thanks everyone for your continued support. I don't know why I am finding this so frustrating. I know in my head it is such early days, and in fact I am a lot more chilled out than I was with ds1! (All that tells you is that i was dangerously close to the edge last time!)
Today was interesting - we had to go to a christening and so i knew that any attempt to organise ds2 sleeping and eating would be futile so i just let him do whatever. He slept all morning pretty much exept for brief eyes open for snacks. he definately didn't feed properly all morning except for his very first feed of the day at 7.30am. He drpped off to sleep otherwise as soon as i put him on. I didn't feel ocmfortable about taking him on and off to keep himawake during the church service so I just had to live with it. Same goes for the gathering afterwards. At about 1.30pm i was really uncomforatble and needing to express andwe needed ot get homefor ds1 nap time anyway so we left. DS2 woke once e got home of his own accord and had a feed of sorts and stayed awake for about 1/2 an hour beofre nodding off again. He then woke up againat about 2.30pm and had another snack but this time stayed awake even though he wasn't interested in feeding. He dozed very breifly on and off for the next hour or so and then stayed awake until bed time! None of this invoved any intervention on my part. i had actually gone to bed for a couple of hours during this as I was so tired and had a eallly bad head ache. he hasn't cried, he hasn't needed cajoling and although his feeding hasn't been great it does tell me that it doesn't really matter what we have done over the last 2 and 1/2 weeks, he has been awake or asleep as and when he feels like it regardless of our actions!
I take on board what you were saying about his awake times being too long. He did it himslef today but maybe i have been so worked up about getting him awke to preserve night times that i have been getting him over tired. i have been loosely following Gina Fords advice as we did so last time, and have been attempting to get him to be awake for between 6 to 8 hours in a day. it hasn't been happening as you know, but she advised 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours of awake time followed by a couple of sleep cycles and then 3 sleep cycles int he middle of the day. This would mean 3 decent sized naps and 4 awake periods.
I think tomorrow i will do as you suggest though and concentrate on getting the feeding sorted out. if i can teach him to stay awake for feeds and get some decent ones in him maybe he will have more energy. I have tried the expressing off the fore milk idea a couple of times and i did feel that it was quite successful. he certainly didn't fall immediately asleep and i did feel empty afterwards.
he is generally falling asleep at night by himslef though. we ahvne't been doing shush pat or pupd. I feed him, attempt to get his eyes open and then put him down, say our night time ryme, give him a kiss and go. His eyes are usually shut again beofre i finish but i know from watching and listneing to the monitor that he wkes again after i have gone and then goes back to sleep by himslef. thank heaven for small mercies!
thanks everyone. I am really appreciating your support.
oh and btw, i spoke to dh and he had been holding off because he didn't want to do things wrong ( bad tempered banshee woman to scarey for him) he has been great since.
XXXX for you all.
