Author Topic: How long to establish EASY?  (Read 1850 times)

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Offline Georgie Carey

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How long to establish EASY?
« on: February 15, 2018, 16:47:44 pm »
Hello, this is my first post.

Background: About a month ago a friend recommended Tracys books to me; my baby and I were a mess - feeding to sleep almost every time, trying to do on demand feeding and misreading her cues all over the place meant that she was overeating and throwing up all the time and that my milk supply was all over the place, compounding the issue by giving her a massive lactose overload. Add to this a dairy and egg intolerance and you get the picture. Baby Charlotte was 3 months old.

I started her on easy as soon as i could. First off I couldn't believe shhhh-pat worked, but it did! It took a good 15 minutes but she slept. We have been doing it for the month now and i am trying to go through the transition to 4 hour easy as suggested in the book but I have the following issues:

Dream feeds never worked: i go to bed an hour after charlie, eating a quick dinner whilst i can so waking up again at 11 was silly, and she would wake somewhere between 2 and 4 anyway needing to be fed. So now we just wake somewhere between 2 and 4 and feed. This isn't a big deal but thought i would include it, what isn't ideal is the fact that she wakes up at 5am and takes anywhere from 10-40 minutes to go back to sleep, sometimes she doesn't.

It takes a LOT of ssshhh-pat to get her to calm down. We try and put her down drowsy but she always winds herself up and we end up with more of a sshhh-pat battle! She doesn't cry but she shouts. The times that she does cry I pick her up and sssh-pat her on my shoulder where she will eventually fall asleep. I keep expecting it to start to take less time but so far, one month in, its not getting any easier! She also wakes up after 40 minutes so thats another round of ssshhh-pat to get her back to sleep!

At night i still feed her to sleep as this is the only way I really know that she has had enough to eat.

So I'm asking how long would you expect it to take to get a baby on EASY starting from scratch? Do you think that i've made shah-pat a sleep prop? and any advice about the naps and morning wakeup times?

Thankyou! ;D



Offline creations

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Re: How long to establish EASY?
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2018, 00:06:48 am »
Welcome to BW forums :)

Let me see if I can answer a couple of your issues
i am trying to go through the transition to 4 hour easy as suggested in the book
Not all babies move to 4hrly E at 4 months. If she can then fine, if not don't panic, you can make the move slowly or hold off on shifting the E times until she's a bit older. You would still need to look at her A times as these effect how tired she is for naps and if the A time isn't increased suitably it can lead to short napping.

Dream feeds never worked
What you are doing is fine. Not everyone does the DF, the idea is that everyone gets more sleep but if you go to bed earlier and do NFs instead, no problem.

shhhh-pat worked, but it did! It took a good 15 minutes but she slept.
This is absolutely normal. It takes 20 mins to fall to sleep so actually 15 mins is good.

we end up with more of a sshhh-pat battle!
This could be related to her routine. If you could post your actual routine times (not the guidance times from the book but what actually happens in your day) we can have a look and see if something needs a tweak for you. We use a format like this on the forums:
WU (wake up) 7.00
E
A 1hr
S 8.00 - 8.40 (resettled in arms with shush/pat)
S 9.00 - 9.40
E 10
A 1hr... and so on
include a few notes about her mood or what happened, how you settled her
include
BT (bed time)
and
NF (night feed ) and NW (night waking not for a feed)

The times that she does cry I pick her up and sssh-pat her on my shoulder where she will eventually fall asleep.
This could be where you need to make a change. Rather than shush/patting to sleep over your shoulder you need to get her nice and sleepy but shift the position, horizontal in arms continue to shush/pat and then lay in the cot and continue to shush/pat either to sleep or to drowsy.  Then you keep reducing the shush/pat in the cot at each sleep so that you gradually reduce whilst still offering support when needed.

She also wakes up after 40 minutes so thats another round of ssshhh-pat to get her back to sleep!
You can begin your shush/pat earlier so that she doesn't fully wake, This is called W2S (wake to sleep) here's a link:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=223809.0
40 min naps can be because LO has not learned to transition from one sleep cycle to the next, the W2S can help to teach this.
40 min naps can also be linked to the routine, we'll be able to see where they are happening in your EASY when you post it.

So I'm asking how long would you expect it to take to get a baby on EASY starting from scratch?
It's very individual depending on the LO, the age, any health problems, and the approach parents take.  it is relatively easy to get "stuck" in one place rather than keep moving forward with the sleep training so it can then take longer.
My own DS I tried to implement independent sleep from day 1 (although didn't really know how and didn't discover BW until he was 4 wks old) and he was going to sleep independently at around 8 weeks - that doesn't mean he never needed any further help ever again, it just means that when he was on the right routine he had learned how to go to sleep after a wind down and being put in his bed, I left the room and he fell to sleep alone, I even got a smile before sleep some times.  So for us 2 months.

Hope this helps


Offline Georgie Carey

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Re: How long to establish EASY?
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2018, 16:39:38 pm »
This is so helpful, thank you so much!

She is always super distracted when eating in the morning, often dad is pottering about or similar and she pretty much always poops mid feed! Our routine has a fair a bit of variation at the moment (trying desperately to read cues!) but will more or less go as follows:

WU 06:00
E 06:15 - 07:00
A 07:00 - 08:00
S 08:00 - 09:45
E 10:00 - 10:30
A 10:30 - 11:30
***walk in the buggy where she will sleep for about an hour 11:30 - 13:00***
E 13:00 - 13:45 (less distracted usually at this time)
A 13:00 - 14:15
S 14:30 - 16:00
E 16:00...

...At this point we are usually off track a bit, sometimes theres a catnap, sometimes ill feed on one side before the bath, but we return to a daily staple of...

Bath 18:00 - 18:30
Feed to sleep 18:30-19:00

Again thank you so so much for any help and advice, you are an angel!

Offline creations

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Re: How long to establish EASY?
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2018, 22:34:44 pm »
Thanks for posting your EASY times.
I know in the books the E time is listed separately to the A times, here on the forums we do it a bit differently because LOs all take different lengths of time to eat so instead we count A from the minute they wake until the minute they are asleep, with the A including all activities including E.  It's just a bit easier for us to follow when we look at lots of different EASYs.

A few things I notice:
- A time looks good for age, at around 2hrs.
- nap 1 looks good length at 1hr 45
- nap 2 looks a bit too short for you to be able to drop the CN properly. You could consider increasing the A time just before to encourage a longer nap, and go for your walk a little later. if that's possible.  9.45 - 11.30 is around 1hr 45 A time which might be too short to get that full nap of 1.5hr or more.
- nap 3 is a good length
- If there is no CN then the last A time is too long and this can lead to additional NWs (night waking) or EW (early waking) due to OT. This could be the cause of your 5am starts. If you can't get a CN in or she refuses it you need to aim for EBT (early bed time) and get her down ASAP so that the last A time doesn't go over 2hrs.  It might mean a quick top and tail instead of a bath on some days to just move on with the feed and bed.  If you do manage to get a CN in you might need to let BT move a bit later to fit in a decent A time, possibly 7.30 or even 8pm instead of 7pm - this would be relatively temporary until the CN is gone.
- You could check for hunger on the 5am WUs, it's a reasonable length of time since the previous E if it was around 2am (not likely hunger if she had NF at 4am though) and perhaps you can feed and get straight back to sleep?
- I'm not seeing on your EASY where these 40 min naps are. Is it a 40 min wake up at every nap?  I've given you a link above for the W2S which I suggest trying.

OK, I think that's about it for now. If you are able to tweak your routine a little based on what I've noticed here and also try to alter the way you are using shush/pat as I said in my previous post, then I think you could see some progress.
Let us know how you get on, and if you have any questions.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2018, 19:53:08 pm by creations »


Offline Georgie Carey

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Re: How long to establish EASY?
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2018, 20:56:04 pm »
Thankyou so so much, I'm going to try all of the things that you suggested. Yes, in all the naps she wakes after 40 minutes and it takes a while to put her back to sleep! I will try the wake to sleep if it doesn't get any better.

Thanks again  :)