Advice on EASY / using PU/PD to solve accidental parenting with 7 mth old

[nemo_sushi]

Hi,

Apologies in advance for the long post, quite a few things I would like advice on......I have a 7.5 month old and I'm keen to use some of the baby whisperer techniques to try and help my LO with sleep and naps.  I have read through the baby whisperer book to try and learn about the EASY and have always roughly followed an EASY schedule in the day, however there have always been some things I haven't tried to change related to sleep and naps so I've now got some accidental parenting issues. We've just got back from holiday so our schedule is a bit up in the air but before holiday our "routine" roughly looked like this:

08.00 wake-up and breast feed
09.00 cereal and fruit for breakfast
10.30ish 45 minute morning nap (being walked in the baby carrier)
12.00 breast feed
13.00 lunch
14.30ish afternoon nap, varies between 45 minute and an hour seems to be getting longer (walked in the pushchair for first 20 mins to get to sleep)
16.00 breast feed
17.30 dinner
18.30 start bedtime (naked play, bath)
19.00 feed to sleep, asleep by 19.30
Wakes up 2-3 times a night (times vary) and is fed back to sleep (takes 20 mins and I can put her down quite awake and she will settle), if she wakes up after 4am Daddy changes nappy and puts her back down, usually goes back to sleep after this but it doesn't work if we try this on an earlier wake-up.

I want to stop feeding her to sleep at night, drop the night feeds and get her napping in her cot in the day for longer (she hasn't done this since about 3 weeks despite us trying to get her to sleep there).  I was going to try to use the pick-up put-down method to address the naps and sleep (adjusted for age) and wondered whether I should try to change all this all at once, or whether I should do one thing at a time.  For example start with naps and try to get those sorted using pu/pd, then work on putting to sleep moving the feed before bath and using pu/pd, then once that is done move to stopping night feeds using pu/pd.  I'm scared that doing it all at once will result in an extremely tired LO and very stressed out mum.  Or will doing one thing at a time confuse her as sometimes I'll be doing pu/pd then other times feeding her?  Also when dropping night feeds can I do this gradually and still feed her on some wake-ups to make sure I don't get really sore/engorged boobs or do I need to drop all of them at once so I don't confuse her.

On top of this I'm also trying to introduce a bottle for one of the day feeds as I'll be going back to work soon so need to transition away from breast feeding.  This isn't going well at the moment and has meant she has skipped a day feed on occasion because I don't want to breastfeed her after she has refused a bottle.  I think this has meant that she eats more solids but then makes up the milk on the night feeds. Should I work on the nap / sleep issues first then go back to trying to introduce the bottle?

Thanks for any advice you can give,

Sarahx

[nevinsmama]

Hi Sarah, welcome to BW!

So glad you found us, I am sure we can help sort out some of the AP issues, we have all been there and some times you just do what you need to do to get by in the early days!

OK, first step: Routine, I would commit to PUPD for naps with a 3 hour A before 1st nap and 3 hour A after, unless nap is less than an hour total, then 2 hour 40 A. I see she has a LONG last A after a short nap, that can contribute to NWs. Have a look here for age appropriate adaptions for PUPD:
How to PU/PD (inc age adaptations)
Before attempting all this, I would make sure she has a very dark room and white noise to drown out any external stimuli. It will be rough at first but we are here to hold your hand and it will get better!



As far as nights go, I would allow 1 NF, say around 5 hours in to the night. If LO wakes before then, I would do PUPD until she goes back out, if she keeps going past the 5 hour mark, DON't feed her. Keep going until she is asleep and then feed on next waking. r Have you got good support from DH? Is he willing to take a stretch in the night? Tracy advocated parents taking turns on nights and not trading off in the night, but it is up to you. I wouldn't trade off while she is awake as that can be confusing to LO.


I wanted to drop off this link about BF tot taking a bottle, there is some great info there.
Breastfed babies and bottles

Hope I answered your questions, let us know how it goes, hang in there! It will get better!