Hello! I'm new to posting here, but I have read several threads and found them all very helpful. I've also read a few of the BW books and have wanted my DD on easy from day one...she unfortunately has had other plans.
She is currently 17 weeks/4 months. She usually wakes at 7am, but from there there is not a regular schedule. She is mostly breastfed (unless I'm at work which is part-time) and eats really often these days, about every 1 -2 hours and for only 5-10 minutes total. And this is during the day and night. She was struggling with not gaining weight so for the past month I've let her eat round the clock to get her weight up. She now seems to be gaining weight well but the down side is that she is developing a snacking habit. I'm not sure how to get her to start taking larger meals. Should I just hold her off for a few hours? Do it incrementally? In the BW book to establish EASY at this ago it sounds like it should be done cold turkey and all at once, but I'm not sure if that would be too harsh for DD to handle. As for sleeping, that is very inconsistent too, plus she does not know how to self-soothe, so we rock or nurse her to sleep at every nap, bedtime and night waking. Her naps are almost never more than 45 minutes. I have tried to keep her awake of consistent periods of time, but her drowsy signals always come too early...I suspect a result of her short naps. For a few days last week I tried to keep her up for just 1.5 hours after waking in the morning (this is usually the period she is up the least amount of time), but her naps got even more difficult and shorter so we went back to keeping her up for only an hour or less after first waking in the morning. My biggest issue is that she is waking about every hour (sometimes every two) at night so I'm getting no sleep. She nurses every time she wakes, and again this developed because we were trying to help her gain weight. Now that she is gaining I'm not sure how to handle nighttime feeds. It seems for her age she should be able to sleep longer between eating, but I don't think she'd be ready to go all night long without nursing.
As you can see we are so far from EASY that it seems almost impossible to implement. That said I really want to make some changes because I know this will just get worse and harder with time. Feeling lost and appreciate any help anyone can offer!
