks) because she thinks she's going to eat later. This is making naptime very difficult because she cries to eat. overall she seems to be nursing less now and I'm worried. any tips on transitioning away from eating then sleeping? (And whether I should be concerned about paci?) Her snacking also makes it hard to do the 3-hour schedule. We definitely could not do 4 hours now.

2. Activity
if I go based on her first yawn, her activity time is really short like 30 minutes. do you think this is just because we're building up the routine and it'll increaseas we get better at it?or is it something I should be worried about? are there any solutions?

as a reminder, I've literally only been doing this for 3 days.

 Thanks for any advice!

Offline weaver

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Re: concerns about starting easy with 13 week old
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2014, 20:41:07 pm »
Yawns are not necessarily reliable tired signs - they can mean a baby is bored, needs a change of scene, or just feels like yawning!  Some babies really love to yawn! For her age you're looking at an A time of about 1 hr 20-30 minutes.  There's nothing wrong with a bit of clock watching if it helps you figure her out.

Stopping feeding to sleep is trickier proposition, but she's very little and can easily learn new things.  It depends what you want to do.  You could start giving her the 'snack' a while before her nap time, so you know she's fed before her nap, or you could try to cut that second feed completely.  It's up to you, but it sounds like you might be uncomfortable just dropping that feed, and that's perfectly fine.  I know mine needed to have a 'snack' when they moved to 4 hour EASY.  What you could start to do is make sure she isn't feeding to sleep - so feed her, and rouse her up before you put her into the cot.  She doesn't need to be wide awake, just not sound asleep after feeding going into the cot. That way, she'll get used to going asleep in the cot without feeding, iyswim. 

You could also have a look at the bfing board, if you want to chat more about bfing.  Are you offering both sides at that first feed? That would be a good way of differentiating between 'meal' time and 'snack' time.

HTH and good luck :)
*Anne*, loving mama to a honeybee (2010) and a sweetpea (2012).  BF for 4 proud years.