Hi all. I was going the Wise Baby way, didn't really understand it, came across EASY and now have the Baby Whisperer getting delivered to our house tomorrow to devour!
Some background of our baby: born shy of 38 weeks. Seems like a smart/alert baby. At 2.5 weeks now. I've had trouble breast feeding so have been doing breast + supplementation (I think baby is getting 2-3 oz per feed, of which 2 oz is formula). This AM she was a awake from 7-10AM. 3 hours! She sleeps in a crib, but the grandparents have intervened and now we are forced to put her in a bassinet temporarily, but hope to go back to a crib week 5. the sleep routine we have done for the last few days is at 7PM, dim the lights, change her, clean her, put her in evening gown... around 745PM we feed her.. first on breast and then if she is still hungry formula.... turn on white noise machine (30 min timer), swaddle, and sleep. Today is worked like a charm as I figure she finished feeding at 8:30PM and its 11PM and she has been asleep (although a lot of tossing and turning...I just took off her baby hat to see if that does the trick)
I have three main questions.
Question 1) What should the evening routine be for a 3-6 week old? I thought I was following the EASY method of a routine and more feedings weighted towards the evening. But now I am reading that the you never feed and then put to sleep. So this is confusing to me. Especially as if you feed and then put to sleep, the baby will sleep longer.
Question 2) How does one plan a routine around a baby who can go through periods of super alertness.... like today she was extremely awake for 3 hours. She then took a short nap. Was awake. And then took a really long nap where we were struggling to wake her up at 5:45PM. We know the baby was so awake in the AM, and that caused it to crash in the PM.. but what is one to do? That was the baby's natural cycle (I think).
Question 3) Should we change anything if the baby... for unclear reasons to us... sleeps 3.5-4 hour stretches in the evening? E.G., 8pm feeding, 11:30-12am feeding, 3-4am feeding, and then a ~7am wake-up? Those are long stretches... and it's a quasi routine? Our goal is to get the baby sleeping through the night as soon as possible though -- so we are very open to changes.
Reality is the baby will transition to grandparents house for week 3-4, so whatever we do now in week 2 will be eroded. So we will be picking up a routine plan in earnest again weeks 4-5....