activity time at night?

[tara72]

we have a one week old daughter and we are working on establishing the EASY routine. however, we aren't sure if we should include a short (15-minute) activity phase after we feed her at night, or should we just do the necessary night-time maintainance (feed, diaper) before calming her and putting her back to sleep?

thanks in advance for any help, we are obviously new to this board and have been just eating up all the wonderful information!

[Erin M]

Definitely just do regular night-time maintainance (I assume you're talking about feeds where eventually, she'll just be sleeping through) and put her back to bed -- the less stimulation the better, you want her to learn that nights are for sleeping and days are for activity ASAP.  If you want, pop on over and join us on the Oct/Nov '06 babies birth club thread -- there's a bunch of us with similarly aged LOs and it helps to chat about it.  You can find it in the Birth Club child board in the EASY forum.

[Samuel's mum]

Just the absolute minimum. I think if she even falls asleep feeding at night you shouldn't stress about it too much. You could try and finish the feed when she's still a little drowsy and not completely asleep but it may not happen - as you are breastfeeding the milk is full of a hormone designed to send her back off to sleep (and you too) and there's not much you can do about it. You may not even need to do burping/diaper every time. I wouldn't try and 'wake her up' at night or artificially keep her awake.

Welcome to the boards.

[tara72]

thank you to both of you for replying! your posts were *very* helpful.

thank you for the welcome, too, and the chat suggestions. if I ever have more free time (eek!), I'll see what I can do.