Hello all. I'm a newly minted father. On Dec. 30th, my wife gave birth to our first son, Jasper Daniel. If you're interested to hear our story,
you can read about it here.I've read the bulk of the Baby Whisperer. I'm on the last chapters, and I feel that intellectually I have a good grasp of it, but in real life with my son Jasper, things are much less clear.
He's 32 days old today. I'm not sure if it's too early to really start him on a routine. On this forum, I saw a sample routine that began at 6 weeks. Is 5 weeks too early to start? I'm not too concerned with getting on the routine right now, but I do want to avoid any sort of accidental parenting that will plague all of us later on.
I want to ask questions about each letter of the EASY routine so I may as well start here with eating.
My wife has been breastfeeding exclusively. And so far so good. J.D. has gained the proper amount of weight and by my observations, my wife's and the doctor's, he is growing great. (He's already outgrown clothes!) So while he's getting plenty to eat, he eats very often. It can be frustrating for my wife because he's a lazy drinker. He'll drink, then drift off to a light sleep, and want to feed anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour later. Of course, there are some times when he drinks a lot, and then passes out for 2 hours. But everyday there's a period of a few to a lot of hours, where he eats just about every hour and kinda sleeps fitfully in between.
I'm concerned that he's being nursed to sleep and that this could eventually (if it hasn't already) become a sleep prop.
So to sum up:
1) Is the sleepy eating a problem? I know it's common and have read the 'remedies', e.g. tickle his feet, undress him a bit, talk loudly to him. Most of those don't work on old J.D., and if they do seemingly not for very long. I want to avoid accidental parenting and creating a sleep prop.
2) I know that the ideal EASY for a 6 week old is ~3 hours. A lot of times, J.D. is about half that. Is this something he will grow into? If we don't feed him and he wants to eat, there's not much we can do to keep him from crying. Any other suggestions about this?
3) Off topic--I have other questions that are primarily sleep related. Should I start a new thread in that section? I'm guessing yes, but I want to be sure.
**Thanks!**