Author Topic: Just starting EASY and struggling with naps  (Read 1394 times)

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Offline Elliottsmama

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Just starting EASY and struggling with naps
« on: May 26, 2018, 15:52:35 pm »
Hello! I have just started “The Plan” from Tracy’s boook (after reading it through and I spending lots of time on here learning from you experts! My EBF son is 20 weeks (will be 5 months on 5 June) and until we started this plan I was a textbook case of accidental parenting. My main goals with starting The Plan were to break the nurse to sleep Association I had created, and also get my son to nap in Joan crib (he had been napping on me or in the pram). We are have just got to the end of day 4 of the plan (so second day of implementing pick up out down) and I need some guidance!

So far we’ve seen excellent results on the independent sleep front—Elliott put himself to sleep after just a few minutes for each nap yesterday and today, and at bedtime last night too. He also took his naps in his crib yesterday and today. The problem I’m running in to is that both yesterday and today, he’s woken from his naps just 30-35 minutes after falling asleep. For his second nap today, I was able to extend it to an hour with holding through the jolt but I held for a good 20 minutes from 35-55 minutes and he still woke up about 7 minutes after I gently and slowly let go. Since we’re doing the plan, I pick up out down to try and get him back to sleep for his first and second naps both yesterday and i day—yesterday he went back down 15 minutes before the wake up time for his first nap and 40 minutes before the wake up time fo for his second  nap. Today he didn’t go back down at all during the S time for his first nap or his second nap. I’m scared we’re going to end up with a massively overtired baby and get ourselves into an even worse situation than we were starting out. How do we manage this? Where are we going wrong? And should we adjust the routine to accommodate the short naps (and have more naps a day) or just keep trying to extend them? I really want to avoid getting him extremely overtired. He usually gets between 3.5-4.5 hours of day sleep and yesterday and today have both been under 3 hours.

One thing I’ve wondered is if his awake times should be longer and that the short naps aren’t the result of him being undertired but I strongly suspect they’re the result of being overtired... help!!!

Also a couple things: up until now we have been feeding on demand so he can’t go 4 hours without eating during the day but we are working on reducing the number of feedings so that he’s more efficient at each one. We’re also not too concerned about cutting out night feedings at this stage—more focused on daytime sleep.

Below is our day for the last two days:

Plan implementation day 1:
7am wake up
7-7:20 E
7:20-8:20 A
8:20-8:30 E (top up—he can’t go 4 hours without a feed)
8:30-8:40 wind down routine and into cot awake
8:45-9:15 S
9:15-10:45 PUPD
10:45-11 S
11-11:20 E
11:20-12:20 A
12:20-12:30 E (top up)
12:30-12:40 wind down routine and into crib awake
12:47-1:20 S
1:20-2:20 PUPD
2:20-3 S
3-3:20 E
3:20-4:45 A
4:45-4:55 wind down routine and into crib awake
5-5:35 S
5:35-5:50 E
5:50-6:50 A
6:50-7:15 bath
7:15 E
7-25 into crib awake
7:30 S (DF at 10:30pm; awake at 1:30am and fed; awake again at 3:30 and 5:30 but shushed/PUPD back to sleep) 

The Plan implementation day 2:
7 wake up
7-7:20 E
7:20-8:30 A
8:30-8:40 E
8:40-8:45 wind down routine
8:45 into crib awake
8:48-9:20 S
9;20-11 PUPD (he pooped and needed a change during this process)
11-11:15 S
11:15-11:30 E
11:30-1 A
1-1:10 wind down routine and into crib awake
1:14-2:10 S (with hold through the jolt from 35-55 mins)
2:10-2:50 PUPD (he pooped at 2:50 so we ended the process there)
2:50-3:05 E
3:05-3:55 A
3:55- 4 wind down routine and into crib awake (he was suuuper tired and  are terrified of having him be in a cycle of overtiredness so put him down earlier than the suggested 5pm)
4:10-4:52 S

We will put him down for the night at around 6:45.






Offline becj86

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Re: Just starting EASY and struggling with naps
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2018, 01:31:27 am »
One thing I’ve wondered is if his awake times should be longer and that the short naps aren’t the result of him being undertired but I strongly suspect they’re the result of being overtired... help!!!
Well, your wondering is correct and second guessing yourself is not ideal :) He's probably got some chronic overtiredness running in the background from not sleeping well for a long time. He doesn't need to pay back that sleep debt minute for minute. He needs to get good restorative sleep by having A times that are long enough for him to take good long naps.

Average A time at this age is 2:15, so he will likely be UT with only 1:45-2hr.

Doing PUPD as long as you are burns a LOT of calories and will start to affect your sanity. Do you think you have a feel for whether he will go back to sleep within 10-15mins of starting? If so, I'd go for 10-15mins and keep going if he's close to going back to sleep but just stop and get on with the next cycle of EAS if he's not going back to sleep because otherwise you will get to a point of him being very OT from PUPD counting as sleep time.

up until now we have been feeding on demand so he can’t go 4 hours without eating during the day but we are working on reducing the number of feedings so that he’s more efficient at each one.
That's great. Plenty of EBF babies cannot go 4hr between feeds until solids are better established. For this reason, I have found myself suggesting a topup feed an hour after the main wakeup feed which you'd then replace with solids when you do start them.

We’re also not too concerned about cutting out night feedings at this stage
Also very sensible. NFs usually self-rationalise so long as there's not a feed to sleep prop going. Plenty of babies this age still need multiple NFs too.

My suggestion is to keep following the principles of the plan with a routine a little more like this:
7 - wake, feed
8 - topup feed
9:15 - nap
10:45 - wake, feed
11:45 - topup feed
1pm - nap
2:30 - wake, feed
3:30 - topup feed
4:45 - nap
5:30 - wake, feed
BT routine incl. feed
7:30 - asleep for the night

I would also say that PUPD is a method of last resort for use if shush/pat has been used consistently for at least 2 weeks with no improvement. You can certainly use shush/pat or some variant that works for you and your baby (the basic idea is that there's a sound for him to listen to and touch for him to feel). You may find with increasing A times that much, he may wake 30mins into his nap - OT waking which is usually easily resettled if you're there before he gets really upset and use the same soothing method as you used for going to sleep.