Hi All,
I'm back again after a few years and unfortunately can't remember my old username. I have a now 5 year old and 6 weeks ago had another beautiful baby boy. We used EASY the first time around with much success except for the early riser and I'm back again with a few questions. I apologise in advance for the rambling nature of my post but I hope you can follow and chip in with questions and responses.
So EASY has been going something like this based on whatever time his night feeds are:
E - 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm or shifted out an hour to 8am etc.
The A part varies dramatically as he can take up to an hour and a half to drink his bottle. Bottles have 5oz in them, we are using Tommee Tippee bottles with a number 1 teat, have tried Avent too but he spills more than he drinks. We tried variflow a couple of weeks ago but he had a cold and we thought we would leave it before trying again so tomorrow we will start a couple of bottles with variflow. Having another child in the house and needing to eat/cook etc. means that taking so long to feed is really impacting on our eldest who constantly feels like I'm with the baby, especially when he comes home from school.
We hadn't implemented a DF as we tried about 2 weeks ago (I realise he was so small) and he only took 2 ounces and still woke an hour and a half later and couldn't be settled so he had a feed then and another a few hours later.
So we DF last night at 11pm and he woke at 1.30am (has been waking at this time for the past week) and I managed to Shh him back to sleep and I woke up at 3.30am (he didn't) and gave him a NF and he took 5 oz. He has also been mooching (awake) in the moses basket for the past few mornings after his 4.30am feed for quite a while and I can't sleep when he does that. He has just had his first bottle this morning and only took 3oz in 1.5hours so there was little to no A time and he is napping and I will wake him for his 10am E.
So really my questions are - thumps head- what do I do? DF or no DF? Do we limit how long it takes to give him a bottle? Do we try and cut down to 1 NF in the hopes it makes him take his bottles during the day? Taking yesterday as an example he had a bottle at 5. Bath at 7 tried another bottle as a cluster feed before bed and then DF at 11. Previously he had been going longer without a feed and I feel like we are messing up his body clock...
Sorry this is all over the place but I would appreciate some objective input if you can follow me