EASY baby- baby whisperer-routine at night

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Seraph

Sat, Sep 12 2009, 2:49 pm

For those that follow Tracy Hogg's- Baby Whisperer- EASY baby routine (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Yourself), what do you do during the evening/night hours?
Do you just cut out the activity part of the routine completely? Or do you let the baby stay awake for a few minutes after nursing so that you're not nursing to sleep?
If you do cut out the "activity" part of the routine, from what time in the evening/night do you do it?

shabri

Sat, Sep 12 2009, 3:34 pm

1st of all, mazel tov!

2nd of all. Yes. a big part of "The Baby Whisperer" is getting the baby to distinguish between day and night. Which means 1. waking them up every 3 hours during the day to feed them and let them be up a bit and 2. at night try to feed them in the dark, quiet, place and put them right back after the burp.

She also recommends "tanking" in the evening hours to try to get them to go a little longer at night,. This includes cluster feeding and dream feeding.

Do you have the book? The big one called "baby whisperer answers all of your questions" is essential if you are serious abt doing it. Also the message boards on babywhisperer.com

Also keep in mind you can start to get them on EASY from birth but a lot of things don't take until abt 6 weeks. What I concentrated on with #2 is 1. wake every 3 hours during the day 2. keep up a bit after a feed and 3 never nurse her to sleep-- the rest of the stuff sort of fell the the side until she was abt 6 weeks when you are able to work on getting them on a real schedule and getting them to get to sleep on their own

good luck let me know if you need any help

shabri

Sat, Sep 12 2009, 3:38 pm

forgot to add

She says stop doing the A once you put them to "bed" between 7/8pm. I prob did it a little later

the schedule should be something like

7 wake up eat
8:30 nap
10 wake up eat
11:30 nap
1 wake eat
2:30 nap
4 wake eat
5:15/5:30 catnap
6 cluster feed
bath
cat nap if need
8 cluster feed and then bed
between 10 & 11 dreamfeed

then see how long they go. At the beginning mine wake at abt 2 and then abt 5. gradually they push off the 2 and the 5 morphs into 7 until they give up nights completely.

Marion

Sat, Sep 12 2009, 6:01 pm

I could never dreamfeed mine (it just didn't work for them), but yes. Also, keeping in mind that for a newborn the "activity" is simply a bath or nappy change...so you just leave it out at night. At the beginning not nursing to sleep just means removing the baby from the breast before he falls asleep there.

JollyMommy

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 1:39 am

do you burp the baby at night feedings? I never do, should I?

cubbie

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 2:13 am

If I recall, she doesn't start with the cluster feeding and dream feeding until 6 weeks, but I will look it up. But basically at night, you don't wake your baby to feed which you do during the day (not letting him take more than a 2 hour nap) and you don't burp or change diaper unless baby has pooped.

pobody's nerfect

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 2:25 am

this sounds like a cool method- where can I find more info?

cubbie

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 2:41 am

Also if you are starting from newborn I would get the first book in the series, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, if you are problem solving or starting with an older infant get the second book The Baby Whisperer Solves all your Problems

shabri

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 7:07 am

re burping in the night, you do what your baby needs. If he doesn't need it, then I wouldn't but if he is going to cry until he burps, or spit up or something, then you def should.

re cluster feeding/dreamfeeding. She def starts it right away. In fact you're supposed to stop cluster feeding by abt 6/8 weeks.

re the book. I have all 3. If you are only going to get one, I would get the big one, Answers all of your questions. The first one is a nice overview but the big one helps you really put it into practice. She deals with the littles kids to the biggest ones in the book.

cubbie

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 7:38 am

shabri wrote:

re cluster feeding/dreamfeeding. She def starts it right away. In fact you're supposed to stop cluster feeding by abt 6/8 weeks.

I have the book in front of me now (the first one) where she talks about Sleeping through the night on page 185 she says "Tank them up. This might sound like a rather crude expression, but one of the ways we get babies to sleep through the night is by filling their tummies. To that end, when an infant is six weeks old, I suggest two practices: cluster feeding-that is, feed her every two hours before bedtime-and giving her what I call a dreamfeed right before you retire for bed......."

In the other book she talks about getting rid of the cluster feeds and dream-feeds and how to do it (round about the time of introducing solids), but that book's in the machsan, I need to get it out at some point.

zigi

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 10:03 am

the second book solves all your problems mentions what to do at all the ages. from newborn till 2

bath time cluster feed then put the baby to sleep. then dream feed.

shabri

Mon, Sep 14 2009, 12:13 pm

cubbie wrote:

shabri wrote:

re cluster feeding/dreamfeeding. She def starts it right away. In fact you're supposed to stop cluster feeding by abt 6/8 weeks.

Funny in the big book (which I also have in front of me) p 94 " I recommend tanking up as soon as your baby comes home from the hospital but you can start using both strategies an time during the 1st 8 weeks and the dream feed until 7 or 8 months"

Its not the 1st inconsistancy I found between the 2 books but I think she says somewhere that she herself tweaked it between the 2 books and thats why

sunny90

Thu, Jan 14 2010, 8:28 am

I'm bumping this up because I need advice!
Has anyone here successfully followed the EASY routine?
Its very hard for me to put my DS to sleep while he's still awake! I try pat/shush--sometimes it works and sometimes not. And at night, it takes me AGES to finally get him to stay asleep in his crib (first he'll fall asleep nursing, I burp him, put him down and then he wakes up 5 minutes later fussing and burps again. then he falls asleep but might wake up 5 minutes later with hiccups. once those are over, even if he was tired before his eyes are wide open and I end up having to rock, pat, shush and jiggle him to sleep. Then I can't fall asleep until I know he's down for the next few hours at least, so I end up wasting about 45 min of his sleeping time making sure he's sleeping!)
Can anyone help me? I'm dreading going to mikvah and then having to deal with this as well!
Also, what's a good bedtime? Now he's starting to be fed and put to sleep at 10 PM but is there a way to get him there earlier?

cubbie

Thu, Jan 14 2010, 2:32 pm

Yes, with 3 kids (of whom my youngest is almost 3 months and it's been so long since I've had to do anything other than put her in her crib, that it seems it was a lifetime ago), firstly how old is your baby?
I set a bedtime of 8pm at the beginning which I bring down to just before 7pm when the baby knows how to put himself to sleep without of with minimal intervention (I only start later because I have older kids and I want them in bed first so I can give the time to the baby)
So at the beginning bedtime looks like this feed in light room, burp, change diaper and then go to the dark bedroom, swaddle, hold the baby upright and pat the middle of the back like a heartbeat (I don't find the shh helps too much so I don't bother) until I feel my baby's body going limp and relaxing, then I put her in the crib on her side supporting her chest with one hand and patting with the other. I then slowly ease her on to her back and move the tapping onto the chest, a very light heartbeat tap, with the other hand I cover her eyes (without touching them) to block all visual stimulation and put the paci in her mouth and hold it until she starts to suck on it. You then need to get to know your baby, some need the parent to keep patting at the beginning until they are fully asleep (if this is the case pat for a good 10-15 mins after your baby relaxes and starts drifting off) others find the patting over stimulating at this point and are better left alone. I found the patting then got her hyper, so once she was sucking the paci I left the room, often at the beginning she would wake up and cry after 5 minutes so I would go in without picking her up, start patting and cover her eyes until she took the paci and repeat. Some evenings it would take an hour of doing this, some five minutes, but by the time she was a month, I had her going to bed at 7pm and either none or one call back. The most important thing is to remember that noise and crying are not the same thing, if your baby is squirming and making noise leave him, but obviously if he his crying soothe him.

sunny90

Thu, Jan 14 2010, 5:34 pm

My baby is 5 weeks old.
Okay I have a few questions (I'm not PMing you so that other people can benefit from this info):
1. Didn't your baby wake up once the paci fell out of her mouth? my son usually does which is why I don't like using it to put him to sleep.
2. When you put them to sleep that early, how much do they sleep at night? About how often do they wake up? Do they wake up early?
3. How do you make the bedtime earlier?
4. Did you have an approximate schedule? How can you do EASY and have a bedtime if they wake up at a different time each day and eat at different times? For example, one night he'll eat at 3:30 and 6:30, and the next night 2:30, 5:30 and 7:30. so it throws the whole day off and therefore bedtime.
Thanks!

cubbie

Fri, Jan 15 2010, 3:36 am

Ok, I'm going to try to answer all your questions as much as I can, it might be difficult to explain writing though...

1) Yes, sometimes the paci falls out, and they wake up, which at that age isn't a big deal, I just put it back in. In the first couple of months I will put the paci in as many times as is necessary, to help them self-soothe and fall asleep. I don't allow a paci past 4 months and start weaning at 3, but before then I'm not worried about dependency on the paci. To put it back as your baby is going to sleep is fine, the important thing is to make sure that your baby isn't sleeping with it, so when your baby is fully asleep if it hasn't fallen out take it out.

Everything needs to revolve around two 12 hour periods, day and night, and you then fit your routine accordingly. I like the day to start between 6.30-7am so bedtime will be betweem 6.30-7pm.

Let's start with day, I wake my baby at 7am if she hasn't already woken take her out of the crib, into the light, wish her good morning, feed her, change her and put her to "play" until she's ready for a nap (as a newborn I was lucky if she was awake for 45 mins, now at 12 weeks, she'll be awake between 1 and 1 1/2 hours) then take her back to the dark room and put her in bed for a nap, repeat at 10am, 1pm and 4pm. (These are not exact times, plus/minus 15-30 mins) Only after the 4pm feed she gets a shorter nap, I wake her at 6pm to give her a bath before her last feed. I also give the last feed earlier by 6.30 to have her in bed by 7pm. I will always wake her for her meal and never let her sleep straight from a feed - this is one of the most important things, (a) to teach the difference between day and night (b) to make sure they get enough food during the day so they don't need to make up for it at night (c) so they don't associate food with sleep.

Night - as I said for me bedtime is by 7pm (incidentally studies have shown that the most healthy time to a baby/child to go to bed is between 6-8pm, earlier, they wake to early, later they get hyper and overtired and have difficulty falling asleep) I then dreamfeed at 11pm. the dreamfeed is great but most parents give up on it saying their baby doesn't take it, it can take a baby a week to learn how to dreamfeed. So the first few days it might take a while to get it going but it's really worth it. A baby will do one long stretch so if the baby isn't dreamfed, it will learn to make it's long stretch of sleep from say 7pm until sometime in the middle of the night, with the dream feed (which must be done between 10-11pm to be successful) the baby learns to make it's long stretch from 11pm and therefore will sleep "through the night" younger even though they're sleeping the same hours, the sleep patterns are reversed. With the dream feed a baby will wake once (occasionally twice) and that time will get later and later. Any nightime feeds you pick up your baby feed, burp (except the dreamfeed which doesn't need burping) no talking, no eye contact, straight back to bed. Hence learning the difference between day and night. I will return my baby to bed, even if it's 6am, and I'm going to wake her up and feed her an hour later, simply to emphisise what is day and what is night. Obviously a baby who has eaten at 6am isn't hungry at 7am, but I will still wake them then and feed, even if it's a small amount as a top up, to start the day.
I really hope this has helped and makes sense.

sunny90

Fri, Jan 15 2010, 4:03 am

Yes it really helped a lot thanks so much! I put him to sleep last night like you said and only had to pat/shush him back to sleep twice before he fell deeply asleep (although I did have to take him out of the crib and do it the first time because he was so agitated he wouldn't calm down in the crib).
1. How would I make his bedtime earlier? Should I move it up cold turkey or gradually, 1/2 hour every day or something?
2. How long should the naps be? When should the last nap be before bedtime?
3. Would he sleep less at night because I put him to bed earlier?
Thanks! Its just that reading the books is nice but when it comes down to specific questions they don't always have the answers!

shabri

Fri, Jan 15 2010, 4:43 am

To answer your original question, yes I have successfully Baby Whispered 2 kids. By 8 weeks or so they each slept through the night (8pm-8am) with only a dreamfeed.

That said, it can take a good 6 weeks to really get the routine going and teach the baby how to fall asleep.

I recommend getting the big book (baby whisperer answers all of your questions) Its a lot more comprehensive with step by step guides of how to establish the routine, get the kids to sleep etc.

Also babywhisperer.com boards. People there are very helpful.

To answer your other questions. At this age they should be on a 3 hr schedule. Meaning wake up, feed, activity and by 1 1/2 hrs after they woke up--put in for nap. They should prob be on 3 1 1/2 hr naps and maybe a catnap later in the day.

If he is going to bed at 10--I would prob just try to cold turkey him into an earlier bedtime. Meaning tom wake him at 7 or 8 (or whenever you want the day to start) and just start your day. 12 hours later bed for the night--obviously with the naps in between. I think at his age within 3 days he should be on the routine.

sunny90

Fri, Jan 15 2010, 5:38 am

Thank you so much! I need all the info I can get!

sunny90

Sat, Jan 16 2010, 12:55 pm

Okay more questions:

1. What do you do on Shabbos when people/meals get in the way of their usual schedule?
2. Do they need to have an actual time schedule? Like, does it matter if he had a nap for about an hour, woke up because he was hungry and was so tired that he went back to sleep afterwards, as long as he was changed so therefore awake for about 10 min?

And also my original questions:

Quote:

2. How long should the naps be? When should the last nap be before bedtime?
3. Would he sleep less at night because I put him to bed earlier?

Thanks!

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