Any March & April 05 mums/moms want to chat?

[Erin M]

Bianca-
I just looked at the birthdates of your little ones and how did you manage to do that?  Born on the same day of the month with just the months and years reversed!  Makes it easy for people to remember them!

[BiancaB]

Hello all,
Erin, Can you believe that I didn't realize it myself until about a week after Si was born..I knew they had been born on the same day date 21st, actually while I was in labour which started on the 20th I said to my husband "If I time this right they can both be the 21st " Sienna was born at 1am so it worked out that way..But the year and month thing was weird! I guess it was just meant to be :wink: Numeroligists would love analyzing this I guess :shock:
GOOD NEWS on my routine adjustment, Nikki you are going to love this..
Sienna slept 12 hrs straight from 7pm until 7am with NO feed last night!!
I went back to every 3hrs during the day which took her back to 3 naps plus catnap and I kind of did a cluster feed as I fed her 4:30pm and then just before bed.
NO DF :!:
What you said about Danielle being more sleep driven then hunger :idea:  I believe my little Sienna is the same, she has been a little overtired on the 4/4 so I'll stay on current routine for a while and see if this sleep phenomonen occurs again..HOPE SO  How is Danielle doing?
Bianca

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

Interesting isn't it Bianca?  Well last night Danielle woke at 10.10pm (I'd decided to have an early night  :roll: ) and then again at 3.30am - I'm going to give it another few nights but if she's waking again before midnight I'll start with the DF again...I'm going around in circles with this.  Nathan took to the DF and by 11wks was going 9.45-7am consistently.  I'm really inclined to let nature take it's course with her, which of course could mean a night feed for quite a few more months if I don't do the DF which really doesn't seem to do much for her. Not sure... :roll:    Hope you get another good night out of Si, it's good to know that it's possible though huh?  You wake yourself up to do the DF don't you, I wonder what would happen if you did an earlier one before you went to bed so you're not having to wake yourself up and then also do another wake up after it? Or is the aim to get her sleeping from 11pm till morning and then bring the DF in earlier in the evening before you do go to bed?

Danielle went back to settling herself for naps MUCH better after only 1.5hrs activity, no fussing, she's been so cruisey up until now and it seemed a real shame that she started to fight sleep and I really didn't want to ruin her and have her associating bed as being horrible.  I never got Nathan onto a 4hr EASY, he was on a 3.5hr at 4.5mths though (which I guess is still only 4 feeds a day but the last one was at 5.30pm with bedtime of 7pm) plus DF, so not too sure what I'll do yet.

[BiancaB]

Hello everyone,
Nikki-My week has been a strange one again!! The nights have been great--10-12hrs straight with no DF----BUT the days have been terrible with short naps and a very unsettled Sienna---Not sure what is going on I have been feeding every 3hrs during the day because she has been going so long at night without a feed. 
She seems to want to stay up longer, she went for over 3hrs awake the other evening from 3pm until 6:30pm and I tried so many times to put her down for a catnap but she just wasn't going to have one...during the awake time she was quite happy, rubbing her eyes a little and I could tell she was tired but not fussing or anything and when she went to bed she was easy to setttle.
So now I'm thinking that because she only really needs around 15hrs sleep in 24hrs at her age, maybe the long sleep at night is reducing her nap times during the day?
 options...
1. try to extend her wake times and feed times again and leave nights as they are.
2.Go back to giving her the DF to see if its a hunger/supply issue. :?:

You asked my aim for the nights...well I didn't really have a particular aim, I just found like you did that the DF wasn't doing much for Sienna, so I stopped it and now I'm just giving her 5 feeds and a top up before bed and she is sleeping from 7-7 most nights, sometimes she will wake at 5am for a feed.
If you have any advice about the days going haywire let me know

I know I shouldn't complain as she is sleeping through at night but like you experienced with Nathan,, I had Kyan on a DF and sleep until 4am for a long time and he was very happy with that, so its just trying to get to know Sienna's pattern thats still a little hard for me. She is such a different personality and even though she is so easygoing, she is also not as clear with her signals for hunger or tiredness as he was :?  He was like clockwork with his timing for awake and eating and loved a routine, still does he is such an orderly little man   Adores his little sister which is a bonus, but she has a sunny nature so wins most people over with her smile :lol:
Hope everyone is going well with good old E.A.S.Y
Bianca

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

Bianca  :lol:  I can't believe how similar both of our two lo's seem in personality and the way they take to routine.  Nathan loves routine, very textbook and quite predictable but was tough work in the early months.  Danielle is cruisey to the point that I often don't know what to do as she doesn't really cry fuss etc....

So we're kind of in the same place as you.  I decided again ( :roll: ) to go back to the 4hr EASY a few days back since she was handling the awake time fine but really wasn't interested in 3hrly feeds and has been lying in her bed chatting to herself when she's meant to be sleeping  :roll: .  Consequently things were out of order yesterday, she snoozed for 5mins while feeding and then was rearing to go again for another 1.5hrs - so had been awake from 9.30am - 12.30pm when I put her down for a nap and she slept until 3pm when I had to wake her up.  So yesterday we did 4hr EASY, plus the DF and she woke at 4am but then was up at 6am for the day but not hungry until 6.30am.  I think I will stick with this for now and just hope that her first nap extends from 45min some time soon, if it weren't for that short nap we'd be doing the right thing.

How's everyone else doing?

[Erin M]

Hi to all 

Well, we had about 3 weeks of perfect 4 hour EASY which ended last Monday (concidentally the same day she got her 4 month vaccinations - I wonder if they could be affecting her for this long?).  Anyway, since then, the 45 minute naps have been back, which basically destroys the 4 hour routine, so we've been on somewhere between a 3-4 hour routine most days.  (But not really much of a routine at all - she did only sleep for about an hour and half total yesterday during the day - made for a very cranky baby!)  She was also up twice last night, so unlike her, once early around 8:30 (she had been asleep for about 45 minutes - that dreaded time frame again) and once at 4:15, took an hour to get her back to sleep.  Maybe it's the heat, it's been mid-90s and humid all week here and we only have AC in our bedrooms.  Oh yeah, and she won't really settle for naps anymore, which used to be no problem.  So I have no idea what's going on.  I hope we straighten it out soon. 

Hope things are going better for everyone else!

[Jayri]

Okay I need some suggestions, I can't seem to get riley to eat a whole lot, granted it has been extremly humid here, the same as every where else from what I gather. She was so hungry yesterday that she took 1 1/2 oz of ebm from ME, she didn't want to bf as I was too hot as it was. I would like to start pu/pd but I am concerned as I have a 2 yr old ds, and  doing pat/shh was hard enough as he kept coming in to show off his toys. I have a bit of time for myself tonight so I am going to sit down and read the section in the new book on it all. I skimmed through b4, dh is game for it as he sees it working.
she still has to wake up for a feed in the night, I'm going to try another df at midnight tonight as b4 I have done it and she has still woken up for her usual feed, but I think I was doing the feeds to close together.
I will keep you posted and look forward to your suggestions.



Naomi; mum to Jayson 07/17/03 & Riley 03/26/05

[FrasersMum]

Hi all!

Well, here's our update.....

Last time I posted was a couple of EASY's into a 4 hour routine, sticking by the schedule Tracy posted in the book.  It went ok for the morning and a bit towards meltdown by the end of the day. 

The next day we decided to really watch DS cues and realised that he was going the full 4 hours (or very close to it) without the stepping through like the book suggested.  So since then we have been pretty much on a 4 hour routine - the days start ok although he's been quite grumpy at the days go on.  I think he's still adjusting to one less nap.  His naps have been going quite well - if we can't get him to go longer than 45mins in the morning then he sleeps for about 2.5 hours in the afternoon to make up.  Today however were 2 x 1.5 hours (we had to resettle but it was pretty easy).

The one thing that was puzzling me until I read some of the other posts - he's started waking twice in the night.  I never could get him to take the DF but he was going through from 7.30pm-ish bedtime to about 4 or 5 but for the last two nights he's woken at about 12 and again at about 5.  I notice Nikki and Bianca that you guys are going through similar.  What do you think?  Growth spurt??  Have your LO's gone back to sleeping through?  (I should mention, when Fraser wakes in the night, in my opinion all bets are off and I just feed him...  :oops:  Not very BW of me!)

Chat soon
Jo

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

Hi Jo, we only had a week's worth of sleep throughs then hit a GS.  Since then I've been flicking back and forwards on what I do.  Anyhow, where we're at now is definitely doing the 4hr EASY as far a feeding goes - Danielle really doesn't like to be fed any sooner than that.   Today she had a nap for 45mins (which is her usual and doesn't get extended), then was awake until 12.30pm when I put he down for her big nap (she seems to always make up for it here) and slept until 2.30 (I did have to pat her back to sleep which took 1/2hr) and then she had a 45min nap at 4.30pm.  It worked out well.  I have put the DF back in as she was starting to wake before midnight, so now gets that at 9.45pm and last night woke at 4am and then started the day at 7.15am.  So not too sure how we're going to get rid of the night feed, but I'm just going to go with the flow at the moment since I've decided to stick to 4hr EASY and see how things stabilise.

Here's our routine from today:

7.15-7.30am wake and feed
9.30 nap (45mins)
11am feed
12.30pm nap (2hrs)
3pm feed
4.30pm nap (45min)
6.45pm feed
7pm bed
9.45pm DF
3-4am feed

So she's going the 2hrs pretty easily although does get a little grumpy and I suspect her wake up today once down for the midday sleep was because of overtiredness.  I actually quite liked this routine it worked well for us and allowed me to get out of the house.  I wouldnt' mind if she had a mini catnap sometime in the morning and the middle nap being pushed out to 1pm - I'm not actually worrying too much about the EASY order.

Naomi - just to let you know, it can take a week of doing the DF to see the results of the "usual" feed time being pushed out a little.  When I first into'd the DF Danielle was actually taking an extra feed a night before it kicked in.

Erin, it sounds like your dd is probably overtired and it's affecting all of her sleeps.  Maybe you need to start putting her down a bit earlier or have winddown that eases her into sleep mode if you don't already.  Once you've got her well rested again then stretch out the awake time again.

[Erin M]

Nikki - You're not kidding about being overtired.  Poor LO has about passed out at her nighttime feed the past few nights, so I've been watching her cues very carefully to get her to bed on time and to sleep longer.  I swear she uses being on her Baby Einstein play mat as a winddown because I find if she's tired and I put her on there, she'll play for awhile and then get to the point where she's falling asleep.  The other day, she did fall asleep there and slept for 1.5 hours.  Anyway, she did take a short nap this morning and woke up, but I did manage to get her back to sleep, so things may be looking up (or not, too soon to tell).

Naomi - I would definitely blame the heat.  I tried to nurse Katie last night when it was 90+ in our kitchen and she started, nursed for a minute and just pulled away completely sweaty.  It must be tough on them, this heat,  I remember it was snowing the day we brought her home from the hospital!  I think they probably need to eat (drink really) more often when it's this hot anyway so they don't get dehydrated.  I hear at least for us in the Northeast US it's supposed to get better this weekend.

Jo - When Katie wakes in the night I always just feed her.  She's not a big night waker anyway, so when she does Im' guessing she's usually hungry (or upset about something in which case the nursing works anyway to help her back to sleep).

Take care everyone 

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

Not sure whether our winter night feeds are worse than hot summer feeding during the day? :?    I think summer feeding would be worse with a little baby.

I think I'm going to need to limit how long Danielle feeds for at her 4am feed because the last few mornings she's not interested in feeding at 7.30am.  What a pain, going to have to get the timing right though so I don't get a wake up 2hrs later.

[FrasersMum]

I don't know Nikki, these cold nights are pretty horrendous!!  And I imagine NZ is considerably worse than Brisbane!!  Thanks for posting your routine, it is very close to ours (most days) and I'm glad that everyone thinks it's ok to be flexible with those sleep times.

We had a better night last night - only one wake up at 4.  I think the fact that Fraser fed well and didn't vomit much (he's a refluxer and there are days when I think he hardly keeps anything down!) helped.

Erin, thanks for the vote of confidence in feeding at night.  I am NEVER in the mood to fight during those dark hours!

Just a quick question - any other mums here full time working??  I started back full time 3 weeks ago, and still exclusively BF (expressing during the day at work) and I'm finding it exhausting.  Would love any others suggestions on how you are going with it..

Chat soon
Jo

[FrasersMum]

I don't know Nikki, these cold nights are pretty horrendous!!  And I imagine NZ is considerably worse than Brisbane!!  Thanks for posting your routine, it is very close to ours (most days) and I'm glad that everyone thinks it's ok to be flexible with those sleep times.

We had a better night last night - only one wake up at 4.  I think the fact that Fraser fed well and didn't vomit much (he's a refluxer and there are days when I think he hardly keeps anything down!) helped.

Erin, thanks for the vote of confidence in feeding at night.  I am NEVER in the mood to fight during those dark hours!

Just a quick question - any other mums here full time working??  I started back full time 3 weeks ago, and still exclusively BF (expressing during the day at work) and I'm finding it exhausting.  Would love any others suggestions on how you are going with it..

Chat soon
Jo

[Jayri]

Riley has done better today, she feeds for about 10 mins in the day. I  am happy with that, any more and she spits it back up.
The heat has been getting to her, I was out today for an hour to the shops and back, I peeked in on her and b4 she fell asleep her face was bright red (it soon went away tho).
Her naps are good, a short one in the morning an hour tops and then a fairly good sized one in the afternoon about 2 hours. She seems to be happy going down on her own, no patting no nothing :shock:
I have to get her back on a bedtime schdule as dh has taken her and ds out in the evenings and given me a break with the heat and everything.
It seems that she is about on par with everyone else, she is adjusting to a 3 1/2 to 4 hr feed by herself. I following her cues at the mo, with a little gentle guidence, each day we get a little more in sync.

Naomi, mum to Jayson 07/17/03 & Riley 03/26/05

[BiancaB]

Hello again 
Since my last post Sienna has hit a GS!! So goodbye my beauty sleep and hello exhaustion    EVERY 2 hrs last night she was feeding and it was most definitely hunger!! All day today she has been the same!!! Now she is tucked up in bed and fast asleep, I'm planning an early night myself, which will sound funny to most of you as I'm posting this while your all getting up...Except the Aussie and NZ contingency :wink:
Naomi,
10 mins sounds okay to me as far as a feed time goes if Riley is lasting 3 hrs in between...My feed times are max 10mins, majority of the time around 6mins and I was really worried for awhile about this. I've figured out the reason they are so much shorter than with my #1 ds is that my breasts(they are well trained Bfed ds 18months until I got pregnant with dd) are really efficient at letting that milk flow :oops:  For that reason we struggled with a very windy Si, the poor thing swallowed a lot of air in the early days. She keeps up now though and actually complains rather vocally if my letdown takes a couple of seconds longer that usual.
You also mentioned PU/PD in your earlier post, there is a heap of great information on the boards about it, if you are going to start, being confident and calm while you go through the process helps alot, those little bubs can really tune in to your vibes
Erin,
I found that watching the clock really helped me in the early days with Sienna as far as when to put her in her crib for her naps, ie going through the 4 steps outlined in Tracys book as part of her wind down...Sometimes Sienna would even seem fine with no obvious signs of tiredness, but if she had been up for 1hr when 3mths as an example, I just went ahead and settled her in her crib and she would then fall asleep relatively easily(you see she was tired after all). What makes Tracys BW book so helpful is that when you have them on E.A.S.Y you can work out tiredness etc before they just collapse with exhaustion.
If they put up a bit of a protest while you are doing wind down, it is a normal/natural behaviour while they are still learning how to go to sleep. Some babies will cry every time, its just there way of winding down their nervous system.
After they get used to the wind down pattern they settle faster.
 Sienna sometimes starts fussing when I draw the curtains in her room(she knows what that means ) but as soon as her head hits the pillow, she has her fingers in and falls fast asleep very quickly without much assistance from me, she knows the drill already. 
Consistency with naptimes and nights is the key to a baby that continues to sleep well as they get older. The hard work put in during this age really pays off later on, I have proof of that in my ds.
Keep up the hard work
Take care
Bianca