I am looking for advice for my 12 weeks old baby who is breastfed and eating every 3 hours during the day. We try to follow 3 hour EASY, but this doesn’t usually work as his naps are mostly short so it’s more like EAS AEAS AEAS…
He goes down awake for naps and bedtime awake and swaddled with one hand out, typically 1 hour 15 min – 1 hour 30 min awake time, but I cannot get him to settle back to sleep after a short nap unless I sway him in his room until he falls asleep again. When we put him down for a nap he starts with a pacifier, but he can fall asleep without it as sometimes he will fuss for a few minutes and then fall asleep. Every once in a while he will be sleeping for over two hours – but I will wake him for the next time to eat.
I do not want to teach holding him to resettle for a nap, and it is often not possible as I have another child at home- so most of the time naps just are what they are. I often run into the problem where I either have to stretch his awake him, or try to get him down for an additional short nap during the day, for our eating and awake time pattern to work.
He goes to sleep by 7:30pm and doesn’t usually want to nurse until 2 am. Sometime he wakes between 12 am and 1am and I give him a pacifier (to see if he will settle or if he is ready to eat) and he usually goes back to sleep until 2am. Recently he has been waking many times early in the morning after his night time feed, but will settle again with a pacifier. Then, if he wakes around 5 I nurse him (as it has been three hours since he last nursed and I find he settles back to sleep). When he is nursed again he will sleep until 7, but if he wakes close to 6am or later I don’t know what to do since it is so close to the start of the day. I typically try to settle him with a pacifier and am in and out of his room for the next hour (he isn’t getting any solid sleep at this point).
