EASY for parents that work, PLEASE HELP!

[Mydreamcametrue]

Hello all.  I am new to the Website and just love it and very addicted.  Need some help though and maybe there are some others out there with the same situation!

How do you do E.A.S.Y when your child is in Daycare?

And.. Any advice on E.A.S.Y when your day HAS to begin at 6:00 a:m.?  We have to get my son up at 6:00 a:m every morning to get feed, dressed and out the door in time to take to the sitters and get to work.

My son is now almost 6 months old (will be Feb. 8th) and is still getting up everynight at 2:30 (like clock work), yeah I know accidental pareting, but when you have to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready for work, you kinda do what is the easiest and that is feeding him. BUT...  I know I NEED to change that and just don't know how...

I know I have a lot of questions and need a lot of advice, but any at all would be very helpful, espcially if you are in the same situation.

Here is my son's current routine, keep in mind he is in daycare so I am trying to work with what "works" for the sitter..

E: 6:00 a:m Bottle
A: Getting ready for sitters, 5 minute car ride to sitters
E: 7:30/7:45 Solids
S: Nap 8:00 a:m (normally will only sleep 45 minutes)

E: 10:00 a:m Bottle
A: Play
E: 12:00 Bottle again
S: 1:00 Nap (about 2 hours) This is when all the other kids take their naps as well.

E: 4:00 Bottle
A: Play until Mommy picks up at 5:00
S: Cat Nap on car ride home (5/10 minutes) and will sometimes stay asleep in car seat once home

E: 6:00 Solids
A: 7:00 Bath, Story, Bottle
S: 7:45/8:00

Wakes up at 2:30 for a full feeding  

Thanks for listening, any help will be greatly appreciated!

-Wendy

[LeslieG]

How many oz is your son taking with each bottle?  How many solids is he eating? You might want to check out other routines in the 6 month range.  There are lots of LO's that get up at 6am. https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php/topic,10386.0.html  Have you tried an earlier bedtime? 

Not much help but I am sure other mom's will answer you too.

Leslie

[Nicola_G]

Hi Wendy,

I am in exactly the same boat as you, although my lo has not yet started childcare - he will do so when I return to work on Feb 15th. However, I have carefully thought out his schedule and he is almost exactly the same age as your lo, so maybe we can work something out together. The benefit you have over me, though, is that your daycare is 5 minutes away! I live in a country area and will be sending ds to childcare in the town where I work, which is 1 hour's drive from home. Just an additional logistics problem I guess.

Anyway, this is my intended schedule:

E: 6.30   Wake, bf
A: 7.00   Depart for childcare (hopefully he will catnap in the car)
E: 8.00   Arrive childcare, breakfast solids
A: 8.30   Activity
S: 9.00   Sleep
E: 11.00  Bottle EBM
A: 11.15  Activity
E: 12.00  Lunch solids
A: 12.30  Activity
S: 13.00  Sleep
E: 15.00  Bottle EBM, fruit
A: 15.30  Activity
S: 16.30  Sleep (we will start working on cutting this out by around 8 months as he goes to 4.5-5 hour EASY)
E: 17.15  Mum pickup, bf before driving home
A: 17.30  Drive home
E: 18.30  Dinner solids
A: 18.45  Bath, bedtime bf
S: 19.15  Bed
E: 23.00  Dreamfeed

As for addressing your concerns re the night waking, you seem to have him on a (mostly) 4 hour EASY, but you are asking him to skip 2 feeds overnight. He should be able to sleep through 7.30-6.30 (about 11 hours) but will need a dreamfeed to sustain him overnight. Also, have you considered introducing more solids? I actually introduced solids at 4.5 months as lo was not gaining sufficient weight, and also in preparation for the childcare situation, and he is now on 3 meals a day plus 5 x bf. It may be that your lo is genuinely hungry at night, in which case as Tracey says, you need to focus on increasing the calories during the day. How much does your ds get in his bottles? And how much does he take in the night?

Some things to consider to address the night wakings are:

• Add a dream feed between 10 and 11 pm, this will tank him up to last the whole night. He is currently missing 2 feeds overnight, this way you will only have him missing one. He is waking up for it anyway, so just feeding him at 11pm may remove his need to wake for a feed at 2am.
• Get some more solids into him to increase his daytime calories. I have recently started introducing protein and dairy (yoghurt, ricotta) as these are more calorie-dense foods
• Increase the amount of his daytime bottles to make up for the amount he takes at 2am. For example, if he takes 6oz at 2am, add those 6oz into his daily intake by adding say 2oz to 3 of his daytime bottles
• When you have increased his daytime calories and are sure that he's not hungry overnight, go to him when he stirs and do pat/shh to put him back to sleep. You will be surprised at how quickly he will remove this waking once he no longer needs the calories. For us, it took less than a week to eliminate the night waking.

HTH, keep us posted on how you go.

[Mydreamcametrue]

Thanks so much for the quick response!

Well...  we were doing 2 meals a day (solids) Breakfast = cereal and fruit and Dinner = cereal and vegetable.. Well......  since we have been doing this my son has decided he no longer wants much of his bottles, SO.. we are lucky if he is drinking 20 oz. of formula a day.

So the doctor has advised us to STOP solids for one week and then re -try again.  The routine that I posted is what we were doing on solids and well now, I really don't have one, but he is drinking more of his bottle. 

I plan to go back to that routine or hopefully a better one with the help of you all next week. 

He should be drinking ATLEAST 24 oz. of formula a day. 

LeslieG:  I have not tried an earlier bedtime, so I may give that a try, but if he has his afternoon catnap then he normally is good to go until 7:30.  Thanks for the link, I will have to check that out, I have not been able to find an EASY routine that starts around 6:00 or so.  Thanks!

Nicola G:  My son was born August 8th so they are only 1 week apart.  I would LOVE to share ideas and chat.  PM or E-mail at W1NDEE@MSN.COM. 

Hopefully there will be some more post from parents that are working and child is in daycare that can offer some advice.

I have not tried the dreamfeed, I did it onenight and it did not work.. I should not have given up so soon.  I will give that a try TONIGHT, actually in the next few minutes because it is 11:00 p:m here.

Thanks again!!!

[Mydreamcametrue]

Sorry I should have added.  He will only take 6 oz. TOPS in a bottle at a time.  Normally it is 4 to 5 oz.  He was just diganosed with acid reflux and is on medicine, so maybe this will help.

[Nicola_G]

Wendy,

Glad I could help somewhat. Hope you have some success with going back to the bottles only, I can't imagine how it would be if Tyson did not take well to bf. Well, actually I can,  he is starting to get really distracted and won't stay on the boob more than about 5 minutes but I think he is just getting more efficient.

As for the dreamfeed, keep trying. It made a HUGE difference to us, and sometimes he wakes up, but mostly he is in that half-waking stupor which is enough to have him latch on and suck, and when he's finished he will go straight off to sleep. Actually, I think he sucks most vigorously in that one feed because he is not awake enough to be distracted. Anyway, in my experience it is well worth keeping at it, because I figure going to bed at 11pm is a whole lot better than getting up in the middle of the night to him!!

[LeslieG]

If you are going back to straight bottles, make sure that they are 4 hours apart. This is important to keep him on a 4 hour EASY.  At around 6 months they usually start to have more awake time so if he is getting at least 2.5 or 3 hours of daytime sleep, I think he is probably fine. 

Were you finding that he ate a lot of solids at a sitting?  With my DD I kind of portion out what I think is enough and when she is done I don't feed her more so that she will drink her bottles.  I also use formula in her solids to boost the amount she gets.

I wish I could be more help but I strongly suggest looking at the posted routines.
Leslie

[Livingmom]

Hey Wendy! I have a lo who is 8 months old and has to start her day a 6am for daycare also. our daycare is 5 minutes away too. She started at daycare when she was 3 months old and we were very fortunate to have a person who worked with us to keep the schedule that WE wanted to follow. It was tricky at first though. We kept a notebook that went back and forth and every morning I wrote down the IDEAL SCHEDULE. The  one that if I were with my lo all day I would be trying to follow. Then I had her write next  to it what happened in reality. After a couple of weeks they started to match. The hardest part for my daycare person was trying to keep to the 4 hour schedule--because she didn't like waking a sleeping baby. But she soon came around and realized that my lo was used to that and the rest of the day went smoothly.

Also, in the morning we wake up and shower and then get the lo one out of bed around 6am. We don't feed her in the morning. We wait and have our daycare lady feed her. It works out well for us--she usually gets her first bottle of the day around 7am.

Our schedule during the week looks like this (and has basically been since she started daycare):

6:00am--wake up/get dressed
6:30am--drive to daycare
7:00--bottle (about 6oz.)
Activity
8:00am--breakfast--solids oatmeal and fruit
Activity
9:00am--10:30am--nap
Activity
11:00--Bottle (about 6 oz.)
Activity
12:00--Lunch--solids--rice cereal and vegetables
Activity
1:30-3:30--Nap
3:30--bottle (about 6 oz.)
Activity
4:30--picked up from daycare and brought home
Activity
5:00--Dinner (fruits and vegetables--just starting meat)
Activity (bath)
6:30--evening bottle (about 6 oz.)
Bedtime

Up until 7 months we did have a dreamfeed--we fed her about 4 oz at 10:30pm. It helped her make it through the evening.  We also figured out this week that we have been making our lo stay up later than she wanted for bedtime. We don't get a lot of time with her in the evening so we liked the 7pm bedtime, but she was always showing tired signs earlier in the evening--so we started putting her to bed earlier and she is going down much easier.

Hope this helped a little--I would be happy to explain anything in more detailed if needed. Just let me know.
Good luck with the daycare situation!

judy

[Mydreamcametrue]

Livingmom

Judy:  Thanks so much for the post..  I love the idea about the notebook.  I had my sitter right down what he was doing each day, but never thought about putting it a notebook to take back in forth.

As yours, my sitter is very good and I know will work with us to get him on a good routine "schedule".

I am glad that you posted your schedule because tonight I was thinking "maybe I should wait and let the sitter feed him at 7:00 when he gets there".  He normally does not even seem that hungry right away in the morning anyhow, so I think this will work a lot better.

I am like you, I get off at 4:00 and get him about 4:30/4:45, home always by 5:00.  Anyhow that only leaves a very small amount of time for ME to be with him :-(  I try to keep him up later, but he is always ready for bed by 7:00/7:30 (If he takes a cat nap).  Just a thought for you, but you may not want to change things.  I am trying to get my son used to a 30 minute cat nap or so from 5:00 - 5:30 or so, this way he will be refreshed and ready for dinner and bath and not so tired. 

I do have some questions for you though:  If you can remember back to when you lo was 6 months old....  What did you do before you started solids?  Do you remember how the routine went or was it pretty much the same, just no solids?  And was she always able to stay up 3 hours before a nap?  MY son seems to be tired within 2 1/2 or so. 
This is a great routine and I am deft. going to use it!  I may have to tweak it a little, but I know will help us.

My son was eating solids, but his formula intake dropped so much and then he came down with a stomach bug and then his acid reflux flared up because of that...  So the doctor has advised us to stop solids until 6 months old, which is in one week.  He was doing great, he loved his food, just hated his bottle, but now since stopping solids he is taking about 32 oz. a day! 

Oh any advice on sleeping through the night?  He still wakes up between 2:30 & 4:30, but almost always 2:30 like clock work..  I always feed him and he takes a full feed.  I do not do a dream feed, I guess I should try this.  How long did it take you lo one to get used to it?

Thanks again and PM me anytime!

-Wendy

[Livingmom]

Hey Wendy--Sorry it took so long to reply. For some reason, the site doesn't notify me when there is a new post, like I requested.

I am glad that some of my advice helped. Let's see if I can answer some of your other questions. But before that--I will admit that we are very blessed with an angel baby that baiscally just follows any routine that we throw at her--granted I think that we keep it so regular helps. . .

Let's see. . .the time in the evening. Our little one decided that catnaps just weren't her style. Because we only get a couple hours in the evening together--my dh and I made the decision to go with it and enjoy a happy baby for 1 1/2 hours, instead of "fight" with her for 30 minutes to get her to sleep. It works for us, though.

Before we started solids. . . Zoey was on a 4 hours eating schedule--which truly didn't change much when solids were introduced. She still eats at 7, 11, 3, and 6:30. The intake went down a little when solids were introduced--she typically takes about 6oz. per bottle. Sorry to hear about the eating troubles with your lo. Hopefully taking a break from the solids helped.

When she was 6 months old, she was only able to stay up 2 hours at a time. Now of course she is very active and wanting to explore everything. She is even pulling herself up to standing on the furniture and taking small steps. I wouldn't want to sleep as much either, knowing that could move around like that--although she does get tired more easily because of all the new things she can do.

Sleeping through the night. . . As for advice--all I can say is what worked for Zoey. I guess I would really suggest trying the dreamfeed. Give your lo about 4 oz. around 10:30 in his sleep. This may be enough to keep him sleeping through the night. I truly believe that Zoey slept so well because of the dreamfeed--we were able to drop the dreamfeed at around 7 months. I also refused to feed her in the middle of the night--after 6 months.  So when she did wake up in the middle of the night--we would go in and pat her back and put her pacifer back in. So she was never used to getting fed in the middle of the night. If you are finding that you lo wakes up at the same time every night--it may just be out of habit. Especially if you try the dreamfeed, you could try the wake-to-sleep method. I have never used it--so I am sure there are some posts around here somewhere.

I hope I was able to answer some of your questions. . .it makes me feel good to be able to help--even just a little.

What is your job? Both DH and I are teachers.

Keep me updated on how things go.
Judy

[Mydreamcametrue]

Hey Judy:

Well I am happy to report that my son is eating his bottle SO GOOD now.  During the day is eats all of his bottle 6 oz. four times a day and seems like he wants more.  He is still waking up in the middle of the night.  Last night it was at 2:30, the night before at 12:30.  He eats a full 6 oz, but I am in the processing of changing that.

I took your advice on several things.  I started a notebook to take back and forth to my sitters (and it working great).  Also we are waiting until he gets to the sitters at 7:00 to have his first feeding.  Now today was the first day of our new plan and so far so good.  I actually had to wake him up this morning to get dressed, but could have been because he woke up at 2:30 and had a full bottle? 

I figured that if he does FINALLY sometime start sleeping through the night and he wakes up at 6:00/6:30 screaming for a bottle, I will try to give him his pacifier or something to hold him off and if I have to feed him, then it will just be 2 oz. at the most and at 7:00 he can have his normal bottle. 

I also decided to start solids back again.  I know he is deft. ready for them.  He is getting hungry almost every 3 hours. 
So this is how his new Routine is going to look and please wish us luck.  Oh and I dropped the "Catnap" and just putting to bed earlier   Less time for us, but I have the weekends.

So here is the plan:

Wake up 6:30:  Get dressed and drive to sitters
7:00 Bottle 6 oz. with 3 teaspoons of cereal (per our doctor because of reflux)
8:00 Breakfast - 1/2 cup oatmeal mixed with formula and a little tiny tiny bit of applejuice to make it take better
Between 8:30/9:00 - Nap (1 hour) He normally will only sleep 45 minutes
11:00 Bottle 6 oz. with 3 teaspoons of cereal mixed in
Between 12:00/12:30 Lunch oatmeal again (I will eventually do a vegetable here once he has his 6 mo. check up next week)
1:00 - Nap (2 hours)
Between 3:00/3:30 - Bottle 6 oz. with cereal mixed in

Mom pick up at 4:45 Home by 5:00

5:30/5:45  Dinner - 1 Stage 1 Jar of fruit
6:00 Bedtime Routine starts, Bath, Change into Pajama's
6:45/7:00 Last Bottle 6 oz. with cereal mixed in.

And hopefully NO MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WAKINGS.  If so then here is my plan:

He normally takes 6 oz. in the middle of the night so:
Nights 1,2 & 3:  6 oz.
Nights 4, 5, 6: 5 1/2 oz.
Night 7, 8, 9: 5 oz.
and so on until 0 oz.  If he takes less at any point then that is my new starting point
For example:  Night 4 he takes 5 oz. instead of 5 1/2 then the next 2 nights he will get only 5 oz.

I know I should not mentiom another book on here, because I LOVE the Baby Whisperer and the Book is Awesome, but I got the idea above from a book called: Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks old by Suzy Giordano, The Baby Coach.  She has sleep trained tons of babies to sleep 12 hours a night by 12 weeks old 100% guaranteed.  She has ALOT of the same beliefs and techniques as the Baby Whisperer.  ROUTINE is the key.

Anyhow Keep in touch and I will let you ALL know how it is going.  We will see.....

You asked what I do for a job:  I am a Loan Specialist for a local bank and my hubby is an Engineer.  I was very lucky to have  a job that works with me and my schedule which is 7:30-4:00 (not your normal "banking" hours).

Talk to you soon
-Wendy

[Nicola_G]

Wendy,

Sounds like you have a plan in place that should work well. However, with reducing the amount of the nighttime feed, be sure to increase his calories during the day to compensate, otherwise you may make the situation worse. He may wake crying from genuine hunger.

Personally, I cannot recommend the dreamfeed strongly enough. I found that because I am bf, I need to take ds out of the cot, which stirs him enough to take a good feed. But not enough that he's wide awake, so he goes straight back to sleep when the df is complete. I think at this age, 12 hours really is too long to go without food - it really means 2 missed feeds on a 4 hour routine. Not until they are a couple of months older will these lads be OK with 2 missed feeds and genuinely sleeping through.

Just my 2 cents' worth.