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

[Erin M]

Hi everyone 

Arwyn's mom - Hi and welcome.  A couple of questions - how old is Arwyn?  What does your schedule (roughly) look like?  If you could post that, it would help us to see if we can help you. 

Have a nice weekend all!

[BiancaB]

Hello Everyone
Thought I'd share this great picture with you all!
Seems like time has just flown since our babies were in this place

[Arwyn's mom]

Oh sorry... I guess that would help if I outlined her schedule. Arwyn is 4 months 1 week old and is exclusively breastfed (won't take a bottle).

Roughly, it is...

5:30-6:00 am wake and feed 6:15 back into crib and she plays until she puts herself back to sleep at 7:30 am

8:00 wake! UGH!!! (She used to sleep until 9:00)

10:00 feed... notice it is two hours since she last woke up so at this feed, she will occasionally drift off and I will try to wake her up and keep her up for at least 30 minutes. If all goes well and she manages to stay up for up to the 2 hours, she is very cranky by 11:30 at which time she will nap for 30 minutes.

2 pm feed and she usually will fall asleep here for a while. Sometimes she will stay asleep for up to 2.5 hours. Otherwise, if I am desperate for her to get some sleep, I will lie down with her (I know, I'm not supposed to but I would rather she sleep)

Depending on when she wakes up, we'll play until it has been 4 hours. I will feed her again, then start her bedtime routine at 7. She is able to put herself to sleep within 15-20 minutes. I dreamfeed at 11. Lately she has been waking up between 1 and 2 only to reassure herself that I am there and then will fall back asleep.

Then she wakes up again sometimes at 4 or 5.

This is our schedule lately. We were on a beautiful routine up until approximately 3 weeks ago where she would nap 1.5 hours and could follow the 3 hour EASY. I just changed to the 4 hour EASY because she didn't really seem hungry after 3 hours anymore.

For some reason, she started to have very short naps about 3.5 weeks ago and then when we went on holidays 2 weeks ago, started to wake up every 2 hours in the night.

Anyways, I just wanted to know if there was any way to extend naps. I persisted with the pick up/put down today and finally got her back to sleep after an hour of screaming baby! Funny how successful that can make you feel.

[Onewoman]

Hi Arwyn's Mum  I am also moving to 4 hr EASY because of short naps, night wakings and not being interested in eating at 3 hrs.

My own experience so far regarding short naps is that I have to keep my lo up for 2 hrs after her last waking. I take her up at 1 3/4 hours and do the wind down, then she settles herself. I have also noticed that if she is up longer than 2 hrs she finds it hard to settle and will more likely wake up before she is ready to. It has been difficult to judge sometimes as when I have left her past 2 hrs as she is showing no signs of tiredness, when we get upstairs she suddenly becomes completely knackered and is overtired! Now I take her up at 2 hrs even if she is not showing any signs of tiredness and this seems to be working well.

Hope this helps 

[Jayri]

Bianca.  I loved the picture. the past few months have sure flown by.
I haven't posted on here in a while, we have kinda fallen off of the EASY wagon.
Riley still eats at regular intervals, over the past little while she has been all over the place, I think her teeth are starting to bother her gums, either that or it is some kind of spurt that I didn't realize.
She still does good putting herself to sleep, is amazing at that.
Welcome to all new mummies.
gotta run, bedtime is calling me
 :lol:  :lol:

[kq]

Hi,
it has been a rough few days. We are transitioning to the 4 hour routine. We are currently on 3 and 1/2 hourly feeds. Routine looks a bit like the following:

0730-BF
0915-nap
1100-bottle
1245-nap
1430-BF
1615-nap
1800-1830 bath
1830-1900-BF and bed

I am clock watching and ignoring tired cues at the moment and am getting 1.5-2 hour naps with brief shush-pat at 40 minutes to extend naps. he is definitely hungry at 3.5 hours and is feeding more.

My problem is that he is still waking 3 times at night-between 2200 and 2300 (i do not DF), between 0100-0200 and between 0400-0500. Will this get better? We only started the transition on Thursday last week.
Should I do an extra feed during the day and if so, where?

Will he learn to re-settle again after 40 minutes? He was doing this great till 12 weeks!

Sam is 16 weeks and 2 days old.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Karen

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

Hi Karen, I'm not too sure where you can put an extra feed in your day - the days I end up with 5 feeds is when Danielle's woken early (ie 6amish) and often feeds 10am and then 1pm before her nap and then 3pm and 7pm.   To me, the 3.5hr cycle is the same number of day feeds as the 4hrly unless you end up with one before a nap or the day's had an early start or late finish and you're able to get an extra one in that way.

If he's feeding for longer at each of the day feeds I would think you'll soon see a night feed dropped soon (probably the 10pm).  When I do two night feeds they're often either 12am & 4am or 1am & 5am.  So I think that providing you stick with what you're doing you should see a change within the next few days.

As far as needing to resettle at 40mins, some days I do and some I don't, depends on if she's gotten overtired or not (or maybe there's a noise in the house or outside that's made her stir between sleep cycles).

HTH, maybe Bianca will have some ideas for you too 

[kq]

Thanks Nikki. I will hang in there and persevere. Will keep you posted.

[Arwyn's mom]

Thanks Onewoman,
Of course when I was finally brave enough to post to this forum and ask for advice, Arwyn decided to have a 2 hour nap the very next day (Saturday). Today, she even put herself to sleep in her stroller while my husband and I went for a walk along the seawall and slept for 45 minutes. Arwyn normally doesn't want to miss a thing and will stay up. Boy were we surprised!


Hello everybody,
I just finished reading ALL the posts from the beginning. It is nice to know that others are going through similar situations, especially the transition from 3 to 4 hour EASY. I went through the night wakings and thought the every two hour wake-ups were going to be the end of me!

[herbst99]

Karen
1615-nap
1800-1830 bath
1830-1900-BF and bed

Hi Karen - I was also struggling with nightwakings - I am wondering if your afternoon nap, which I take is also 1hr45min long is not maybe long a nap for the afternoon. Our afternoon (a good day!!) 15:00 FF .... anything from 16:30 to 17:00 we have a short nap of between 30-45min (1 sleep cycle) and then at 18:30 bedtime routine and 19:00 FF and sleep.
I do however do the DF at around 10:30pm. Hope this helps (I seem to recall something of 4-6mth olds only needing 3hr30min naps total during the day and 11-12hrs at night??)

[kq]

Hi all,
Thanks for advice. I have just had the night from hell with 2 hour wakings all night long and I am not sure all of them were from hunger. I fed on some of them and not others-cannot remember which! Our evening nap is usually about 45 minutes to 1 hour long and then low key activity, bath and last feed.
Am hanging in there and today is a new day.
Have a good one,
Karen

[herbst99]

Well Lise woke up TWICE last night - first time in I don't know how long and I was just so frustrated...but I know this was because her napping yesterday was soooo out of wack. I hope this is not teeth! My DH was on call as well so in between his phone ringing and the baby crying we did not get much sleep - but as Karen says - today is a new day so hopefully things will be better.

[kate585]

Hey, everyone!  Hope all is well with the nap issues. 

Two quick chat room questions:
1.)  What is HTH?
2.)  What is KWIM?

I am showing my ignorance here.  Thanks!!!

[Erin M]

Hi all - nice to hear how everyone is doing, even those of you who are just checking in.  I really just visit this thread not so much for the EASY part of it, but just to see how other babies of Katie's age are doing. 

Kate - HTH = hope this helps
          KWIM = know what I mean

Karen - When we were transitioning from 3 to 4 hour EASY, I did an extra feed between her last two feedings, so she ended up eating around 3 PM, 5 PM, and 7 PM which seemed to work for her.  I still do it sometimes if she seems like she needs it. 

Bianca - loved the picture - time really does fly!

Arwyn's mom - Katie used to sleep later too (until 9ish sometimes, but it seems like since she has gotten more of her day/night sleep sorted out, she's up pretty consistently around 7:30-8.  Oh well).  In looking at your schedule, I think maybe you need to find the right amount of time to keep her up.  4 hours is a really long time at this age (between your last two feedings).  That might have something to do with her waking up every 2 hours a few weeks back. 
I also think she's kind of backwards in the morning, as in she eats, goes back to sleep, is awake, and then eats again, but is really too tired to eat.  Do you think you could give her a shorter feed when she wakes at 5:30-6 and then feed her again when she gets up for the day and start her routine that way?  Eventually I would think she would drop the 5:30-6 feed and if you shortened it, that might help it along. 
As for the short naps, there's a huge thread on that on the napping board - I used lots of the suggestions the ladies did on there to extend Katie's naps although it did seem like she did it herself after awhile.


Take care all.
-Erin

[Arwyn's mom]

Erin M -- Thanks for the advice. I have not tried to cluster feed at night. I'll try it tonight. I have always dream-fed and that usually keeps her happy until 4:30 or 5:30 but not lately.

As for the naps, when I finally got up the nerve to post here and ask for help, the very next day she napped for a minimum of 1.5 hours each time (one nap was even 2.25 hours) and did it for 3 days.

After 2 good days, she woke up 2 times last night (2 & 5:30) and wanted to be fed. Both times she took a full feeding so I don't know what is happening.

Today she is not napping as I was a bad mommy and had her trapezing all over town and then to her grandparents' place. She's all knackered up (Thanks Onewoman... I love the word and am using it all the time!  ) and is having a hard time getting a nap in.

So, as a result, I am listening to her do her mantra cry now and trying to put herself to bed. This is the second time in the same nap period! She woke up after 15 minutes and is now trying again to get some shut-eye!

Well, I'd just like to let everybody know that I am so happy I joined this message forum. I come here to feel a little better about what I am doing and to connect with some people who are following the same philosophy about routines and sleep. I feel really supported here... it's not the same when other moms haven't struggled through the same thing. They don't know what you are talking about and why it is so difficult.

Thanks.