Third baby but feel like a first time Mom

[Patty B]

Hello! I posted my introduction a few days ago, I'm a mother of three boys, 13 and 9 years old and a 16 week old baby, he will turn 4 months  on the 9th of september.

If I have to compare the experience with the three it has been different with the three because of their temperament. 1st baby and 1st time mom and he would not nap never, we did all AP possible...chaos for 2 months but then he was fine, 2nd baby I was ready for everything but he turned out to be very good at naps and sleep since 3 weeks of age. Now with the 3rd he is sort of in between, won't fuss as much as 1st baby but not as at ease as 2nd.

I'm using EASY for the first time and have been on it for 7 days now.
In the past and until last week I had followed a routine of my own in the way that I would try to do the same things everyday in order to have the baby anticipate by making the day predictable, and things would flow without any trouble until I got back to work, plus I had a very good nanny ...etc.

We relocated to a new country before 3rd LO was born and therefore I'm not going back to work outside the house in the near future.

Now I need support/guidance to: teach independent sleep, sort out EASY issues/questions.

LO was sleeping through the night (7 pm - 7 am) just a week before his 3rd month mark and I was happy with that. I was puting him for naps and to sleep by rocking in my arms but it started to take longer and longer and my back was hurting more and more. So I decided to start teaching him to sleep without rocking and unfortunately coincidental(I hope is only coincidence) he has started to wake up once at night as I just started to put him on a more structured routine.

My past routine was:

7:00 wake up and eat
8:00 rock to nap - 20-30 minutes nap it took 5-10 minutes of rocking to get him to sleep
8:45 play, short walk on the stroller
9:45 bath, feed and nap (in that order) He woul nap for about three hours in the first weeks but recently 2 in average, here is were I found the first issue it would sometimes take up to 35- 40 minutes of rocking and  the last few days he would either get distracted and start cooing or just fuss it was becoming really hard.

1:00 eat
2:00 nap - but he would ocasionally fall asleep in the car or take the nap later

It was in the afternoon that naps did not follow a routine, sometimes I would nurse or rock to sleep and sometimes he would fall asleep in the car and naps could go from 30mins to 1 hour and only nap once in the afternoon. To sleep my routine has been consistent since day one, eating while being cuddled and singing the same 4 songs after which I would rock him (me standing up) in my arms to sleep for about 30-40 minutes (there was a span of weeks where he would fall asleep only after 10 minutes of rocking).

My EASY routine for 7 days now has been the three hour one, starting at 7:00, and without DF. As soon as I started the routine I have not nursed/bottle fed for naps (the one after the bath was particularly difficult to remove) nor rocking all the time, I have been using shush -pat while holding stainding up - he cries and push as I'm singing to him and patting his back but will finally relax (after 15 - 20 minutes)and I lay him on the crib drowsy, following with a gentle pat and shush on his belly for the first ten minutes, additional ten without pat, just my hand on his belly. Questions: is this ok? am I doing it correct? will it eventually work? how long for him to not cry every time I put him down for naps? I know I won't have an overnight result but a timeframe of success/fail would be helpful to provide me with patience and energy 

For bedtime I followed my ritual (Pjs, nurse + bottle, same songs) except the rocking and he has started to fuss and cry and get all worked up that his sleep window is gone, I get him out of the room for 10 minutes and try again, he will fuss again but get to sleep (drowsy and I do shush-pat) Questions: He starts to cry when I'm going to feed him and is hard to get him relaxed asI feed him as though he is trying to stay awake I can only interpret he is geting confused (no eating for naps and eating for bedtime). Questions: how can I feed him for bedtime so he understands it is OK and he feels relaxed and helps him to go to sleep? what kind of affirmation/association can I encourage or provide? Can you explain further how feeding right before bedtime works

Regarding EASY - he won't take the late afternoon catnap everyday, the four days that he has I'm getting him down on his crib until 8:30 pm and I have followed through with the E as soon as he is awake from his catnap, and so afterwards it is hard to get him to eat  during bedtime...any advice on this??

When he misses a nap can I provide E if more than two hours have passed? If he only naps 25 or 40 minutes each time, do I feed as soon as he is awake regardless of nap time or do I try to stretch it 20, 30 minutes or even 1 hour? If he wakes early from a nap can I use shush-pat to get him to sleep longer?

And finally, he has been waking up once either at 2:30, 3:00 or 4:30 am for the past 10 days. I nurse him, and put him back in the crib as soon as he stops nursing and will fall back to sleep, I have not tried sending him back without nursing because I feel if I'm training him on independent sleep it will help to sort out this issue...or is it the so-called 4 month regression and is it something I should tackle in a different way? if yes, how so?

Thanks for Your input and all the blessings and support You can send this way!!! I thought 3rd time around I would have known better, but my LO is throwing totally different cues from what I recall the first two times and I need to prepare accordingly

[Lindsay27]

Hi hun and welcome to BW! I just wanted to write a quick note to say that I've seen this and I will be back to post properly when my DD goes down for her nap

[Patty B]

Thank You! I believe and hope I'm not the only one and that some solution can be found, I'm stressing out too much and my DS has been a happy and curious one always when awake, I want him to keep that way and not make time with mom feel like a burden.

Thanks!!

[Lindsay27]

Hello!  Sorry I didn't get back yesterday, crazy day!

Okay, first things first, welcome to BW!  Thrilled to have to here, this community is so great and supportive. 

I will try to answer all your questions, but the first thing that jumps out to me is your A time.  At 16 week you are looking at an A time of about 1.45-2hrs (you are approaching 4hr EASY) so I honestly think if you start to push your A times that a lot of things are going to settle into place for you.  Some good links to look at are:
Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!
Time to Transition - 3hr, 3.5hr or 4hr EASY

Questions: is this ok? am I doing it correct? will it eventually work? how long for him to not cry every time I put him down for naps? I know I won't have an overnight result but a timeframe of success/fail would be helpful to provide me with patience and energy 

Yes, this is perfectly ok, you are doing fantastic.  Like I said, I think if you push those A times this is going to be much less of a battle for you.  I think the reason it is talking such a long time to settle is because your LO is UT (under tired) so he's fighting sleep when you try to put him down because he just simply isn't tired enough yet.  I usually only leave about 10mins to settle to sleep, so I would probably start your wind down routine 10mins before you'd like him to be asleep.  It might take a bit of playing around with A times, maybe start with 1.40hr and see how it goes, and you can increase fairly easily from there, if needed.

Questions: how can I feed him for bedtime so he understands it is OK and he feels relaxed and helps him to go to sleep? what kind of affirmation/association can I encourage or provide? Can you explain further how feeding right before bedtime works

I don't think he's necessarily confused that you are now allowing him to eat before bedtime, however this is probably more a case of either OT or UT.  He could be OT from short naps during the day, or possibly UT depending on how late the CN was.  I think once your days and naps are a little more predictable, bedtime should fall into place easier.

Regarding EASY - he won't take the late afternoon catnap everyday, the four days that he has I'm getting him down on his crib until 8:30 pm and I have followed through with the E as soon as he is awake from his catnap, and so afterwards it is hard to get him to eat  during bedtime...any advice on this??

He is probably ready to drop a nap, so when you move toward 4hr EASY you essentially have 2 good naps and an evening CN.  Pushing A times is going to help with this   I find feeds towards the end of the day are always wonky at this stage, my DD never took to 'cluster feeding' and needed a solid 3hrs between feeds for it to be a good one.  So if feeding upon wake up from the CN means that he isn't going take a good bedtime feed, then I would skip it if he can last that long.

When he misses a nap can I provide E if more than two hours have passed? If he only naps 25 or 40 minutes each time, do I feed as soon as he is awake regardless of nap time or do I try to stretch it 20, 30 minutes or even 1 hour? If he wakes early from a nap can I use shush-pat to get him to sleep longer?

If he misses a nap then I would do your E as close to regular time, or 3-4hrs after the last feed.  If that means it would be in the middle of the next nap, then I would just feed before the nap.  Sometimes with short naps the day can go EASAES. 

And finally, he has been waking up once either at 2:30, 3:00 or 4:30 am for the past 10 days. I nurse him, and put him back in the crib as soon as he stops nursing and will fall back to sleep, I have not tried sending him back without nursing because I feel if I'm training him on independent sleep it will help to sort out this issue...or is it the so-called 4 month regression and is it something I should tackle in a different way? if yes, how so?

This is perfectly ok, feed upon waking a right back to sleep.  At 4 months my DD went from sleeping from 7pm-3/4am, to picking up an extra feed around midnight.  Night sleep can kind of go off the rails at 4 months, and then tend to pick up extra feeds or having extra wakings.  But if you feed and he settles back easily then just keep doing that!

[Patty B]

Hi Lindsay!! Thank You so very much!! the small changes in lengthening A have made a difference so far (fingers crossed it will continue to improve) and I will keep ironing out a better routine with longer times.

He is not fussing when I take him to the crib for his naps, cries just very little before he gets drowsy, the pat was startling him too much and even when put down drowsy he would try to suck my fingers, so I'm doing a steady sssh and that calms him down (bottom line: 10 minutes to get him drownsy into the crib) and only reaffirming  with my hand on his belly for 10 minutes after that. Now how can I get past the 40 minutes mark? He will take longer than 40 minutes if I pick him up again ssshh for 5 minutes in my shoulder and back to the crib. It's this ok? am I on the right path to independent sleep/self settle?

Again thank YOU!!

[Lindsay27]

Fantastic news!! 40min naps are usually used by 2 things 1) a UT baby or 2) LO doesn't know quite yet how to transition between sleep cycles.

What A times are you working with now? I would say if your A times are within "normal" for the age range, then it might be a transition issue.  You can try sneaking in around 35mins and holding/patting to help move over to the next sleep cycle.  That said, with both my LOs I found it to be largely developmental and they eventually just learned to do it on their own.  DD was around 4 months and DS around 6 months.