14 week old ready for 3.5 hr EASY?

[Tomatoandcheese]

Long time lurker but first time poster here. We used EASY successfully with my first child and started implementing it with our new daughter at 3 weeks. She has been a pretty good night sleeper (one wake up some time between 2.30-4.30 then back down til 6 with no df) but the last week has regressed to her newborn sleep pattern - waking at 1 and 4 but then waking every 10-20 mins after 4 and trying to start the day at 5.30. I'm desperately hoping this might be a sign that she needs to move to 3.5 hr EASY rather than that she is starting the 4 month sleep regression early! We are also getting 45 minute naps but can generally extend with dummy/paci to 1hr45 to 2hrs.

This is what we have been doing though things shift depending on how well naps go:
6.00 (dwt) - e and a
7.10 - s
9.00 - e and a
10.00 - s
12.00 - e and a
13.00 - s
15.00 - e and a
16.00 - s
18.00 - e
18.30 - bath, pj's, story
19.00 - top up feed
19.30 (or earlier) - bed for night

Each nap will require resettling with dummy at 45 mins and usually a couple of reinsertions (she cries for the dummy but doesn't fully wake). If I get her up after just 45mins she will be cranky and clearly needs more sleep. Usually I'd assume OT but we used to get 2 hour naps uninterrupted on this and now don't, so maybe she is UT instead? I think she is extending her wake times and might manage 1hr20 awake if she has slept well which is not always the case. Time to shift the feeds? She never seems desperate to eat but does nurse well every 3 hours.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[LaraAndrea]

I am only stopping by quickly so I can give you a brief suggestion to get you started.

Glancing over your routine, it does look like you could up the AT. 45 min naps are most often UT.

As you move toward 4 months and 4h EASY you may want to gradually extend time between feeds and increase AT. avg AT for a 4 month old is 1:45-2h.

[Tomatoandcheese]

Thanks for replying. This morning I tried extending first awake time by 20 minutes (so 1.5hr total) and she went down easily but woke after 40 mins and had to be given the paci. She was yawning quite a bit beforehand so I assume that was slightly too long. Will try 1hr20 instead. With the paci she did sleep until 9.20 (1hr50) so went 3hr20 between feeds and was still not especially hungry. Will keep that interval today and see what affect, if any, it has on NW and EW. She's happily awake now despite needing several paci reinsertions during the nap so obviously did manage some good sleep somewhere in there...

I should say that she goes down without the paci at the beginning of sleeps and will usually resettle after a night feed without it too (though not last night) so we only normally use it for extending naps and EW. Still I suspect it may be becoming a bit of a prop for her. I'm hoping she'll replace it with her thumb once we stopped swaddling but we tried one arm out and she's not ready for that yet. She sleeps in a cot wedged right up by the bed so it isn't too much of a problem currently to keep reinserting it in the early am.

[LaraAndrea]

I would be weary of going back to 1:20AT.
40 min wake at this age is normal and if she was OT you would have more likely seen a 25-35 min wake. The fact that she went back to sleep would also (too me) suggest that the AT may actually be right.

It takes a baby some time to learn how to connect adult sleep cycles and it also can take a baby a few days to get used to a change.

I would stick with the 1:30

[Tomatoandcheese]

Oh damn - saw this after I had already tried 1hr20 for next awake time. Mind you she settled the best she ever had (3 mins from putting in swaddle to asleep in cot). She did need help at the transition point still which was at 40 minutes again. Would it make sense to work on lengthening that first awake time to 1hr30 first and keep others a bit shorter for a while?

[LaraAndrea]

That is what worked best for me. I focused on first AT, then moved on to others. Something about getting a good first nap always gave me positivity for the rest of the day.

[Tomatoandcheese]

Great, that's what we'll do.

Wish I had found this forum with my son. Thank you for your advice!

[LaraAndrea]

This place has saved me many times!!

[Tomatoandcheese]

Ok I could do with some further advice I think. Have been trying for 6 days now to extend wake times and she is just not making it. A lot of the time she's full on crying after just an hour awake, even if she has had a good nap beforehand. And she gets fussier as the day goes on so that we've had a couple of times in the afternoon where she has seemed to want to go down after just 45 mins. It just seems like she's getting really overtired and is no longer spending any time happily awake.

On the other hand she is settling for naps much more quickly, usually within 6 or 7 minutes of being swaddled rather than 10 to 15 which is what it was taking. Still wakes at 40 min mark (pretty much regardless of awake time length so I assume we have a transitioning issue here, even though she initially falls asleep without props) but goes back down with paci.

She settles MUCH better at bedtime. Night wake ups were improving until last night but I see from the Wonder Weeks app that she has just started the latest leap which may be contributing to night issues. Still waking early and wanting to start the day at 5.30, which is making it even harder to move the first nap later. Sometimes she will doze if I give her the paci but not always and never gets back to deep sleep.

Do I persist in trying to push out the wake times or pull them back to the hour/hour and 10 mark and just spend a few days keeping notes on sleepy signals etc before trying to change anything again?

We are moving house next week so I'd like to let the dust from that settle before attempting to address the transitioning issue and will just accept that we will likely have multiple night wakings/mid nap wakings for the paci in the meantime. I've been dreading the 4 month regression and am now pretty sure that it is here 

[creations]

Hi there and welcome to BW forums. It's nice when lurkers decide to post so we can welcome you properly

Mine also seemed to  hit the 4 month regression at 3.5 months so it's certainly possible. He also came out of the regression at 5.5 months (rather than the more common 6 months) so it seemed to last the same length of time but just earlier.  Having said that, with LOs there are always a bunch of other things on the go at the same time so it's never 100% clear if it is one thing or another disturbing sleep.

Anyway - I noticed that you are having to use the paci at the 40/45 min mark and wanted to stop by to say this could be a prop issue even though she falls to sleep without props for the start of the nap.  LOs can quickly get used to a certain way of doing things (meaning they get used to resettling the way you teach them to resettle) so if you keep on relying on the paci to get through the transition you can be reinforcing this habit rather than dropping it.  I would instead try W2S (wake to sleep) and resettling with shush/pat rather than reinserting the paci.  Initially things could get a little worse because it is a change of expectations but then you should see some improvement as she becomes less reliant on that paci prop.
Having said that - depending how reliant she is you might choose to continue to give the paci mid nap as SIDS guidance suggests it is not advisable to drop a paci cold turkey if LO is reliant (I don't think your LO sounds reliant due to not using to fall to sleep but you know best and it's your call).

I'll just add that moving house if likely to cause sleep disturbance too, not just the day of the move but following it too just because it will be a new environment for falling to sleep. If you do choose to change things up I would consider that a great time to do it, simply because the sleep is already disturbed so might as well change up the habits at the same time.

Hope the move goes smoothly for you all.

[Tomatoandcheese]

Thank you for this. I do think the paci has become a prop for her and trying to address it when we move since sleep will be disturbed anyway is a good suggestion. She'll be 15 weeks so am I just trying shush pat at this age or is pupd now more appropriate as we are rectifying a habit?

Also wanted to say that the last two nights have been really good - no df, one wake up for a feed (2.10 one night and 4.45 last night) and put herself back to sleep after, no paci or other soothing required. This appears to be because we have capped her last nap at 40 minutes. So she is currently doing roughly  this:
6.00 - e
7.15-7.20 - s (all naps interrupted at 40 mins and extended with paci)
9.20 - e
10.30-10.40 - s
12.40 - e
13.50-14.00 - s
16.00 - e
17.20-17.30 - s
18.00 - e (I don't let her sleep later than this)
18.30 - bath & pjs
18.45 - stories with big brother
19.00 - feed
19.20-19.30 - s

[Tomatoandcheese]

She'll be 15 weeks so am I just trying shush pat at this age or is pupd now more appropriate

No sorry you said try wake to sleep. Ignore this then!

[creations]

shush/pat is always the go-to method.  Your LO is too young for PUPD really and it is considered a last resort method, it also uses shush/pat once you put down to sooth in the cot when possible so for now certainly shush/pat with W2S.
For future reference paci use and PUPD don't mix so at a later date if you used PUPD you'd need to drop the paci.  If you think LO is reliant on the paci it's safer to wait until after 6 months before dropping it cold turkey.

hope that helps