Baby led, but learning to self settle with PUPD?

[tipofthetree]

Our 20 week old is essentially on a baby led schedule. It is somewhat routine and not crazy, i.e. he normally only feeds every 3hrs or so, but can be more, can be less. Then often has 4 feeds through the night after his 7:30pm 'bedtime' feed.

My wife is not keen on implementing a strict EASY routine (he is currently AESY - needing fed/walked/rocked to sleep. Can't self settle).

In this situation, is it even worth trying PUPD in the night to teach him to self settle? i.e. if a strict routine doesn't work for us, at least he will learn to put himself to sleep.

As we're likely to stick with AESY, can we let him fall asleep while feeding (he also gets held upright for 30 mins after), then rouse him gently before we put him down? What do other people on EASY routine do for night feeds if they fall asleep while feeding?

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Night feeds are different than day feeds - they are supposed to fall asleep while eating and hopefully remain asleep. I have done this with all 3 of mine and it has not impacted their ability to learn to self soothe to sleep otherwise.

The thing with EASY is that it truly is not a strict schedule...it is just a routine in a specific order that is not meant to be run by the clock but by baby's cues. For some babies (like my DD3 who was ebf up to about 6 months)it can sometimes be more of a EAEASY due to needing a top up feed as A times get longer but the main thing being stopping relying on feeding or props to get your lo to sleep (I mean for  daytime/bedtime, not night feeds).

It is up to you guys of course but one of Tracy's saying was "start as you mean to go on" which is worth considering - once your lo is bigger and perhaps harder to rock or walk to sleep and feeding before sleep becomes an issue with teeth (they need to be brushed before putting lo down to bed) it may be easier to think about changing things around now rather than down the road.

[tipofthetree]

So it might work to use PUPD for his bedtime, then just feed him to sleep for night feeds (hopefully they'll decrease as he learns to self settle) and use variety of PUPD/feeding to sleep/walked to sleep for daytime naps?

In reality I think this is how any attempt at sleep training would pan out for us. Is this too confusing for him?

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Yes I think it may be...tbh I would try to pick one thing a stick to it for a bit, he may surprise you. I did shh/pat with my kids mostly, so no experience with pu/pd. My kids are all quite spirited so after about 3 months old feeding to sleep did not work unless they were ill and I was desperate lol.

Is he ebf? If so I would not expect the feeds to necessarily decrease unless some.of the time he is waking and just doesn't know any other way to get back to sleep.