Eat Play Sleep is a popular baby management plan that shows up in a number of best-selling books (Baby Whisperer, BabyWise, etc.). I’ve steered clear of the Eat Play Sleep conundrum because I don’t like to poke at other baby sleep people. Mostly because I don’t want them to poke back at me. But today I’m going to put in MY big girl panties, because I think we need to talk about the E.A.S.Y. sleep plan. Because E.A.S.Y. is often not easy at all.
Eat Play Sleep
Eat Play sleep or E.A.S.Y. stands for Eat Activity Sleep Your time. In theory the Eat Play Sleep plan ensures your baby will take 2 hour naps so “Your Time” will enable you to prepare fancy Pinterest recipes or finally watch that Pilates video you bought but still haven’t taken the wrapper off yet (don’t lie to me, I know you have one).
Note: If Eat Play Sleep is working gangbusters for you – GREAT! I’m delighted to hear it. Stop reading here. Go read something fun instead. Like my favorite post ever (and sadly I didn’t even WRITE it). If however, you’re having a hard time of it, read on.
There are two key elements to the E.A.S.Y. or Eat Play Sleep method (these are effectively the same thing, so for simplicity I’m going to use E.A.S.Y.):
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- Nursing to sleep is taken off the table. Sure you still need to get your baby to fall asleep (using sushpat, pick up put down, etc.) But you are not going to have any nurse = sleep association problems because nursing to sleep is not allowed.
- It solves(ish) the “what does my baby need?” conundrum because you are now following a scheduled plan. So there is a lot less noodling on things like, “Baby is crying. Is he hungry? Is he tired? Does he have gas? How should I handle this?” If he’s crying and it’s EAT time, you feed him. If he’s crying and it’s SLEEP time you put him to sleep.
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Everybody has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.
-Mike Tyson
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E.A.S.Y. Baby Sleep Not So Easy
Hopefully the problems with the E.A.S.Y. sleep plan are jumping out at you at this point but if not I’ll clarify.
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- You’re going to put your baby to sleep SOMEHOW. Taking “nurse to sleep” off the table doesn’t guarantee that you’ll successfully get baby to sleep some other way. Nursing/feeding a newborn to sleep is so very popular because it’s so very EFFECTIVE. Removing that from your naptime arsenal can make the first few months with a newborn REALLY STRESSFUL.
- Sometimes babies have needs that don’t line up elegantly with the plan! Growth spurts, illness, the fact that it’s a Tuesday – these things can all throw you OFF the plan. If you’re confident working within a plan and maintaining a level of flexibility that’s not a problem. But I see many parents who are rigidly adhering to the plan and/or feeling like a failure because they can’t.
- Trying to schedule and space out your baby’s feedings during the day can have the unintended consequence of having them shift their feedings into the night. Sure some babies can tank up on a big feed and thus successfully nurse every 3-4 hours during the day. Some will just make up for the lost daytime meals by filling in with extra nighttime meals. Which is related to…
- By definition, the Eat Play Sleep sleep plan means that when you put your baby down for a nap, they haven’t eaten in a while. If your E.A.S.Y. napping baby takes short naps all day long, hunger may very well be a culprit. Even if you don’t want to nurse your baby TO sleep you can still feed your baby NEAR sleep to avoid this problem. Unless you’re militantly following the E.A.S.Y. plan in which case I hope you enjoy those 25 minute naps.
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Does Eat Play Sleep work for lots of babies? Sure it does. The truth is that most babies are pretty flexible and you could pick any best-selling baby sleep book (hopefully this one) and if you’re consistent, it’s going to work for you. But if you’ve got a challenging baby, if things are not going so smoothly, if you’re using Eat Play Sleep and you’re struggling with short naps, struggling to get baby to take a nap at all, or have a baby who eats CONSTANTLY all night, I would suggest that Eat Play Sleep may not be as E.A.S.Y. as you hoped. And I’m not alone in this, check out with Dr. Karp has to say about it.
If you had luck (good or bad) with Eat Play Sleep please share your story! Also is anybody else impressed that I managed to work a Mike Tyson quote into a baby sleep blog? I feel like I just won some writing prompt competition with that one. Like instead of quoting Plato or Mr. Rogers I’m going to find the most child-inappropriate people and shoehorn their words of wisdom in to posts from now on. Hmmm…I may actually do that.
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Claire
November 28, 2016 at 11:02 pmomg, yes, props to you for working in the Mike Tyson quote. I’ve just discovered your website and I already want you as my new bff. No, seriously. also, I am currently staying awake way too late to read up on how to get more sleep. ridiculous.
Katie patee
January 11, 2017 at 8:13 pmI need help with my baby who is only napping 30-40 mins . She is 5 months old and we are on day 5 of nap training ! She is doing amazing at night only waking once now for a fees sleeping about 11 hours in her crib! But durning the day she is only able to stay up for about an hour before she is tired and fussing again ! I’m in this cycle I don’t know how to get out off help!
Aline
March 21, 2017 at 3:01 pmHi Alexis,
This is a really good post. When I had my son (9 months ago), a friend gave the the Baby Whisper book as it really helped her go throught the scarry land of first time moms. She figured it would be good for me as well. I have to be frank…I just hated it. I tried to do everything the author said, and pretty much nothing worked for my son. I was getting extremely frustraded because things were not going as the expert said it should go. I then realize that babies are not robots and they are not all the same….and they are also always changing! The only thing predictable about my son was that he was changing every week. The EASY plan never worked for us because he was a carnapper for the first 6 months of his life.
I learned to trust my own skills as a mom and listen less to what other people say.
Thanks for your post!
Kim
July 21, 2017 at 12:40 amHi Alexis, and Hi Aline, Thanks for this post and thanks for sharing.
I’m a new mom to a 7week old now. Prior to birth, I’ve read Gina Ford’s contented baby like a bible, I was so sure I know what to do and expect. After birth, I had difficulty sticking to the schedule despite trying to be flexible about it. Then I tried EWS, since it’s supposed to be more flexible. But it doesn’t work either. It seems more like EWEWES all the time.
I tried putting d bb down early for naps, but I end up taking 1-2hrs EVERY TIME, trying to get him to nap.
It’s really stressful reading about how most people don’t seem to have a problem to such a routine w their babies.
I’ve been trying to be very careful about sleep associations, but at 7weeks now, it just seems to back fire on me all the time. Because the baby doesn’t sleep, I try all means to get him to sleep: nursing, rocking, wearing him around. This is like a vicious cycle I cannot break, and I constantly question what I am doing wrong.
Thanks for letting me know that I’m not the only one feeling this way.
Aline
July 25, 2017 at 10:39 amHi Kim,
I am glad my post helped you. My son is now 1 year old and sleeps MUCH better! I know it is tiring and frustrading, but it will pass. Babies are not robots…. and some babies just don’t sleep as others. My son was a catnapper…. and things started to change after he was 7 months. He only slept through the night close to 12 months… Before that he still needed at least one night feedinh. I also tried to brake sleep associations….but never worked for me. I never left him crying alone. He still needs my help to fall asleep, and I am fine with it. Just do what you have to do to survive. He sleeps through the night now! Try to put him down very drowsy but awake…. but if it doesn’t work, don’t stree over it. Some babies are just more difficult when it comes to sleep. Things will get easier. You will miss this tiring time of your life… I already do. God bless you and your little one 🙂
Brienne
August 10, 2017 at 9:47 pmHi! Please bear with reading my all-to-familiar scenario….
Sleep environment hits all key req’s (dark, white noise, temp, etc). Good bedtime routine, nurse swaddled baby, put her/him in sleeping place, rouse just a bit (as both you and Dr. Karp recommend) and boom…..eye open, cries begin. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Now baby is very mad, overtired, busted out of the swaddle and things aren’t looking good……….this is my life. Nights and naps. Any advice?
Cathryn
September 13, 2017 at 12:00 pmHi, I have a 5 month old and have nothing but good things to say about the EASY approach. I am a single mum and self employed (work from home) and therefore not eligible for a penny in statutory support so had to juggle a newborn and getting back to work within a month of my son being born. The experience would have been miserable without having at least some structure. EASY does this without giving a strict timetable and far from being one-size-fits all helps you work things out according to the temperament of your child and the demands of any given day. I guess I didn’t see it in the same way that the author – of course babies change, but the principle of learning to sleep independently and because he is tired (not just full of milk) seems like a good idea to me. He was sleeping 7 hours through the night from 4 weeks, 9 hours now, and most importantly is happy and thriving. I can get enough work done to pay the bills and still enjoy the very precious time with him. I appreciate it doesn’t work for everyone, and aiming for perfection is setting you up for failure. There are good days and less good days, but the approach has worked out so well for us, I’m so glad I stuck with it.
Danielle Flood
October 2, 2017 at 10:48 amMy first born followed easy routine and slept like a dream it was perfect.
Trying to follow it again because it worked the first time and my 2nd baby will not nap long enough for me to go 3 hours between feeds. So I’m feeding every time he wakes every 2-2.5 hours. He naps between 1-1.5 hours. Mostly 1 hr.
So it’s hard to stretch to 3 hours cycles.
He sleeps well at night with bedtime routine established and sleeping by 7:30. Dreamfeed at 11 and sometimes wake up around 3:30/4:30 (he has slept through a handful of times inconsistently).
He is 8 weeks on Thursday.
For example I fed him today 7:45 then out him to sleep 1.30 mins later he wouldn’t settle so fed him 9:45am (2 hours since last feed) hoping he would take a long nap. He woke an hour later. Fed again 11:15am and then fell asleep again.
Every day is different. Trying to stretch to a cycle of 3 hours but impossible with short naps and I’m feeding sometimes before nap and after in the hope that helps but doesn’t. Thankfully his short naps are ok because he sleeps at night relatively good.
Should I try a different routine to help get the 3 hours cycle and longer naps?
Also when he falls asleep on the breast should we still burp, could that be my problem? Waking up needing to burp? It’s hard to burp a sleeping baby and I don’t want to wake him?
Megan
January 12, 2018 at 10:01 amThis is my baby! I saw you posted a few months ago. My daughter is 4 weeks old and she sleeps well at night for her age wali g every 3-4 hours to feed some nights longer but recently naps have only been 30 minutes-1 hour long. This has only been for the past 3-4 days and getting her to sleep during the day is impossible and she is usually overtired from me trying for so long. What did you find helped you?
Rachel
April 11, 2018 at 3:33 pmI wish I’d read this 5 months ago. So many of my friends swore by Moms on Call. I read the book and was ready to implement right away (and don’t get me wrong – there’s some really good stuff in there about baby care and sleep environment). But also… very few of those friends breastfed and I had a baby who decided to make up for lost time growing in the womb and went from 6 lbs. at birth to 9 lbs. at one month. So… needless to say… he was always hungry and the recommended schedules did not seem to work. One day, he fell asleep just a few minutes before it was time to wake up to feed him and I found my self (GASP) WAKING. A. SLEEPING. BABY… WHO DIDN’T EVEN SLEEP WELL IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! That’s when I gave up on schedules. Felt like a failure, soft mushy push over who couldn’t even discipline her baby into napping at the right time. Ever since, I’ve felt like all my exhaustion stems from that failure. So yeah, just thank you.
Miranda
June 8, 2018 at 1:24 pmEat Play Sleep doesn’t work great for us either. I attribute it to the fact that my baby is an every 1.5 to 2 hour nurser. Pretty sure I have lower breast storage capacity, which means he needs to eat more often to get what he needs. It’s so frustrating that so many books push the every 3 hour eating schedule. This just doesn’t work for some breastfed babies for various reasons. Once I accepted that my son just needed to eat more often, my stress level improved immensely. He takes 30 to 45 minute naps usually, with 1.5 hour nap every so often. However, he does pretty well at night. Bedtime between 6:30 and 7:30, depending on when his last nap of the day ended, wakes between 2 and 3 am to eat, sleeps until 6 or 7a. Recently, he has had some more struggles, but I attribute it to the 4 month sleep regression. My point is, one size does NOT fit all! If you baby isn’t doing well on a 3 hour schedule, then maybe he needs a different schedule. It doesn’t make you a failure! Every baby is different.
Stephanie
October 2, 2018 at 2:39 pmI LOVE your writing style and this article! I have a 3 month old and nurse before naps and then burp and swaddle to where she is usually drowsy but somewhat awake. She fusses for a minute or two and then is out for 2-3 hours (knock on wood) for at least one of her naps per day. Nighttime sleep is usually 11 hours (KNOCK ON WOOD). I appreciate this article and your FANTASTIC writing style – it’s fun!
Jessica
March 4, 2019 at 6:44 pm“By definition, the Eat Play Sleep sleep plan means that when you put your baby down for a nap, they haven’t eaten in a while.”
THIS! thank you!!! all the sleep experts have/nad me so stressed! I was spending 30 minutes trying to soothe and rock my baby to sleep and then it would be time for a feed anyway! Now I offer food before and after naps. My boy doesn’t always eat a lot at every feeding and all we were doing was adding nighttime feeds! Plus, why do we insist on taking the hard way EVERY SINGLE TIME? If biology is saying nurse to soothe and sleep I hate that we fight it so hard in a desperate attempt to get more sleep at night.
Jessica
March 31, 2019 at 3:48 pmThank you! I try my best to follow the EASY system, but my baby often times only naps for 30 minutes which means I should feed her right after when I may have fed her only an hour and a half ago, and she doesn’t seem hungry yet, she just is done napping. I still try to start each day on the EASY plan, but until her naps improve I have to let her play a bit after naps before feeding, and then if when I feed her she falls asleep on the boob so be it! Mommy’s just need to do what works for them and not over stress strict schedules if it isn’t working.