Hi,
It's been a while since I posted on this board, and this is my first post in this Forum (I was more a "general sleep" type person before).
My LO is about 14 weeks old now. We read the books and started with what we thought was EASY when he was 4 weeks old. I'm beginning to think that we've got it wrong as things seem to be getting worse sleep wise, and we are currently all over the place routing wise. When we read the book we kind of hooked into the whole EAS part, and one line where Tracy says that when they wake up they will be hungry. Which is fine in principle if they stick to the sleep patterns she describes. However, our LO, and I gather from this board MOST LO's don't. So what we have is daytime naps of either 40-45 minutes, or 2-2.5hours. A nightime routine of bath, bed by 7, nap for 45, wake up, feed, scream or generally be unsettled until anywhere from 9.30 to 12.30 (as was last night), then possiby 3 night wakings at say 12, 4, 6 and finally up at 7 for the next day. My wife feeds him everytime he wakes up (he is BF and doesn't like taking a bottle of expressed milk - even if my wife had the time to express some). So back to the literal translation of Tracy's book.
I can't help but think that we are getting something wrong, but being as my DW is the hand that rocks the cradle and has to deal with him all day, and, like most men I know, I am terrible at disscussing things like this with her, there seems to be very little I can do. My wife seems to think that it's just a matter of time before he sorts himself out and he is just a little bit of a late starter in the sleep department, but I kind of think that there must be more things we can do to help him along (typical man attitude I know). The night before last my wife got 2 hours sleep, last night 4, I got a bit more than that as I can't be involved in the night feeds, but I'm getting worried about my wifes health.
We tried extending naps a couple of weeks ago, but my LO really kicked off, and 20 minutes of screaming reduces my wife and me to tears. She can't be expected to deal with that on her own when I am at work so we gave up after the weekend. I know this was a bad thing to do what with consistancy and all, but it wasn't helping any of us.
Any help/advice (especially on the "how to talk to stressed mum" approach) would be very welcome.
Thanks for "listening"