Author Topic: looking for Jan/Feb 05 moms to chat...  (Read 60905 times)

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Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #150 on: June 22, 2005, 16:37:01 pm »
Hi everyone! Thanks Christine for responding to my post. It's nice to know there are other babies like mine out there. I look forward to receiving some input on my situation. I am currently still wrapping my dd and giving her a paci for all naps and nighttime sleep. I tried one arm out a few times but she knocks the paci out of her mouth so I gave up but would like to wean her off of the wrap as it is getting very humid & hot here.
Christine, is Leah on a 4 hourly routine yet? If so, how is it going? Has anyone else tried it? I'm not totally convinced it's going to help her night wakings.
Here is my schedule from yesterday, any input would be greatly appreciated.
7 AM - Feed
8:50 AM - Nap
10:30 AM -wake/Feed
1:30 PM - Feed
2:00 PM - Nap (I couldn't get her down any earlier no matter what I   
                        did)
2:30 PM  - wake (only 30min, couldn't extend this one)
3:30 PM - Nap     
4:30 PM - Wake/ Feed
5:00 PM - nap
6:00 PM - wake
7:00 PM - bath
8:55 PM - sleep (had trouble getting her down any earlier)
9:45 PM - wake/Feed
10:55 PM - sleep (two night wakings at 1:30 and 4:30 AM after that)

I have a couple of questions:
(1) She has been napping later in the afternoon, usually from 4-6 ish. Is that too late for a nap? Could that be affecting her night sleep?
(2) For the past 3 weeks she has been napping in the evening around 8 or 9 for an hour and then getting up again until 10:30 PM, I'm not sure why.
Thanks for reading this long post and any responses would be greatly appreciated
 
Heather

Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #151 on: June 22, 2005, 16:40:56 pm »
Sorry, I apologize. I missed that I fed her at 7:30 PM. Thanks
Heather

Offline dkjokisch

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« Reply #152 on: June 22, 2005, 20:22:59 pm »
First of all, with regard to the swaddling, continue it if it helps settle her.  Just strip her down to her diaper or onesie before you wrap her up.  Also, if you know anyone handy with a sewing machine, you can get lighter-weight fabrics than the traditional flannel receiving blankets and hem them square to about the right size.  My MIL sent me lightweight cloths that are made out a gauze-like diaper fabric, but they are bigger than cloth diapers, about the size of a receiving blanket.  I use them for everything.

But to your questions...

A late afternoon nap will not interfere with night sleep.  In fact it often helps them sleep better at night because they're not overtired when you are putting them to bed.  I think Tracy talks about this in her second book.

As for evening wakings, I'm not sure about that.  Once Maya goes down, she's normally down for the night.  Anyone else?
Deborah
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Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #153 on: June 22, 2005, 21:09:24 pm »
Hi Deborah,
Thanks for responding. I have been using the miracle blanket with my dd in her diaper but it is a bit of a thicker fabric. She is outgrowing it anyways so I may check into a lighter fabric. Maya is sure cute in her photo. Is she a spirited baby? It sounds like she keeps you on your toes. Do you have her on a 3 hr or 4 hr EASY?  I have been contemplating switching Samantha to a 4 hour EASY but have been hesitant because she still seems to need to eat every 3 hours. This week I have been trying to be a bit stricter with the EASY schedule but then I get depressed because I feel tied to the house more and I start having higher expectations of my dd to conform to a schedule. I'm trying to find a happy medium between going with the flow and following a loose schedule but it's hard some weeks. Thanks again for your response.
Heather

Offline Leah's Mom

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« Reply #154 on: June 23, 2005, 00:54:27 am »
For my sake, Heather (Kelsey's mom) will now be referred to as Heather #1 and Samantha's mom, Heather #2 - no preferance, just the way I met you both!  :D

Heather #1 - Please let me know how extending the naps goes. I tried to go to four hour feeds today, and was able to stretch the first one out to 3.45, then 3.5, then 3. But that left me with a problem becuase the last feed was at 5:00 and then she didn't want one before bed at 7.

Heather #2 - We are still on a three hour schedule as well, with night wakings at or around 3 and 5:30. My DD has also been waking up for the dream feed at 9:45. This has just started recently, could be their age? As for the late afternoon nap. Like Deborah said, late afternon naps are good for nighttime sleep, but Tracy also says too long of a late afternoon nap can affect nightime sleep. She suggests only a 45 minute nap during that time. This long nap could also be why you cannot get her to sleep any earlier then 9. We have had a lot of success with an early bedtime. Leah takes a catnap from 4:30-5:15, goes down for the night at 7, DF at 10, wake at 3, 5:30 - but then sleeps till almost 7 am. You could try and cut the last nap down to 45 mintues and see if she settles easier?
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Offline Leah's Mom

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« Reply #155 on: June 23, 2005, 00:57:09 am »
Heather #2 - do you have a bedtime routine established? This helped our DD with settling for the night. Also, a very consistent bedtime, ours is always 7:00. After a week or so of the consistent bedtime and routine she always goes to sleep right away.
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Offline Jaime

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« Reply #156 on: June 23, 2005, 01:47:01 am »
HOLY COW!!  what a great thread... wish i'd found it sooner!  could have used some support for my crazy baby  :lol:   although you all have given me some ideas to try with my lo.

luke was born jan 23... that makes him almost 5 months.   :!:  when did that happen?!  he's a touchy, which makes things oh so much fun.

i too have battled the horrid 45 min nap.  we seem to have mostly come out of it now, since converting to a 4-hr routine in this past month.  Leah's mom (Christine?), i was able to make the conversion after i read a post about nap training by meg's mom on the nap boards (it's now an announcement)  he's a much happier baby now. 

deborah, (maya's mom) things are rather crazy with 2 kids 20 mths apart, but if i was doing it all over again i'd still space them this way.

anyhow, howdy to you all.
Jaime
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Offline HeatherC

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« Reply #157 on: June 23, 2005, 02:01:19 am »
Heather #2 (that's so funny), I think you are doing a great job.  I totally understand how short naps affect the EASY routine.  You have to do the best you can with Samantha's needs and personality.  I agree with the others that a late afternoon cat nap is great so they won't be overtired for bedtime.  As for her waking up after her 8 or 9 bedtime, hum, might she need more to eat during the day?  I can't remember if she is bf or ff, but if she is on the bottle, you could try increasing her input.  Might she not really be hungry and just needs help resettling.  I would try pu/pd to get her back to sleep until you want to give her the df.  At four months, she should be able to make it until the df after eating at 7:30 I believe.  As Christine said, make sure you have a consistent bedtime routine.  My only other unprofessional advice would be to try and give her a little activity time after feedings unless she just completely dozes off.  I only say this because it might help you to establish a better routine for your sake.

Kelsey has been feeding at 4 hours now, even though her naps are still short.  This makes EASY completely undoable, but I'll work on it.  I haven't had much opportunity to work on extending her naps because we have been out and about quite often lately.  By the 3rd feeding she's so tired because she's only used to being awake for 2 hours that she wanted a nap immediately (see Heather #2, Samantha's not alone in that), and it left 2 hours before the next feed.  I just kept her busy and used the time for bath and she ate and has since gone to bed.
Kelsey, Feb. 4, 2005
Landon, Jan. 2, 2007

Offline HeatherC

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« Reply #158 on: June 23, 2005, 02:03:59 am »
Welcome Jaime!  I love to hear "howdy"; I'm from TN!  I have also read that announcement about extending naps, but have been unsuccessful.  Any special advice?
Kelsey, Feb. 4, 2005
Landon, Jan. 2, 2007

Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #159 on: June 23, 2005, 02:14:08 am »
Christine, I do have a bedtime routine of bath/swaddle/feed, however, lately she can't seem to settle probably because of the long late afternoon nap. I was getting her down by 8 PM for quite awhile and then she started waking at 8:30 PM and not going down until later. I have kind of gone off of the bandwagon because of this. Tonight, for example, she had a late afternoon nap from 4:30-5:45 PM. I gave her a bath at 6:45 and then swaddled and fed her but I cannot get her to go to sleep for the life of me and it is now 8:05 PM. I'm expecting it won't be until close to 9 PM till she goes down. I will try cutting the late afternoon nap back to 45 mins tomorrow and see if that makes a difference.
I just thought of one other strange thing that happened. When I was putting her down at 8 PM (a few weeks back) she would have more night wakings than if I put her down later (ie: 10 PM) in which she would sleep longer (like 4 hours straight from 10-2 AM). When she went down at 8 PM she would wake every 2 hours all night (ie:10, 12,2,4) and then I would get no sleep ...very strange. 
Heather#2

Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #160 on: June 23, 2005, 02:50:18 am »
This is great, I'm glad I joined this thread.
Hi Heather #1, I must have been in the process of posting when you replied to my post. I am exclusively b/f and she feeds for about 15 minutes at a time. She has become more and more distracted during the day while feeding so it is a struggle even getting 15 mins out of her. She does empty me completely though so I have been assuming she is getting enough but then maybe not... 
I just had an AHA!! moment. Since she started getting up after an hour in the evenings I have been playing with her assuming that she isn't tired so I'm wondering if she is now waking out of habit.
I have been able to extend her naps lately. In fact today I was able to extend both her morning and afternoon naps. I usually go in at the 25 min mark and sit in the rocking chair waiting for her first peep. I then put both hands on her with a little pressure and shush. That takes about 10 minutes and then she stays down for at least another 45 minutes.
Christine, it sounds like you are having some difficulty getting on to the 4 hour routine as well. I have done the same thing where I have gotten her to 3.5 or 4 hours for the first feed and then the rest of the feeds are 3 hours because of short naps etc. Let me know if you have more success with it.
Heather#2

Offline Deb_in_oz

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« Reply #161 on: June 23, 2005, 09:42:30 am »
Welcome everyone - when i started this thread i had no idea how huge it would become.  i feel i need to go back and re-read it all as i have lost track a bit.

we are still up and down, most recently thanks to oilvia catching her sister's cold - 2 kids with runny noses is not fun and Olivia has been having real trouble with feeding (can't breathe) and then sleeping issues too.  we are so frustrated!

i have a question for those with fussy eaters - when olivia was BF she would often fight getting on the breast but i dealt with it.  then on the bottle she is even worse and we have ended up pretty much forcing her onto the bottle (physically we have to hold her very tight to our bodies and then shove the bottle in) but then she usually eats fine from it.  we have 2 MAJOR issues now:
1) she really only eats well if in her room with dim lighting and occassionally needs us to hush her or put on white noise.  she is so senstive to surroundings that everything is a distraction anywhere else.  how do i overcome this?  she is not portable at all at this stage b/c when we have had to take her out we have accepted that she might only eat 100ml (4 oz or less)
2) since we have had to push more and more to get her to eat (especially with the cold) we feel she is actually starting to get upset at the sight of the bottle now and both Dh and I feel like crap feeding her - it feels like we are torturing her.  why would she fight so hard ( a real struggle) and then drink happily after a few seconds on it.

any suggestions would be great as we are both starting to feel like we have no parenting abilities.
Debra - a New Yorker living in Australia married to a Brit

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Offline dkjokisch

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« Reply #162 on: June 23, 2005, 13:16:52 pm »
To Heather #2 - I would say Maya is a touchy baby.  She has kept us on our toes since day 1.  For the first 10 days of her life, we were lucky to get her to sleep for 3 or 4 hours in the bassinet ine the middle of the night.  Other than that, she would not sleep unless she was held.  SHe also had weight-gain and digestive issues so there came many a time in those first few weeks when we had to let her sleep in someone arms so I could keep her awake long enough to eat so she wouldn't wind up back in the hospital.

To answer your question...she is on a rough 3-hour EASY, for several reasons.  Though she is 5-1/2 mos, she only weighs 12.5 lbs.  On the 3-hour EASY, she gets five feeds a day.  She does not take a dream feed (it took so long to get her to bed some nights there was NO way I was going to disturb her to eat), so if I went to a 4-hour EASY, she would only get four feeds a day, and with her size, I am concerned that wouldn't be enough, and she'd start to wake it night.  She sleeps 7:45pm to 7:45am with no wakings, and I don't want to mess with that.

As for the late afternoon nap, I don't let her sleep past 5pm (though she does occasionally get a 10-15 minute catnap while we take our evening walk).  I feed her when she gets up (usually between 4:15pm and 5pm), my husband and I take her for a walk, and we start her bedtime feed at 7pm, and as I said, she's down by 7:45pm.

You're right about finding a happy medium.  It took about 2 to 2-1/2 weeks to get her on EASY at about 4 mos.  Before than she was on a slightly different schedule that was working for us, but it all went south when the entire extended family showed up for a long weekend for her baptism.  She went four days without a nap (everytime we put her down in the crib, my MIL and SIL would go in there, poke her until she cried trying to get her to smile, and then pick her up because she was crying), and the no-napping went on for about two weeks before I said enough is enough.   But I digress...the happy medium...I made a commitment to stay home during the day as long as it took to get her on a good schedule.  Now we try to run errands during her activity period.  If we have to be out during a nap, I try to make it the late afternoon nap, and we start her bedtime routine earlier (by 1/2 hour or so) on those days.
Deborah
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Offline dkjokisch

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« Reply #163 on: June 23, 2005, 13:30:29 pm »
Also, Heather #2, you mentioned Samantha get distracted while eating.  Maya is also easily distracted while eating (she is exc bf).  I feed her in her room with only one blind open, and no lights on.  It definitely helps to keep outside stimulation to a minimum.  If I have to feed her elsewhere, she doesn't eat as well, and I usually plan to get her home for a proper feeding before her normal 3-hour interval.

However, she has taken to trying to suck her thumb while eating (???).  Sometimes, I can tuck her arms down so she can't, but feeding her has always required two hands so I don't have a hand free to hold hers.  She can eat while doing it, but she breaks the seal, and it makes a mess of the both of us.  She was never a very neat eater, but this is over the top.  Has anyone else had this problem?
Deborah
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Offline Heather_Samantha's Mummy

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« Reply #164 on: June 23, 2005, 17:05:02 pm »
Debra! good job on starting this thread. It's a popular one!
I'm not an expert on bottle feeding but could it be the nipple? Maybe the milk isn't flowing the way she likes it. Maybe she's a baby that likes a faster flow (or slower) or something. Just a guess.
Deborah, It sounds like Maya has been a challenge but it's nice she goes down at 7:30 PM until 7 AM. That gives you a nice break. Samantha hasn't been getting good evening sleep for the past few weeks so I haven't been getting breaks. Samantha has tried to suck on her hands while feeding as well so I have been wrapping her lately to feed.
Just a question regarding extending naps:
Am I correct in that if I keep doing this eventually she will just resettle on her own and sleep past 30 minutes? I was just wondering because this has been going on for weeks now.
By the way, last night was terrible. She had major gas and didn't go down until 10 PM which was a 4 hour stretch since her last nap. She was then up every 2 hours all night farting (can I say that?). The only thing I can think of that I would have consumed lately that would affect her like this would be pink grapefruit pop (she seems to have a sensitivity to citrus). I thought it was simulated flavour but it's not!! OOPS!!!
Once I get going with posts I can't stop!!!!!
Heather#2