ACTIVITY > E.A.S.Y. Forum
EASY problem with sleeping and eating...
zelda:
i have been trying to implement EASY for a while now and i have a huge problem. well, two: my baby always wants to feed before sleeping. that's why i wanted to do EASY in the first place...
but the REAL problem is that he wakes up about a million times in the night (last night: nine) and wants to feed. i try to start the day between 7.00 and 7.30 and feed him right away. of course he doesn't want to eat properly because he has had something an hour earlier at his last waking. so, by the time his nap time rolls around at 9.00, he's hungry and needs to eat.
what do i do? these problems are just reinforcing each other and i don't see a way out. help!
Onewoman:
How old is your baby?I'll be able to give some advice when you let me know.
zelda:
sorry, he's 4 months. i just don't get it, he is not hungry in the morning. even 4h after his last feed at 3am.
Onewoman:
Yes it is a difficult one and you must exhausted! First some questions - How are his feeds in the day, how often, and how much does he take? How long are his naps? Is he a big baby? Do you dreamfeed?
If your son is waking 9 times a night and it has been going on for a while, I would say that he has got used to a prop to fall asleep - your breast or the bottle, because he really can't be hungry that many times. Also you say he always wants to feed before sleeping in the day, so he has just learnt that that's how he gets to sleep. The only way to overcome this is to be strict and help him learn to fall asleep on his own!
You will need to gradually increase the daytime feeds and reduce the night time and also implement a sleep training method like pick up/put down. Have you used shh/pat?
Initially I would not feed him at 7am, but wait until he is really hungry, even if that is just before his sleep, so that he takes a good feed. Then, when you can be sure he has fed well, you can be confident that he won't be hungry for at least 3 - 4 hrs and do pu/pd for naps, bedtime and night wakings. (For night wakings decide what is a good amount of time for him to be asleep e.g. if his last feed is at 7 pm and you don't do a dream feed you could reasonably expect him to be hungry again at 1 or 2) If he is falling asleep when feeding and it is time for his nap, take him off the breast/bottle and sit him up so his eyes are open and then put him down to sleep. He will cry! But it's just frustration. If you help him learn now how to get to sleep it will save you lots of problems in the future.
A baby of 4 months should only need 5 - 7 feeds in 24 hrs, but they must be good feeds and not snacks. Every 3 - 4 hours in the day and 1 or 2 feeds at night.
Pick up/put down is hard work, but if you are consistent they learn really quickly - it only took 2 days for my lo, and the first night was lots better after doing pu/pd in the day. It really is worth the hard work :) . What I did was read the chapter on pu/pd a few times (if you don't have the book the method is explained in the Sleep Forum in a special interview with Tracey). Then I wrote down the steps I had to do and put it on the wall near the crib so I would remember and also it helped me keep going when things got tough.
Let me know how things go and good luck :D
zelda:
hello, thank you for your reply.
well, the good news is that he is not longer waking at night. the bad news is that he will still not eat in the morning after he wakes up. so, i would like to pick your brain a little bit more, if i could:::
now we are really working on EASY as it's time for a 4h schedule. we are using pu/pd and it is working except for the E part. to answer your questions :
1) his naps are great, they improved as soon as he started sleeping longer at night (funny how that works). about 1.5-2h twice a day, sometimes he has a 45min nap in the early evening if he seems tired.
2) he can drink up to 7-8oz when he is hungry, but mostly he just snacks, drinking 2oz when he wakes up and 3oz before he falls asleep. i think this is the real problem - every time we try to put him down for a nap, he is hungry. but we give him a bottle before bed, and he falls asleep fairly easily.
3) we do do a dreamfeed. i feed him as much as he will take, this is generally about 3oz.
do you have any tips for getting him to feed after he wakes up instead of before? my idea is to feed him before he sleeps for now, so he gets a solid feed in and stops snacking, and then work on moving the feed forward by putting more and more A time between the feed and the nap , what do you think?
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