Hello,
First, THANK YOU to everyone who participates on this board, particularly the volunteers who moderate and cheer us on. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to find this site. I appreciate having a forum like this where I don't have to feel self-conscious about asking for help undoing what I believe are errors with EASY.
Here's the background on our situation:
We learned about EASY when our son was about a month old. He has moved from a 2-hour to 3-hour to 4-hour EASY over the last 10 months. EASY helped us learn to read his cues and make our daytime lives completely predictable.
On the one hand, our son has been a *terrific* napper in the sense that he always goes down easily and "on time," as far as the EASY schedule is concerned. On the other hand, he has been a *poor* napper in the sense that he typically sleeps for only 50-60 minutes at a time; very rarely, he will sleep for 90 minutes or more, but that's mostly when he's had a really bad night's sleep the night before.
I must also confess that his schedule has not been a "true" EASY because he typically goes to bed at 9 o'clock, as opposed to 7 o'clock like most EASY kids. Actually, it can be even later some nights, if I'm perfectly honest about it. My husband and I both work during the days and we know (ugh) that we've been terribly selfish in wanting to enjoy the evening hours with our son.
At the moment, our son is on the schedule below, and he sleeps through the night only intermittently. When I say "intermittently," I mean that he will sleep through for, say, three nights in a row, then not sleep through again for three, four, five, six nights; then, he'll surprise us and suddenly sleep through again...
5:30 - wake up & bf
[activity]
8:15 - babysitter arrives & solid food ("breakfast:" yoghurt &/fruit puree &/grain cereal)
[activity]
9:00 - sleep (60-90 minutes)
10:00/10:30 - up & small bottle (breastmilk)
11:00 - finger food ("lunch:" meat &/cheese &/veggie &/fruit &/grain & yoghurt if very hungry)
[activity]
1:00/1:30 - sleep (60-90 minutes)
2:00/2:30 - wake & small bottle (breastmilk)
3:00 - finger food ("snack:" small portion of meat &/cheese &/veggie &/fruit &/grain)
[activity]
5:00 - mom's home from work: bf for half-hour or less, one side
5:30/6:00 - catnap (1/2 hour)
[activity]
7:15 - finger food ("dinner:" very small portion of meat &/cheese &/veggie &/fruit &/grain &/yoghurt)
[activity]
8:15 - bf
8:45 - bath time & wind-down
9:15/9:30 - bed
I see from reading other parents' notes on this message board that many drop the third/late-day EASY nap (catnap) immediately. Wow - we just didn't get that from the Baby Whisperer book. I can see how some would say that common sense might have told us it was silly to keep it -- and we have contemplated getting rid of it -- but because our son is up later at night, we have maintained it because he shows signs of being ready for a nap at 5:30, sometimes even as late as 6:00. Based on our son's cues, really believe(d) that he still needed it -- and, when he does the late catnap, he pops up within a half-hour and is playful until we start to wind down at 8:30, so it seemed he would be incapable of actually "going down for the night" around that hour.
I know it's important that I also clarify that he DOES NOT WAKE AT THE SAME TIME every night. Most times, he wakes up once, deep into the morning hours, around 2 or 3. We've always given him the pacifier because ... well ... it helps him back to sleep quickly.
There are also nights (usually just as a new TOOTH starts to push through, and especially in the day or two where the tooth is actually cutting) where he wakes up many times -- as often as every hour starting at 11 PM. Those nights, what he will need is unpredictable -- sometimes he is good with the just the pacifier, and other times we need to do pu/pd, which usually works within a few minutes, but we have tried for as long as 60 minutes on terrible nights...
There are times when he WAKES AN HOUR OR TWO AFTER HE GOES DOWN, and it is never hard for him to return to sleep at that hour. Usually, just a stroke on the back and a reassuring word does it.
In the last week or so, as two more top TEETH have pushed and cut through, his nightwaking cries have clearly been about pain, and he physically clings with his nails during the pd part of pu/pd. I have to confess that we have let him snuggle in with us on those nights because, after anywhere from a half hour to an hour of pu/pd and other attempts to console him, he simply will not return to sleep without company ... and the reality is that both of us have to work the next morning.
Aside from those lapses, I think it's worth mentioning that I otherwise DO NOT NURSE or sing/rock/jiggle him back to sleep; we try very hard to keep him in the crib with just a hand on his back if he seems to need physical contact (unless we are doing pu/pd, of course).
I have learned from other messages on this board that wake-ups in the early part of the night (1-2 hours after bedtime) are typically attributed to either too much sleep during the day (seems impossible because his naps are short) or being awake too long in the evening time (very likely). I've also learned from other messages that delaying the time of the first nap can help with both too-early rising and night waking. So, I've taken a crack at a revised schedule here ...
If I haven't overwhelmed you with too much information, let me ask what you would say about the routine below as a "goal/ideal schedule" to stretch my son beyond a 4-hour EASY, eliminate the late-day catnap, get him into bed earlier, and help him sleep later in the morning:
6:30 - ideal wake up time & bf
[activity]
8:15 - babysitter arrives & solid food ("breakfast:" yoghurt &/fruit puree &/grain cereal)
[activity]
10:30 - sleep (90 minutes)
12:00 - up & small bottle (breastmilk)
12:30 - finger food ("lunch:" meat &/cheese &/veggie &/fruit &/grain & yoghurt)
[activity]
3:30 - sleep (90 minutes)
5:00 - wake & mom's home from work: bf
5:45 - finger food ("dinner:" meat &/cheese &/veggie &/fruit &/grain)
[activity]
7:30 - bf
8:00 - bath time & wind-down
8:30 - bed
Over time, we would try to nudge the bedtime further an further back until it hits 7:30.
I welcome any advice or comments about this routine, my "read" of the situation (reasonable? objective? totally flawed?!), and any words of caution about what we might experience as we make a transition!!!
Thanks so much,
Shannon
