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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But between you and me I hate the whole EASY thing. I totally get the appeal. Lots of people really thrive on schedules and loathe the chaos that newborns bring to the picture. They want to be able to plan their day and have some degree of predictability. They also like to feel like they’re driving the bus vs. just desperately running on the baby hamster wheel. And at a certain point introducing a consistent rhythm is really helpful for everybody. Also new parents are often EXHAUSTED which means their brain is functioning on the same level as a squirrel. So trying to deduce hunger cues, sleepy cues, etc. is a struggle especially when more challenging babies don’t give good (or any) cues. And to be fair there are good elements to this approach, such as the emphasis on putting baby down awake and not keeping baby awake too long. But I see a lot of people getting stuck on the eat play sleep plan and the problem isn’t their implementation or their baby. It’s the plan.
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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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I read about EASY when I had my baby girl, who was (and still is) breastfed. It made sense, but just didn’t work for the frequency in which she needed to be fed. She would wake up (quickly) hungry, so I just modified it to Eat, play, eat, sleep and everything was fine. But seriously, do we really need someone to tell us that our babies need something to eat after they wake up, need to play, may need to eat again and then need a nap? in hindsight it looks less like rocket science and more like common sense, but being a first-time tired momma of a newborn, I couldn’t muster common sense if it bit me on the nipple
I’m right there with you. A few years ago Oprah had this expert on who described how you can figure out EXACTLY what your baby needs if you can train your ear to hear the “cry” just the right way. I rewatched that video 100 times trying to master the technique and frankly never got past, “Well I can DEFINITELY tell he’s crying…”
same here!! but those videos of babies and their “neh” and “ergh” and all that *seemed* so clear at the time!!
So glad to hear I’m not alone on being incapable of differentiating between cries… I was a FTM to triplets (they’re now 2.5 years old), and I felt like a total failure in this regard when they were infants. I remember telling other moms that all the cries sounded the same to me – well, other than I could tell which baby was doing the crying – and they claimed they had no such problems and looked at me with a combination of pity and horror. Then again, that’s a look I get often from many singleton moms 😛 As they got older and got into a set routine, it became a moot point.
I can imagine distinguishing a KIND of cry when there are 2 OTHER babies crying and you are exhausted is pretty much impossible 🙂 Glad to hear you and they all survived that newborn phase.
I am just laughing to myself after reading this post and comments. I have been struggling with this type of scheduling and the Baby Wise book since my daughter was born. It just has not worked out for me and I felt like a failure because my best friend’s son thrived with this routine. Today I just decided to see what would happen if I fed her and then read her a story and put her down for a nap…like magic consistent 2hour naps! Praise the Lord! I can actually have time to myself! OH and that whole crying thing on Oprah, I watched that multiple times and tried to practice it. I’m calling bull. My kid has one cry. “ahhhh” which is not one of the options! After days of frustration, I just called it quits.
We fed on demand and nursed to sleep EVERY SINGLE TIME for the first few months, and I don’t regret a minute of it. She often ate every 2 hrs during the day the first two months, and I can’t imagine FORCING her to wait for another hour or two when she was so tiny and she was hungry!
When I went back to work at 8w, she naturally started spacing her feeds to every 3 hrs at daycare, and it wasn’t until we were starting solids at 6 months and hitting some sleep issues that we switched to more of an eat/play/sleep schedule every 4 hrs.
That has worked great for us for the past 9+ months, though it’s all changing now that she is in the 1 or 2 nap time conundrum. Overall though, I was not an advocate of doing the EASY method when she was an infant – for my kiddo at least, she just needed to eat more often than that, and it was easier for ME to get her to sleep with nursing. Win/win!
Lots of kiddos need to eat more often than that and how great for you that you listened to that instead of forcing her to move to some schedule she wasn’t ready for? Also I’m being a bit unfair by lumping E.A.S.Y. (from the much reviled by ME Babywise) with Eat Play Sleep which is generally a bit more flexible. Your eat, play, eat, sleep compromise is a great one 🙂
The 2->1 nap conundrum will hopefully be a temporary one. Most kids are on a 2 nap schedule till 12-18 months so I would lean towards 2 for now. But clearly your gut instincts are right on so feel free to ignore me completely 😉
My baby just turned 6 months and we were doing the way play sleep schedule and it was working till now. She wakes up and isn’t hungry because she only slept an 1hr to 1hr 1/2 so when I get her up she plays instead and then eats before she goes to sleep. I feel like I messed up somewhere but I don’t know what else to do when she wakes up from shorter naps not hungry.
I have to say that implementing EASY when my little guy turned 2 months saved.my.life. Up until that point, he ate constantly, and every night from 10-3, and then again 4-5 (which meant mommy slept from 3-4 and 5-6:30 before we were up for the day–rough!) After doing EASY, he started eating full meals with some predictability (perhaps if I’d found your blog earlier, I’d have solved it with some other strategy). He still eats regularly at night (2-3 times), but he’s in the 4-month sleep regression, plus making up for lost weight during an illness, so I don’t think that’s why. At 3 months, he was sleeping a 4-hour and 5-hour chunk at night.
I do have to say, though, that I’m very flexible within the routine as you suggested above. I’m still happy to feed him again within wake time as long as I don’t feed to sleep. And often we do feed shortly before a nap again. We have short naps, still, but he’s only 4 months old, and I’m fairly certain it isn’t usually correlated to eating (sometimes he refuses a feed close to naptime, and then wakes up hungry, but I almost always offer.)
I think the key before was that I was doing eat, sleep, play, and then when he got tired playing, I’d feed him and then he’d nap, and it just wasn’t working for us. So the suggestion of EASY saved our sanity, but we remain totally flexible. If he’s clearly tired after a feed, I’ll still put him down, but it gives us a flexible framework in which we can work.
Good for you! Also most 2 month olds are eating constantly 😉 But nursing is exhausting especially when you’re doing it CONSTANTLY so getting some space in there really makes it more manageable. Also most 4 month olds are eating 2-3X a night (hopefully soon you’re down to 2 though!).
That makes me feel so much better! I swear everyone around me is like “my 4-month-old sleeps 57 hours in a row and drifts peacefully off to sleep while I’m drinking with my husband…”
Yes and I eat a 100% paleo diet, you can bounce a quarter off my abs, I just finished War and Peace, I’m growing all our own food in a fully organic backyard garden, my children speak 5 languages, etc. Don’t believe the hype 😉
These posts and replies have just made my day
Yeah, I’m not crazy about EASY either, for all the reasons you mentioned. But now, with kid #2 at 10 months, I’ve realized I’m pretty comfortable just muddling along without any real plan or system at all. 🙂
Most importantly, though, the Mike Tyson quote is fantastic. So fantastic that I’m going to have to see how else I can work it into my day.
I know right? There isn’t much you can say about Mike Tyson that is “fantastic” but he’s definitely given us a great quote there 😉
When my daughter was three or four months old, we began to notice that her mealtimes were happening in intervals of about four hours during the day. If she was crying in between and we tried to feed her to soothe her, it just made her angrier with us. So, after some thought, we decided that her meals were at 7 am, 11 am, 3 pm, and 6 pm. Our thinking was that those are normal human mealtimes, so it made a certain amount of sense. She could eat at night if she needed to, but those were her meals during the day. It improved both her mood and her sleep considerably, as she would lay down with a full belly about an hour after each of those meals. She’s now 11 months old and, if they try to feed her at an odd time during the day (an hour off of those times in either direction, let’s say), she gets furious with them.
We came up with this system by going with our gut. I’m now mildly horrified to discover that this is a BabyWise thing. Broken clock, twice a day, etc.?
whoops – eta – “if they” refers to her daycare ladies. Typing/posting too quickly. Apologies.
RB, can you please elaborate on how you got your baby onto this mealtime schedule. How you dealt with her naps or what you did if she seemed to want to eat at other times? I’ve been feeding my son (3 months) on demand and keeping his wake time within 90 minutes, but I’m starting to wonder if he might do better with more consistency time-wise, rather than just watching the wake time.
Personally I think that BabyWise IS horrifying. But what you did ABSOLUTELY ISN’T! What you DID was listen to what your baby was telling you and letting that lead you. FANTASTIC!
Some babies are snackers. And frankly that is EXHAUSTING. Yours is a “tank up on big meals in a predictable schedule” baby – AWESOME! You figured that out – AWESOME! It’s working for you and you all have a bit of predictability in your day – AWESOME!
I could not imagine putting my daughter on a schedule when she was a newborn. Nursing to sleep was the only way she would sleep. A lifesaver! Plus, I nursed on demand and there was no way I would let her go hungry to stay on a schedule! Now, when she was older and eating solids then I worked on stopping the nurse to sleep association but she was 7+ months by then.
Personally that’s what I would advocate for too. Sure there are some people who really like to feel they are “large and in charge” and that’s OK if it works for everybody involved. But being a bit more relaxed and flexible when they’re newborns and working on more of a schedule when they’re older just generally works better all around 🙂
EASY turned into EAESY for me when my 10 month old was younger and sometimes EAESYESY time. She would wake up from a huge nap and nurse right back to sleep. At this point naps are still a disaster, but at least nighttime sleep is better. Thanks for pointing this out for other new moms.
Naps are still a disaster? Booo 🙁 Usually things are on the upswing at 10 months. Sending you positive thoughts that things turn around soon!
You are rght cuz i dont ike taking naps at home
After 6 weeks the feeding and sleeping on demand wasnt working for us. At that point when I had heard everything will get easier and it didn’t, she was so tired and cranky, I started reading, found the E.A.S.Y plan and implemented it. It saved me and by week 8 I felt I had everything under control. I am one of those parents that needed to follow a schedule just to take the guess work out of my daughters crying. Although she is a fairly easy baby and this just got me thru the rough spot. My daughter is now 8 months and E.A.S.Y doesn’t exactly work anymore for us as she needs to eat before sleeping or else as you said we would have a short nap, and I didn’t go thru sleep training to get a short nap due to hunger!!! It was a good starting place for us just to navigate our way being a new parents.
So glad you found a system that made everything work out for you! “finding a way to navigate as new parents” is probably the #1 challenge for ALL of us coming home with that little 8 lb bundle so congrats on finding your way 🙂
I remember soon after my daughter was born my mom asked me if I was going to put her on a schedule. In my mind I thought yes, but not right away as she was just a newborn, and feeding on demand made much better sense. Other moms kept stressing to me the importance of implementing a schedule right away “I had all my kids on a schedule before 5 weeks.” That is all well and good, but if your newborn has silent reflux, a tiny airway, and has blue periods while feeding, a schedule isn’t going to help. The most she could take at a feeding was 2oz, on average 1 oz, so I was feeding her every 2 hours instead of the 3 to 4 like everyone said would happen.
We fed on demand until she was hospitalized at 11 days old for turning blue 3 times in one feeding. Once her formula was switched, meds prescribed for the silent reflux, and had surgery to open her airway it made such a difference. She was taking in more ounces, which meant she was able to sleep longer. The hospital stay actually “put her on a schedule”, and unbeknownst to me it was an “Eat, Play, Sleep” schedule.
At 4 months naps started to get wonky and short, because as soon as she would wake I would feed her, and then she would play. An hour and a half later I’d put down her down for another nap that would be short and the cycle would start all over again.
I had this “schedule” for her up until a two weeks ago when I snuck on YouTube to watch the above vid with you and Dr Karp discussing EASY. It made so much sense to feed the baby 30 mins prior to the nap. Now, her naps are in the 1hr 15min – 2hr 30min range all because I tweaked the time when I feed her.
You are my hero for including that Mike Tyson quote. It’s actually quite fitting in this sense not to mention hilarious. I challenge you next time to quote Cersei Lannister – she is after all “The Mother of the Year”.
Jonelle,
OMG – phew that is a rough start. I’m thinking back on all the things that made my anxiety level BLOW UP when I had a newborn and I think if baby was turning blue all the time I would have probably fainted. Silent reflux, surgery, eating 1 oz a feeding – my heart goes out to you.
But here you are – things going much better – WOO! So glad that you were able to break out of the “hungry short nap” thing! I loved getting a chance to interview Karp. A) I knew we would pretty much agree on EVERYTHING and B) it’s instant credibility. No longer am I just “wierdo Internet blogger who says this” It’s “Me and Dr. Karp agree that this is a good idea!” Fabulous 🙂
How have I NOT quoted Cersei? Well admittedly probably only 5% of my readers would get the reference;)
But let me say – CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Cersei quote would be amazing… please do. I will be waiting!!
This post could have really saved me 12 months ago. My first and only is about to turn one year. I was given Babywise by three different friends who swore by it. GREAT!…I thought. I thrive on predictability. I really don’t like surprises. And surprise, I got a hard baby. It wasn’t his fault, he had reflux and MSPI and I was frantically trying elimination diets to figure out what was in my bMilk that was hurting him. ANd then frantically cooking everything from scratch because it’s almost impossible to find prepared food without any allergens in them. with the exception of sweets. i needed real food people! i digress. i had so much going on that I CLUNG to the EASY plan even though it was clearly not working for us. Little guy took super short naps. And this was after it took 30 minutes of intense effort convince him to close those adorable eyes, for the love of!
In retrospect, I would have done myself a huge favor by being willing to nurse him to sleep. I was so afraid of having to break that habit later that I spent 5 really hard months trying to figure out why he was so resistant to sleep. The bonus here was that finally after CIO at 5 months and keeping a very consistent schedule, we’ve been able to put him down awake for 2 naps and for a full nights sleep with very rare night wakings. but i’m not sure it was the Easiest way to get here. In fact, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.
So, how in the world do I nurse to sleep the next one and know when to break that sleep association?
I nursed my daughter to sleep until around 6 months. That’s when we transferred her to her own crib and I think it was more important for her to go to sleep “drowsy by awake” like Alex always says. It honestly wasn’t a bad transition, and it was SO nice to be able to nurse her to sleep in the beginning. I loved those cuddle times more than anything. 🙂
thanks Josey! 🙂
1). I wish people would stop giving other people copies of BabyWise. There is so much I loathe about that book and there are SO many better alternatives. Such as….pretty much ANY OTHER BOOK. *sigh*
2) So sorry you had such a challenge. But at least it’s all sorted out now? I hope you are enjoying your rabbit food diet ;P
3) You and everybody else is resisting the use of (insert: nurse to sleep, swaddling, pacifiers, white noise, etc.) because they’re terrified of having to stop later. And my answer is, “There is a time and a place for everything.”
Don’t avoid them when babies are young – EMBRACE. Encourage healthy sleep habits, use age-appropriate soothing, don’t let them stay awake too long. That’s it.
Work on separating nursing from sleeping when they’re 3-4 months old. If you’re using all this great soothing and baby isn’t over tired because you’ve been rocking things since birth – this will not be a huge issue!
But don’t nurse to sleep till their 9 months old as then you will look around and find you have landed squarely in cryitoutsville.
EASY had me feeling like a failure because my son didn’t perform as the book (Sleep Whisperer) said he would. I nursed him to sleep for naps and bedtime until a few weeks after he turned 3 months, and then we switched it up so he’s lose the nurse=sleep association. It went surprisingly well! I don’t think he was developmentally ready to do it prior to 3 months.
WOO HOO! So glad to hear it went surprisingly well 🙂
PS. Why are you making the “somebody farted” face? 😉
Love you more all the time, and I actually laughed out loud at your Mike Tyson quote. 🙂
My son is almost 8 months old, super sweet baby… Goes to sleep on his own for daytime naps (usually 3, lasting 1-1.5hrs each) and at bedtime. We have sort of fallen into a routine of eat-play-sleep, simply because he has great sleepy cues and is almost relieved/delighted to be put down for a nap at times. It is seriously the cutest thing 🙂
However, as soon as he wakes up, he is begging for the boob. Even squeezing a diaper change in there is enough to turn him into screaming red faced angry baby. He is still waking up 1-2 times at night to eat, and I almost wonder if some of it is that he has developed a “wake-eat association”?? Have you ever heard of this? (My other thought is that he is actually hungry cause he scarfs down both sides and then goes back to bed wide awake but falls asleep on his own, so probably less habit and more still a need thing at this point. But he is so insistent and “impatient”–although it isn’t really fair to expect a baby to be patient 🙂 –that I wonder if a little more randomness about when he eats might help.)
I would love to know your thoughts.
Hey Anna,
Cheers and thanks 🙂
Listen most babies wake up cranky. Yours wakes up cranky and hungry. At minimum feeding him when he wakes up gives you a happy/easy way to transition from naps to play time no? And he’s taking nice chunky naps so it doesn’t sound like you have a “hungry nap” issue.
As for the night thing I don’t at all believe he has a wake-eat association. I think he has a night feeding habit. At 8 months if he’s gobbling 2X a night at night he’s probably eating 12+ oz of BM during the night. See the post below (night weaning) for some ideas on how to get out of this. He certainly is capable of a 12 hour fast but that doesn’t mean he might need some gentle nudges to GET there.
I’ve never posted before, but I LOVE this post. I started EASY on the recommendation from my doctor (who has 3 young kids) and I was always frustrated with what to do when she didn’t follow the pattern. It took a while to realize that not all babies will follow the pattern like they say!! It was good to get me to think about when and how I was doing things, but not good because it caused so much eating and sleeping frustration for me. What should I do if 3 hours since her last feed was right before her next nap because her naps were short? I was convinced she was never going to sleep well! She is now 8.5 months and we have a good pattern going… and she is a great sleeper!!!!
PS I’m glad to read this now- if only me with a 3 month old baby could have read this!!!
Thanks for joining in Jen 🙂
“if only me and my 3 month old baby could have read this”
This is pretty much the lament of every tired parent of an older baby in the world 😉
And yes your experience is exactly why EASY trips people up. 20 minute naps, growth spurts, car naps, etc. How do those things work into the plan? Um….they don’t.
Yay a reply! Lol. I neglected to mention that it was this website that helped me keep my sanity and helped me navigate through these sleep problems. My daughter never slept in a swing (we tried- she wouldn’t! Same in the car. I’ve tried… numerous times! She forces herself to stay away if there is action going on). So thank you for that!!!
I meant to say, despite the fact that she never slept in a swing this website helped me figure out what to do and accept the short naps that would eventually end (which they did). Blaming this on baby brain! And I still read your site often!
Thank you for this post! So many people kept pressuring me to put my son (when he was a newborn) on a schedule. Nope, I would say not yet, he’s on demand feeding and I go by his sleep cues. Although at times I would second guess myself especially when I would compare my son to my friend’s baby who was nursing every 3 hours and sleeping through the night before 3 months. Someone also gave me the baby whisperer book. There is some good points to the book, but overall it made me feel like I was a failure. I wish there was more blogs like yours, where you make me feel like what my little guy is going through is normal.
My guy is now 8.5 months and he’s more on a schedule now that he’s eating solids and going longer between nursing. And his naps are down to two a day, before this I have no idea how he could have been on a schedule.
The big thing that I’ve learned and want to stress to new parents reading this, is that every baby is different and do what works for you and your baby.
And don’t compare yourself to other people’s parenting/babies. The truth is that about 1/3 of babies are genuinely EASY and will pretty organically fall into predictable chunky naps and will night wean themselves. Fantastic!
However just because your friend has THAT baby doesn’t mean that what SHE did will work for YOUR baby. Truth is when somebody is blessed with an easy baby pretty much anything they do will work. And if your baby isn’t one of the 33% of “easy babies” you’re going to have to work harder to get to the same place that they got to effortlessly.
This is the fundamental truth and unfairness of becoming a parent 😉
We did EASY, although at the time I didn’t realize there was an actual name/method for what we were doing. The schedule was great and I always knew what my baby was crying for. The challenge we had was getting our little one down for naps. She needed motion and would wake the moment we placed her in her crib. Around the four month mark I ditched the EASY plan and started nursing to sleep and nap time improved dramatically. I guess every kid is different, so to say one way is better than the other is hard for me to weigh in on. I will say that if I could do it over with my baby, I probably wouldn’t do the EASY method with her again. Who doesn’t want to nap after a nice meal?
My husband gets on my case about the fact that I rarely eat a good lunch (I generally much on the kid’s leftovers) and am STARVING by dinner. All of this is a fair point.
However whenever I do eat a good meal I desperately want to take a nap 🙂
We went with EASY starting from around 6 weeks or so. I was flexible with it, and I think it worked really well for us. It wasn’t a clock schedule, more based on awake time. One reason I think it helped is that if my daughter ate when she woke, she nursed really well and deeply (not conking out after a few sips). When I had been nursing her to sleep, she didn’t sleep any longer (or she took a nursing nap) and I still wasn’t sure hunger wasn’t an issue because she didn’t take in very much sometimes before she drifted off. Or she would wake up as soon as I shifted her and I was caught trying to decide whether to nurse her more (which would turn into a nursing nap) or try to settle her to sleep another way.
When she went to two naps around 6 months it became EAS, EAEAS, EAEAS but she didn’t fall asleep while nursing anymore.
I know that the sleep experts think that for sleep associations the bigger issue is making sure they are at least a little awake when you put them down. But how do you deal with not nursing much when they are sleepy? Would you then be doing EAES all day?
Oh no Francesca – you got a sad little purple identicon. I hope that’s not really what you look like 🙂
I’m not really sure what you are asking? If you nurse a baby when they are sleepy they’re almost guaranteed to fall asleep. Some people definitely do EAES all day. When they’re younger this isn’t a problem. When they get older you can modify this so that when you put them down after nursing you wake them up just a little so they aren’t FULLY asleep. Not sure if that answers your question?
At some point during the 4th trimester someone told me about eat, play sleep (ha ha, forget the Y!). I started doing that with our baby, but that was literally the extent of it–no schedules or anything like that. I have to admit, it really helped me to understand what my baby needed, which may sound counterintuitive. It also kept me sane and gave a rhythm to what felt like a rhythm-less existence! We were always flexible with it. At 6.5 months, we are still doing eat-play-sleep (with longer naps that leave more Y time).
Around 4 or 5 months I picked up the baby whisperer and was dumbfounded by what she outlined as the proper feeding and nap lengths on EASY. My baby certainly wasn’t doing that!
I completely agree that EASY should NOT be used during the 4th trimester. You need to be flexible with a “schedule” if you use one at all. All babies are different, so while a very modified EASY worked for my baby, it might not work for others. And you will have to be prepared to drop EASY sometime during the 2nd half of the first year!
The first few months of babydom does feel really hamster wheelie and I totally get your desire to have a bit of predictability. And it definitely works for some kids so good for you!
One of the reasons I steer clear of “nursing stuff” is not that I’m not pro-nursing or don’t know enough about it. It’s because it’s SOOO variable that anything you write is going to make 50% of the readers feel like they’re doing it wrong 😛
We have always used EASY and we like it. That said, we are super flexible and account for illness, growth spurts, etc. If baby girl wants to eat an hour after she just ate, more power to her! We just take a break from A time for a bottle. If she seems to be having a hungry day, we offer extra food before the nap.
We never fed to sleep and instead used shhhh pat and pick up/put down. These worked for us, but both obviously depend on the child. You do what works for you and make changes if something stops working.
I love the idea of a flexible routine – a framework to give your day some structure so everyone knows what to expect – but you must stay flexible. Use your head and alter the plan based on the situation. You can’t print out the schedule from the book and just do it blindly, because you’ll end up with a very unhappy family. Also, if you are type A like me, you can’t hold the on-paper times as the perfect schedule or you’ll just beat yourself up. You have to see it as a list of suggestions that you can use to build your own daily routine that works for you. When I keep all that in mind a balance structure with thinking on my feet, everything goes smoothly.
Oooohh…a type A parent espousing flexibility! Are you really type A or just pretending 😉
No seriously how great for you that you can work with the best of both – schedule and flexibility. Finding that balance is SOOOO hard so congrats!
Also, to everyone who felt like a failure for not following a schedule, I run in a circle of friends who think I am a questionable mom for following a routine, having set naps that take place in a crib, and feeding my daughter using bottles. I ignore them, if YOU are happy, BABY is happy and your PARTNER is happy, then you are NOT a failure!!!
What the what?
I live in hippie haven and even here nobody would give you the hairy eyeball for bottle feeding, crib sleeping, or having a bit of predictability. Who are these people you are running with?
I think it’s awesome that you are feeding your baby in a way that works for all involved, that she’s napping in a crib (seriously most of my readers are JEALOUS) and has a good routine. If your friends are giving you the hairy eyeball you can tell them I said so 😉
I put my daughter on EASY after 13 days! My mum and my sister were pretty insistent on it, and also horrified that I co-slept for those first couple of weeks. I am so pleased to hear that EASY doesn’t work for all babies from my NUMBER ONE baby sleep expert! Yeah it worked great for my sister and her baby was sleeping through by 8 weeks. Mine is coming up to 7 months and we still have 1 – 2 feeds a night (we are night weaning which is stress free so far!). She just took longer – although I was militant about EASY. AND….and I felt like a complete failure. The pressure from family not just to a routine, but to have a routine that just like it had for my sister, was overwhelming, and definitely a large contributing factor to my PPD. In fact reading this article has lifted a weight off my shoulders. Thank you so much, Alexis!
Phew! That’s a lot of family pressure. As somebody who gives advice online I can totally relate to the desire to give somebody advice. But here’s what I’ve learned:
1) Was that advice asked for? Don’t give advice to somebody who hasn’t asked for it! (Note: I learned this the hard way but for real, it’s a big lesson).
2) Are you helping or hurting with your advice? If you’re totally freaking somebody out then it’s time to shut up about it! Sometimes the best advice is to shut up, make them a hot meal, and leave well enough alone.
Hmmm….I think I see a post here. “The Best Advice for Advice Giving Family.”
Did NOT work for me! I know some who have found it to be very successful, and I tried it for about a month when baby was a newborn and then I gave up because the stress of trying to make it work was to much. We now have a schedule of our own (baby is 9 months), not copying anyone else’s, and it works great for us. Baby was pretty challenging from the start, but it’s much better now. For a while I thought I was the only one who failed at that schedule.
Can I just say – 9 month olds are the BEST. Seriously my absolute favorite age. So glad to hear things are better now.
I also struggled and felt like a total failure with these books. And it is super stressful. Frankly I think that NO baby books should cause people stress and anxiety. Having a newborn baby is stressful enough without books piling in on that!
It didn’t work for us. Baby likes to take a nap on a full tank, and he never took the miracle long naps she talked about. We mostly did Eat-Sleep-Activity-Eat ad nauseam. We ended up with a very hungry, cranky baby trying to abide by those rules.
Lyndsey – most babies like to nap on a full tank. Most grown ups do too 😉
My LO was born at 37 weeks and was a very very sleepy baby for the first 2 months. I had heard of EASY and wanted to use the method loosely while still feeding on demand, etc. Only problem was LO literally only ate and slept around the clock! He fell asleep every time he ate and would sleep until the next feeding. I held him for all naps and let him sleep on me at night. (Sidebar I had problems with oversupply and I think baby had reflux which is most likely why he slept so much better on me, slightly upright). So EASY actually made me feel a little anxious b/c my baby wasn’t playing!!! Around 2 months I started making efforts to put him down for naps and separate sleeping and eating. I don’t use a feeding scheule but I have found 90 minutes to be the sweet spot for awake time. Although my baby is 4mos now and can go longer between feedings I do try and tank him up during the day and feed about 15-30 minutes before naps. So he ends up eating around every 2.5hrs but can nap for 1.5-3hrs, so I’m in no rush to space his feedings further at the risk of shorter naps!
So much great stuff going on here! Also if he has reflux then kudos for not spacing feeds out quite so much (often refluxing kids do better snacking vs. eating a mammoth meal). Lots of newborns do sleep constantly so I get why you might be a little worried about the lack of “A” time. But as you see – things start to stretch out organically on their own. Sounds like you’re definitely rocking now though – kudos!
Thanks, Alexis! Of course LO stopped long naps after I bragged about him here. We’re on the other side of the 4mo regression and night sleep has actually improved but naps have been cut to 20-45 mins. But on the upside that did give me the courage to switch to the crib for naps! No way I would’ve rocked the 3hr nap boat! Still not ready to lose the swing at night…Baby steps 🙂
I first learned about the EASY cycle in Babywise when my daughter was about 2 weeks old. I promptly wanted to chuck the book across the room because I knew there was no way I could make my newborn eat according to any sort of routine and schedule. (Oddly enough, this was before I heard about all of the negativity associated with Babywise. I felt like a mommy instinct champ when I found out though!) I went right along nursing on demand and soothing to sleep when she showed tired signs. Oddly enough though, around 6 weeks old, she kind of fell into an EASY routine on her own. This was in no way set to any sort of time schedule, but she always wanted to eat when she woke up and would show tired signs before she showed signs of being hungry again. I will say though, that this was not some magical fix for sleeping long periods of time though. She was a short napper until about 5 months old. Moral of the story, we fed her when she was hungry, we put her to sleep when she was tired, and followed the “rules” laid out here, and eventually we had a baby that fell into a regular, predictable nap schedule on her own without us forcing one on her. (None of this was nearly as easy as I just made it sound, but we do finally have a good sleeper!)
mommy instinct champ
I’m loving this. Maybe we could make a badge of honor (literally) because listening to your own instincts when a best-selling (yet horrible) book says otherwise deserves recognition!
Hey! I just wanted to tell you….you rock! I love reading all your wisdom on this site which you pair up with your hilariousness…if that is even a word. Functioning at the level of a squirrel, haa yup that about sums it all up! I totally agree with what you are saying here as none of my kids were EASY babies. And my 3rd is proving to be the biggest challenge of my life. But I want to say thank you so much for the advice you have shared on here and for keeping it real!
Wow – thanks KP 🙂
Oh yeah, and the Mike Tyson quote…..NicE!!!!
My dd fell into a perfect EASY routine all by herself when she was about 2 months old, and I must say that it was glorious! Finally, there was predictibility, there was structure, there was an end to the madness. Aaand then a few days later it stopped! Luckily, I was able to keep the play-sleep consistent (following your sleep guide) and continued to nurse on demand. She’s 8 months old now and much more predictible 🙂
Speaking of predictibility, my dd decided to throw a curve ball at me tonight by refusing her 3rd and final nap. They’ve been getting shorter lately, but I used to be able to get her take at least a 15 minute cat nap to get her to bedtime. And I REALLY tried tonight(over an hour of swing, swaddle, and white noise). I read one of your older articles about moving bedtime up when this happens, but I’m a little confused on how to do that. Should I slowly move it up, or do it right away? Secondly, If she already sleeps 10-11 hrs at night, will moving her bedtime up a couple of hours mean she’s going to wake up earlier, or instead sleep 12-13 hrs straight? I compromised tonight and moved her bedtime up by 1 hour, but she was still awake for 4 hours straight and wasn’t too happy about it. I felt terrible, but I didn’t want to chance having her think it was just another nap and then not sleep through the night. I’ve been chanting “please don’t wake up” in my head for the last 3 hours-I should probably be sleeping!
Cathy,
I would use the “nap o desperation” trick of taking her for a stroller walk, car ride, baby wearing, etc. Most babies still need a 3rd nap at this age but frustratingly won’t take one so you sort of need to force it. Then you inch bedtime up a bit. will it make her night longer? Possibly. It may go from 10 -> 11 hours. No guarantees there sadly. But it’s better than having her awake way too long and bedtime becomes a misery for all involved 🙁
Alexis,
You have to be the most generous woman ever, responding to all of us so kindly and with humor. Just wanted to send some appreciation into the cyberspace. Thank you
Hmmm . . . is this the reason my 3 month old takes 30 minute naps? We fell into eat-play-sleep before I knew it was a thing because even from the beginning, he was not a baby who could be nursed to sleep (which is its own kind of hard, believe me).
In my experience, eat-play-sleep creates an association of being fed upon waking up.
Lately, I’ve been trying to top him off before a nap, but it has rarely resulted in lengthening the naps. We swaddle, use white noise, and use black out curtains. He still takes 5 short naps a day and wakes up to eat 3 times during the night (7-7). Sigh.
We are experiencing the same as you. I didn’t even realize we we’re in an EASY routine until reading this. Now I’m wondering like you if my little girls short naps are due to being hungry. We also have a problem with her bedtime being between 2-4am, maybe adding an extra feed before naps will help. I’m not sure how to change this schedule either since my baby is starved when she wakes up.
Yeah, after reading this post, I think I should make an effort to shorten the time between eating and sleeping. He is so awake and happy after he eats that it seems like the perfect time to play, but like others mentioned, we can probably change from EAS (I have never had the Y!) to aEaS by splitting up of the activity time with a feed. The challenge here, though, is how can you find time to run any errands with the baby during the day? It’s hard enough as it is with 90 minute wake times. You’re basically held captive if you plan to be home during the feedings and the sleeping time. (My baby hates his stroller, is totally alert when I take him outside in the Ergo or Moby wrap, and I don’t drive, so a car seat nap is out.)
So, after reading this post I changed our schedule for a few days. Now I know that hunger is NOT the reason for my son’s mini naps. Was good to rule it out, though.
What do you do if the problem is just overtiredness? I’m strict with his wake times, I do all of the swaddle/white noise/etc stuff. I’m giving him every opportunity to sleep and he’s just not taking it. Is there a point where you should just give up and not worry about sleep so much?
Hey Erica! I’ve been playing around with our schedule too and I haven’t noticed a difference in my little girls naps by adding in a feed before naps. I think for both of our little ones there’s something to remember: maybe they just aren’t developmentally ready for longer naps. It can take some babies up to 6 months before they consolidate naps, and some babies are always cat nappers (hopefully you and I have babies that won’t do that). For me, just adjusting my expectations has helped me cope better, and lets face it, coping is one of the most important things for us. That and sleep, and a good cup of coffee when we don’t get sleep. 😉
Something for you to look at: is your baby overtired? Maybe, but maybe not. How many hours of sleep total is he getting a day? Those cat naps plus nighttime sleep might be adding up to what he needs so trying to get him to sleep more is a loosing battle for now and will just frustrate everyone. If you can’t get him to sleep go do something else, even if its just to get your mind off of it and distract both of you for a while. Try putting him in a carrier and wearing him while you talk on the phone to a friend or go for a walk. Run an errand with him. Will he miss a nap? Yeah. But it’s ok and it’s not the end of the world. I know I’m afraid of the cranky baby in public conundrum but some good advice I got from Alexis is screw it, who cares what people think. So he’s cranky and fussy, he would be at home too but at least this way you can get out of the house a little. Even if its just to go to a coffee shop and eat a scone or something. Maybe you’re not afraid of the fussy baby thing like me, but on making him more over tired then he already is (if he is in the first place), I worry about that too. Here’s the thing: creating a sleep deficit isn’t such a bad thing, as long as it’s not happening multiple times a day, everyday. You might be suprised what happens, or it will be not so succseful and you’ll know what to do different next time. I have a hard time going out too, but yesterday we just did it and (kindof) threw caution to the wind. I made sure to let my little girl get her first nap of the day and had the diaper bag packed and was ready to go myself when she woke up. I fed her, changed her, then we left. Just remember if he gets too fussy or its too much for you to handle, just go home. If your grocery cart is full, just grab a worker and tell them you can’t put it all back yourself and go. I’m hoping the more we venture out the better we’ll get at it, and I think the same is true for you. It’s ok to skip a nap here and there, try it and see what happens. It’s ok to experiment. I know it’s scary but just try it out. If its too early for your son and he’s not ready yet, that’s ok. Try again in a week and see then. You’de be surprised at how much they change in a week or two.
Also, could he be overtired? Yes. And playing around with the amount if time he’s awake is a good idea. Have you tried shortening it yet? Also cutting out cat naps while my daughter ate helped get her real naps on track better. Could that help for you?
What have you tried and what’s worked and what hasn’t? We can work on this together because we have some of the same issues with similar aged babies.
Also, one last thing. Getting out of the house and feeling like an actual real living human being and not a hostage is so liberating. Even if its a disaster I can say I tried. I feel like to be a good mom I need to be happy and if that means strapping my baby in a carrier and going to the mall for an hour and she misses a nap is a worthwhile exchange. It lets my baby get exposed to new things and helps me feel less isolated. Sometimes I feel and sound like a hostage in a crisis situation, traumatized and frantic. I can laugh about it, but I’ll tell you it’s a lot more funny when I’ve gotten good sleep. Wait… What’s that again? Hahaha! Anyway, keep sharing and somewhere along the way things will improve. Think about it this way: we know one day things will be better, kids grow up and your son and my daughter will be 5 years old and non if this will matter anymore. Lol 🙂
Hi Amy,
Maybe our babies are similar! Is your daughter extremely alert? From the time he was born, people always told be how unusually alert he seemed. He’s my first, so I didn’t know any better, but he is and was constantly in motion and he has never been a mellow baby. I don’t think that means he needs to sleep any less, but maybe it is harder for him to relax compared to my friends’ babies who were sleeping through the night at 5 weeks…
Alexis, is there a way I can give Amy my email address without sharing it with the world?
Anyway, thanks for the support, Amy. I am pretty certain he’s overtired. Lately he has only been getting 10 hours of sleep a day and he’s been waking up 4-6 times per night. He was much better just a couple weeks ago.
I do try to go out with him almost every day. He occasionally falls asleep in his Ergo or Moby wrap. But when he doesn’t, I feel guilty for disrupting his nap schedule for the day. I don’t think he particularly likes going outside; he just tolerates it. So I feel selfish for taking him out every day. I’m also a little concerned about making a scene somewhere, but like you said, if he starts crying, I would just head home so it wouldn’t be a big deal.
This site is the only one that doesn’t make you feel like a horrible mother for having a catnapping baby. So, I really appreciate that, Alexis! Still, I don’t know if it is just my son’s nature to take 30 minute naps. If I sleep with him for a nap, he can often go for 1-2 hours, but he can’t make those sleep transitions by himself. I cannot sleep with him for every nap so I try to do it no more than once a day. It is very interesting to sleep with him because I can really see how he is cycling in and out of light sleep. He often stirs or even makes a small cry or moan. I pull him a little closer (he sleeps propped up on my arm) and his face relaxes and he goes right back to sleep. Sometimes he will actually start to cry and I pop the pacifier in quickly. He’ll suck for 10 seconds, spit it out, and go back to a deeper sleep.
Hey Erica, So I can’t comment on your response for some reason so I thought we could connect over facebook. (This is in response to your comment from April 19th). Troublesome tots has a facebook page, if you go there and “like” it we can find each other there. Then exchange info. How does that sound? I’ll post a comment on the page so you can find me. 🙂 I’ll put your name in it so you know I’m the one you’re looking for. Hmmm, the nerd in me could make that into something from star wars, but I digress.
I have some ideas for you. Not sure what will work and what won’t but if nothing else we can just support each other, ok? 🙂 Talk to you soon!
Hi Amy and Erica,
I would love to know how you solved the problems with your babies because I feel SOOO identified with what you are saying!!!!! My baby is 3 months old now. He is super alert and a champion cat napper. He use to nurse to sleep till he was 2 months old and he still does during the night but he just doesn’t for naps. He stays awake for 1.5 h but he gets cranky and fussy between 30 min to an hour before sleeping. During that time I hold him and rock, put him down in the swing awake and he falls sleep for 30 min. We repeat this for 5-6 times a day and it’s exhausting 🙁 He seems to wake up hungry so we end up doing EAS by accident. I have tried to nurse him closer to sleep but it doesn’t seem to help. He hates being worn and his stroller so going out is a BIG challenge. Any advice?
My baby girl just turned 3 months old last week, and I started sleep training her at 2 months. Our pediatrician was adamant we not co-sleep, so I bought a bedside co-sleeper and began swaddling her again. I found it unnecessary to swaddle her after 2 weeks old since I was holding her and patting her back to sleep anyways. My husband hated her being “confined,” but I definitely saw how the swaddle helped to comfort her. I am a swaddle convert! Anyhow, I digress. I read “The Baby Whisperer” and definitely disagreed with some things; but I tried the E.A.S.Y. method to put her to bed. It worked amazingly after only 1 night! The shush-pat was awesome.
Then, I found myself getting paranoid that we weren’t keeping to the E.A.S.Y. routine and got anxious trying to keep her “on track.” I gave it up after 2 weeks. She was starting to nap infrequently. Breastfed babies want to feed every 2-3 hours! This was not working for us anymore since a hungry/sleepy baby is a cranky one. So putting her down for her nap was tiresome, especially when she was sleepy and also hungry! She would fall asleep anyways but be up after 15-20 minutes wailing. I found that she slept better and longer on a full stomach.
Now comes the ACTIVITY part. The “fail” that applies here is tummy time was not very practical when my little girl was on a full stomach. I have a good bedtime and naptime routine set so she gets good sleep and is a happy baby. And everyone knows, a happy baby is a good day! Hence, I did appreciate the E.A.S.Y. method in theory; but it was also a “fail” for us.
This is a great story – thanks for sharing! Really relate-able because I think most of us use books as a framework for “what we should be doing” and then have to adjust when things aren’t working quite according to plan.
I didn’t put this in the post but I’m also not a fan of the term “activity” because it implies that you need to be doing some sort of baby-training. When maybe it means putting baby in the Ergo while you have coffee with a friend or hit Costco. So I don’t think you FAILED at all 🙂
Hi there!
Holy cow! You took one of my worries right out of my head! I started an EASY routine with my 6 week old son. As a FTM, I feel clueless and was looking for some kind of routine for my “touchy” baby. I was very confused about how to fit in tummy time, and diaper changes for that matter, because both are considered part of the activity time. Thanks for sharing your perspective . . Now I don’t feel alone in my questioning of the method!
I love this site so much! It definitely helps to know that there is no one perfect way and I am ok just doing what works for my baby. Thanks, Alexis!
When my baby was a newborn, I tried to start an EASY routine and was very frustrated when it didn’t work and she never slept more than 45 minutes and wanted to eat all day. Finally, I gave up on it and followed a lot of the advice on this site, and things got better or at least I wasn’t as stressed about it! Now, she is 4.5 months old and we do have a rough schedule, but it is more like AEAS. When she wakes up, we play for 30-45 min, then eat when she starts to fuss, then play for another 30-45 min, then take a nap. She is usually awake 1.5-2 hrs at a time now and sleeps usually 45 min still but sometimes 1.5 hrs.
Trying to follow EASY was just frustrating and stressful for me early on, and it worked better just to try to get her to sleep after a short awake time. The information on this site was great and extremely helpful. She is still napping in the swing as I type…
Aw….thanks 🙂 Yeah AEAS or EAES are far less memorable but far more realistic “frameworks” for your organizing your baby time. So glad to hear that you are less stressed. And cheers 🙂
Hm actually I can’t imagine life WITHOUT EASY as a guide. I can be really neurotic and indecisive so knowing that my baby is probably hungry after 2.5-3 hours, or needs to sleep about 20min after he has had a feed, is really a life saver for me, instead of having to guess! (baby no. 2 is 3mths old now)
Even if baby wakes way too early before the next feed, I try my best to put him back to bed, which thankfully, is successful at least half the time. When it isn’t I take him out on the stroller for a breath of fresh air/ buy some cupcakes to make myself happy, because it at least keeps him (and me!) sane and quiet till the next feed! This is because I know he isn’t hungry yet…
I think EASY can work if you aren’t too rigid about timing and just use it as a general rule to guide what to do for your baby:)
Hey Michelle,
That’s great! I’m so happy to hear that you found something that really worked for you. Because honestly that’s what we’re ALL trying to do (easy in theory right?).
Cheers 🙂
I very briefly tried EASY, like I did every other system out there, in the sheer desperation that can sometimes be the land of newborn. Ultimately what I found most helpful (because my daughter isn’t a strong signaler) were the smartphone apps that let you easily record when your baby is eating, has slept etc…etc…With those I was able to learn how often baby was hungry and be more precise about her drowsy window, so that I could anticipate. So after watching baby closely for a couple days and obsessively recording everything in my “babyconnect” I knew to the minute when she would next get sleepy, and if it had been a while since the last feed I could offer the boob (which she never turns down!) and tank her up a bit pre-nap…It also made it easier to put her down drowsy but awake because baby goes from happy play to cranky yawning in the time it takes me to blink. hAnyway, if you’re as obsessed with data as I am and want to feel some illusion of control, I think the apps that are out there are super helpful.
Question: What do the apps do that a paper record don’t? I’m not trying to be a jerk I’m honestly curious!
Lots of peeps are using these. Although I’ve run into problems when we do sleep consults because nothing is sharable so they have to type it all up in email for me 😛
i am obsessed with total baby app. i love that it shows me a graph of his sleep so i can see how his sleep is improving or not, when he takes naps, when he took his last nap at a glance, how much he’s eaten that day at a glance. and you dont have to remember things. it has a timer so once you start nursing, turn on, then when done turn off, and it records how long and on what boob you nursed. same for sleep. my only issue is that it doesnt divide day sleep and night sleep properly. it goes from midnight to midnight.
Haha 🙂 I found it easier to press a button on my phone than gather paper and pen and run to check the clock; I always had the info w me wherever I was; the machine calculated intervals for me (when I was really tired, I could never be sure I was adding and subtracting correctly); I can share the info at the press of a button; other caregivers (ie: Dad or Grandma) could input data to the same account – so, for example, once back at work I could instantly see how much I needed to pump, or know if I was coming home to a bad napping day; Data tracking! Without needing to pore through a binder full of paper I can see patterns (which, yes, for the first three months was no pattern, but hey, hope springs eternal) – mostly it meant not having to rely on my memory. Baby is crying? Why? Oh, the app says she woke up 1hr15mn ago and ate 2hrs ago – she’s tired AND hungry – duh. 🙂
OK so I need to some research or I’ll sound like one of those, “Tell me about this technology thingibob you youngins are using these days?” people. It’ll be like when I try to explain to MY children how Mommy grew up listening to these disks that made music.
Which apps are the cool moms using? Babyconnect? What else?
I use iBabyLog, which is not the fanciest, but free. I use it for tracking feeds and sleeps, but you can track a million different things. I love seeing the bar graph of total sleep per week. Sometimes one bad day will make you feel like everything’s hopeless, but if you look at the weekly totals, you can put it in perspective. I also like that I can record notes, so I write the time my son goes down for a nap. That way I can see compare the out down time with the actual falling asleep time.
I was at a loss at what to do for awhile. My wonderful 2 month sleeper who slept through the night and had x3-4 2 hour naps a day turned monsterous at 3 months. Would only sleep for about 90 mins at a time throughout the night, naps turned into 45mins maximums and most of the time there was flat out refusal for naps unless one was willing to go to war for 45-1 hour to get her to sleep….longer than the nap itself….it didn’t feel even worth it.
So I tried the E.A.S.Y plan as recommended by a few friends who said “it was amazing” Tried it for three weeks with little or no success over what we had been doing….our naps have gotten worse…now maybe 30 mins, but granted there is little struggle to get her down. Nights are a little better….but I’m ready for a change! I also would often find that yes, I would have to feed her prior to a nap because sometimes I knew she was hungry eventhough “it wasn’t eat time yet”….I agree that this plan fails if not flexible to still listen to your babies needs.
Hey Shannon,
Well it sounds really sleep regressiony. Given her age I would definitely work with MORE soothing (dialing up on whatever you are already doing). Also she may need help blocking out stimulation at naptime (super dark room + LOUD white noise). Sometimes babies have a harder time as they get a little older. Why? Because let’s face it – babies are all but blind and deaf when they’re born. As they get older they actually see stuff. Which seems cool but it can cause them to get overwhelmed and overstimulated. So it’s not uncommon for some babies to sleep in almost a sensory deprivation chamber a la swaddle, dark, white noise.
Hope that helps!
I have tried so hard for so long to get my baby (now 5.5 months) onto ANY kind of schedule. The problem I keep coming up against is short napping! Sometimes 20mins, sometimes 40, occasionally (very occasionally) 1 to 1.5hrs. Inconsistant naps makes it difficult to implement a routine like EASY let alone a solid timed schedule.
She goes to sleep at 7.30 – 8pm each night and wakes between 6.30 and 8.30. I put her down awake but drowsy, she can often resettle herself through the night and we have a mini nap time routine with all the must haves (swaddle, white noise, swing, dark room etc)so I don’t understand why she wont take longer naps. How long her nap is then determines how long she stays up – a 20 min nap and she’ll be tired in 45min to 1hr, 40 mins in 1.5hrs, and a big nap she can go up to 2.5hrs before she is sleepy again – or not depending on her mood.
I have tried sticking to schedules no matter how long she sleeps for or how tired she is between naps but it still doesn’t work. I have tried just following her cues but the times are still so varied day to day.
So does anyone have any idea on how to get a short inconsistent napper onto a good schedule that will ultimately improve naps? Or does it just magically happen overnight once they turn 6 months as I have heard some people say? (fingers crossed on that one but HIGHLY sceptical!)
Hi, a mama of an inconsistent napper here as well. The same thing – different times, different length, different awake periods, etc. I quickly gave up the idea of any sort of schedule. It’s impossible to have one if one day your baby wakes up at 7, gets sleepy at 830 and sleeps for 20 minutes and the next day baby wakes up at 630, is sleepy at 730 and will sleep for 60 minutes. It got better after 6 months because his window of wakefulness got longer and he could go 2-2,5 hours between naps even if the nap was shorter. Until then I just went with his signs of tiredness (based on how long his previous nap was) and made sure he napped when he needed to.
I know it would bring some predictability into your life but don’t feel like you need to be on a schedule because everyone else is. I can imagine it probably makes you feel like you failed when you haven’t, these babies simply cannot be put on a schedule. I just made sure my boy napped when he needed to even if it meant 5 naps one day and 3 the next. The overall goal is not to overtire him and that’s what I sticked to. Hope it gets better after 6 months for you too!
I was going to respond but Katka did so eloquently there isn’t much more to say.
I have a 6.5 month old who only would take 35 minute nap every time, up to 5 a day. One day I was taking care of my grandfather and needed more time to tend to him when she woke up. So I went up there and rocked her crib. I almost gave up after 10 minutes but after 15 full minutes she actually went back to sleep for an hour! When she woke up she didn’t scream and cry for once because she was finally rested after a nap. Now I try it all the time and it works maybe 1/3 of the time and we are down to 2-3 naps/ day. Not sure if this is a good technique or is reinforcing her need for me to help her get back to sleep, or if it would work for anyone else but after 3+ months of 35 minute naps, I’ll take it
For once I don’t have a question! I just wanted to say how funny and wonderful this post is. And to thank you for your last answer to my question. I so appreciate your approach to all of this–clear facts, common sense, and empathy.
I lied! I do have a question! I wrote to you previously about early morning wakings. The long and short of it is we’ve been sticking to our guns and not going to our 7.5 mo old until 530 in the morning. NO COSLEEPING to get him to sleep longer. Things have improved, but there are still nights when the kid wakes at 4 and cries for an hour and a half straight.
Is this normal or totally damaging his psyche?
I’m worried it’s because we’re not as strict about naptime. He’s still nursing down for naps. I cosleep with him for his first nap, which lasts about 2 hours, but only because I’m constantly nursing him back down throughout the nap. The next two naps (approx 3 hours between) I nurse him for 15 minutes and try to put him down in the crib. He usually sleeps another 15-25 minutes (not always for the last nap). Basically, I’m a human pacifier during the day. Two big issues with this:
1. I think the boob/sleep association at naptime is bleeding into the early mornings.
2. Not that I need him to be on an EASY schedule (the worst), but the nursing for naps is messing with him getting in a reasonable feeding groove. Because the nap nursing isnt a full meal, he cant go another 3 hours after without eating, but because he’s gotten a snack, he doesnt eat a full meal. So I’m feeding him every 15-2 hours. It’s exhausting and it feels wrong.
Also, I’m getting maybe 20 minutes to myself throughout the day. And I don’t know how I’m going to go back to work.
Can you tell I’m on the verge of tears while I write this?
I am curious about Alexis’ answer to your first question because that’s what I figured out as well. We successfully ditched the paci for night and baby goes to sleep on his own beautifully. Sometimes he giggles before falling asleep!
But. If he wakes up after 5am in the morning he will often not go back to sleep on his own. Nursing him to sleep doesn’t work anymore and the only thing that works is to take him to bed with me and plug him up with the paci, which is how he falls asleep for naps. So I too kinda think that after 5 am it’s not night sleep for him anymore but day sleep and he needs the nap routine (paci+me). I am planning to tackle drowsy but awake for naps soon and I’m curious if it will ultimately improve the 5 am wakings.
BTW how is the big post on naps coming along Alexis? 😀
Hi Katka,
Alexis posted a great answer to my early morning question under the Dr. Karp pt. 2 post. Basically, cosleeping, soothing or feeding before 530 were all causing our guy to wake up more. We resolved to not go to him before 530 NO MATTER WHAT and to not cosleep at 530. I dont know if he thinks of 530 as day or night, so I’m avoiding the confusion all together. It’s a long, hard road, but it’s working better than anything else. His nighttime wakings are getting better, though they still happen here and there (and when they do, they’re doozies).
I am still nursing down for naps, so I cosleep for his first nap at 730. This way I can guarantee at least one good chunky nap. The other two require 15 minutes of nursing and maybe 25 minutes of sleep on his own if I’m lucky. It’s not sustainable, for sure.
Hey there,
I don’t know how long your little one has been doing this, but I was dealing with early morning wakings for about a month. We had already done CIO to get him out of the early morning feed since I knew it was a habit and he didn’t need it (he’d feed for about 4mins and be back asleep). It worked and we were doing great for about a week. So at the beginning of the early wakings I thought it was an extinction busrt. So for about a week he cried for 1/2 hour to 1.5 hours before going to him at 6am. Well it didn’t stop and so I tried moving bed time, getting him to eat more, feed him at night, but nothing worked. I eventually resorted to putting him in the swing and hope he’d fall back asleep. He developed a really bad cold about 2 weeks in and after another 2 weeks of early mornings and green snot all over, I decided to take him to the doctor. It turned out he had a double ear infection. Talk about feeling like the worst mother of all time. So my advice to you is make sure he isn’t hungry at night (maybe he needs to eat and then you get to sleep till 7am). If that’s not it, try to adjust the bed time to EARLIER (wessbluth’s recommendation). Lastly, make sure there isn’t a medical issue. From all my readings, if baby is waking up early and is happy, there may be nothing you can do. If he is waking up grumpy, there is definitely something going on. Rested babies are not grumpy.
Hope this gets sorted out for you.
Marina
PS Alexis, this post would have alleviated major stress about 12 months ago. The EASY schedule would NEVER have worked for us and he is now almost a year. Between the stresses of milk supply issues and a little boy who is ALWAYS sick, I didn’t need the additional stress of a schedule. As long as baby (nearly toddler!) is happy, then I’m happy.
Hi marina.
Yeah, we’re pretty conservative when it comes to letting him CIO. We make sure he’s not hungry or sick. He’s still getting an 1100 feeding, and we always wean off of feedings sloooowly. We’ve gotten tripped up many times going to him just in case, but it’s worth it. It’s so hard to know when to let him cry and when to go in. In our case, I know he’s healthy right now and not hungry. It seems to be working okay. I’ve got my eye on naps now.
Oh no! Your first message was all happy and chipper and then BOOM – I’m going back to work and we’re all miserable and I never get a second to myself and we’re damaging the baby!
Wow. That’s quite the turnaround 🙁
My first question is – how do you get him to go to sleep at night? Are you nursing/cuddling to sleep or is that just for naps?
My second question is – what happens at 5:30? I mean if he cries from 4:00 – 5:30, then what? You bring him to bed and put on your human pacifier hat? You start the day? You make a martini for breakfast?
My first thought is – what happens if you nurse him right after he wakes up at 4:00 AM? I mean he’s 7.5 months so it’s not entirely unreasonable. If you can nurse him at 4 and then he’ll sleep till 7 I call that a win.
My second thought is – don’t let him cry and THEN pop him on the boob. TONS of people do this and it’s totally understandable. You have the “we’re not going to get him till X hour” plan because tons of books espouse this. But unfortunately what you end up teaching baby is that they should cry a ton because if they cry LONG enough they get to go back to human pacifier station.
This baby goes to sleep on his own at night, we make sure of that. We don’t feed him at 4 because it led to more and more wakings, and mommy instinct told me he wasn’t hungry (plus he’d gone many times without eating until 530). At 530, it’s wake up time. No cosleeping. He’s getting fed because it’s morning. The 4am wakings are getting fewer and farther between (don’t jinx don’t jinx don’t jinx). 530 is starting to become the norm for him. He woke up at 615 this morning (DON’T JINX DON’T JINX DON’T JINX)! The problem is now solely the naps, which are getting worse. I do cosleep for his first nap and boob him down for the other two. It’s getting harder an harder to put him down at all. Today he wouldn’t sleep at all during the day without the boob. I kept trying to put him in the crib and he kept waking up. So that’s where I’m at. I cant sustain this. Plus, I’m worried the daytime boob/sleep association will start affecting his nighttime ability to put himself back to sleep.
hmmm, it seems to me that a lot of people like EASY simply as a guide. I preferred the guide of Weissbluth. I was given Babywise and Happy Baby when my first was born, and read Babywise first because it was shorter. (Alex, if you write your book, can you please put a 2- page summary at the start of each baby phase?) anyway EASY was so stressful for me. If my baby had a big poop he was mad with hunger. then would fall asleep on the boob anyway. what do you do then, wake him up, make him play, then go to sleep? TOO many questions about what happens if …. he didn’t feel like eating when he woke up? He spit up a ton of what he just ate and was hungry again? He didn’t stay awake for the prescribed time, or asleep for the suggested time? I felt like a failure and the book was promising me that my baby would sleep through the night by 8 weeks. Well that was not happening but people NEED to tell first-time parents that “through the night” means a 4-6 hour stretch!!!!
anyway with my second, she’s 1st percentile for weight and I’ve gotten so much conflicting advice about how and when to feed her (less often for larger volume vs more often for more hindmilk) that EASY would never work. As it turns out, she eats best as she’s falling asleep. Some of her best nursings are “dream feeds” that I learned about on your website! I think as long as you don’t *always* put your baby to sleep on the boob then you will have an okay time breaking the milk=sleep association.
DITTO. DIT.TO.
And at this rate I will never write a book that is longer than 2 pages so um…win win?
I agree it’s not for everyone..but I was desparate for something when at 3 months I finally spaced out my daughters feeds to every 2 hours(just to give my poor boobs a break! haha), she would only nurse to sleep and then only sleep for 20-30 minutes at a time; waking at least 4-5 times a night and then needed to be nursed to sleep, which took 45 minutes to an hour every time. In short, EASY saved my sanity! After training her off her nurse-to-sleep crutch she actually started taking longer naps– 45 minutes at first and by 5.5 months she’s taking a pretty reliable 2 2-2.5 hour naps a day. I do follow it pretty flexibly though and don’t hold to a strict schedule, I think the key is to use it as a routine and it really depends on your child and what sleep problems you are trying to fix!
And I am really glad it worked for you! Also really glad you’re getting those great chunky naps. Life is so much easier when you get a little breathing space in there 🙂
I do not like one-size-fits-all solutions when it comes to the many trials that come with caring for an infant, so BabyWise has never appealed to me.
I know baby’s are adaptive. I understand no one likes feeling like a baby slave, ruled by a tiny, iron fist 🙂 I understand we are supposed to guide and steer our young children into healthy habits. But is it also too radical to think that maybe we are supposed to adapt to out infants’ schedules? Maybe going through a rough season in life when things don’t fit into a pretty schedule allowing us plenty of “Me time” is part of raising a baby.
Yes, infants need to sleep, have their diaper changed, take a bath, etc. etc. Sometimes they don’t want to. We might even have to let them cry a little and do it anyway because we know they need it for their health and well being. But I feel much better doing that because I’m their mom, I’ve assessed their habits, personalities, daily circumstances, unique preferences, and so on, and I feel confident that it is what they need at that given moment, not because some book expects me to do that when the clock hand says so. That’s just me.
I’ve learned there are so many ways of purposefully and lovingly getting your itty bitty child on a good schedule and practicing good habits. There is room for much grace in child rearing, and as long as you dedicate your steps to the Lord I believe He will bless that.
Thanks for the post.
That being said, the schedule and method presented in BabyWise might be exactly what your baby needs! That might be the most loving, selfless thing you could do for your baby. I just don’t like the idea of assuming it’s what ALL babies need.
Babywise has never appealed to me on many levels. I think there are some merits in E.A.S.Y. however (if you can take it standalone?). And yeah for some babies it’s a godsend (if nothing else the comments here have made that clear to me!).
Can I just say – that picture of you with the poohbear birthday hat on is PRICELESS. It captures so much so well. Thanks for sharing 🙂
While it helped us make some gains in the sleep department (longer naps, sleeping in the crib, not nursing to sleep – most of which were lost during a brutal regression leading us to use CIO by 6 months), the EASY method actually made my milk supply drop significantly and it took a few dramatic melt downs to figure out what was going on. My baby was 4 months old and had suddenly realized the world existed so she was very distracted during her feeds. Even if I tried to ensure she’d nurse lots after her naps, she basically went hungry for a few days as I was trying to implement the routine since she couldn’t concentrate on nursing long enough to go on for 4 hours. In hindsight, I shake my head at my own sleep deprivation..
I would therefore say that the Baby Whisperer is borderline irresponsible when it comes to breastfeeding (which i saw confirmed on Kellymom after the fact, ugh).
CIO worked really well for us when it was time to do it and I felt ready (partly because of reading the entirety of this blog, comments included). Since she was 6 months old, she has been sleeping 12h at night and putting herself to sleep for naps too. She just turned 9 months this week and.. is there such a thing as a 9 months sleep regression? This is our first major setback. She cries so so hard at bedtime and I have had to go in and pick her back up (and nurse her down) since it is obviously out of the ordinary for her to wail at bedtime at this point. Since she usually falls asleep on her own, I feel like I have no tools to help anymore and am shuddering at the thought of picking a sleep book..
Oh sleep conundrums..
OMG Esme, your situation sounds exactly like ours. However, we did CIO around 4 months-ish and it worked like gangbusters for us (only 1 night!!) Baby Whisperer did mess up my supply which was already on the low side, ugh.
Our LO is 9.5 months and the usual 10.5-12hr nights of sleep have gone away the past week or so. LO has several night wakings where dad goes in to comfort (it all usually takes about 10m) but the crying seems unbearable now since we haven’t had to deal with this in such a long time – we have no real plan to combat this aside from our usual nap and night time routines….
I truly do wonder if there’s such a thing as a 9 month sleep regression/growth spurt.
If you discover any tips I’d love to hear them!!
Yes. It’s called separation anxiety and almost always rears it’s head at 8-9 months 🙁
Hey guys,
Just wondering if anyone knows if object permanence can happen before 6 months? My LO is 20 weeks and he is awake so often at night… I’m doing the 45 minute shuffle with his paci (I live in Australia we call them dummies)… Anyway, he settles so well with it by himself in his cot… I’m terrified of taking it away as I don’t know if I can handle CIO. And I don’t know how he’ll handle it. The first and only time he slept 8 hours without needing resetting or breast feeding was 5 weeks and 3 days ago….. Please help!!!
Possibly. My guess is that he needs MORE soothing to fall asleep and when the paci falls out he’s not getting that source of soothing. You could prove me wrong by ditching the paci and having him sleep like a champ 😛 But is there another way for you to give him MORE? I would consider what options are available to you (maybe back to the swaddle)?
Hmmm.. Yes we do still have him in a swaddle bag- he can lift his arms up a bit so if the dummy isn’t in then he’s sucking on his hands through the bag.. We’ve tried having his hands out but he just throws them all over his face and eyes and he literally will not sleep if his hand/s are out. I’ve tried- he layed there for 1.5 hours grizzling/crying/squealing/sucking on his hands… Since I wrote this I haven’t done the dummy shuffle for 2 nights- he’s been going for 4-5 hours between feeds without waking in between a lot, or if he does he has woken twice. I feel better I must say for sleep longer than 40 mins at a time. Don’t know why and do t know if tonight will be the same. Just had a SHOCKER of a morning… The Eat, play, sleep scheme had worked for us as originally he was demand feeding and I had over supply with my breatmilk and we got into lactose overload territory which was BAD! Green frothy poos and crying in pain and only wanting the boob to settle but getting far too much milk and the cycle began again. So with a more scheduled feeding regime his vowels improved. As well as he’s older and my milk has settled… And we were doing feed play feed sleep but he won’t take the breast after his first feed any more.
So getting back to the dummy shuffle- we swaddle, have white noise, dark room, he is on his side as he won’t sleep on his back.. He’s a hyper vigilant bub who if there’s anything to look at he will therefore will not go to sleep… So fingers crossed we can have these nights like we’ve had the last 2 of.
I’m also confused a bit too about naps- I was reading google + but can’t figure out how to post in it yet. If he has a short nap he gets tired and when he usually would stay up for 1.5 hours I might put him down sooner as he is showing tired signs.. But u were recommending someone else to keep them up- then he gets overtired? Prime example is this morning. He had a 5am feed, then I thought he’d go back to sleep for couple hrs. He slept on/off for 1 hr. then I thought ok u can get up. He got up, we had a play on the floor, started showing tired signs at 640. Tried to put him down, screamed. So thought ok maybe he isn’t tired yet (unusual for him to cry when he is put down) so I got him up. Tried put down after 10 mins as he was tired- screamed. So he cried and cried until 8 when I took him out in the baby bjorn- front sling, and he went to sleep. I just kept walking as he was asleep. Then we had the drs at 9. So I fed him at 930, got home at 10, tried to put him down as usual- screamed. So I’ve rocked him to sleep which still took ages and he’s still in my arms. I’m going to put him down in a minute and get a drink and use the bathroom……????? Babies eh? Totally unpredictable.
Ps thank you so much for replying to my post! U r so great for doing this website and I was so excited to see you post back. Thanks for the humor too- I so need it!!!!
I love your site but have never commented because I don’t usually do stuff like this.. but I just HAD to after reading this post. My baby is 4 months old and I wish I NEVER would have read the Baby Whisperer. Yes, it has some great stuff about listening to your baby’s cues and not keeping them up too long, but my mom could have taught me that! I am so happy to hear your views because all my friends raved about the EASY schedule. My son was jaundice, so the doctor made me feed him every 2 hours no matter what for his first two weeks. He has never been a snacker so he has always ate at pretty routine times. But what tripped me up was he would never sleep for 1-2 hours every nap. He is a great baby and now takes two little naps (30 min-1 hr) and then a big one (up to 3 hours)! When I was trying to follow EASY he would wake up and then what?? He wasn’t hungry so he would do Activity and then he wanted to eat and then take a nap!! Not EASY at all.. and it drove me nuts because I let some book tell me what MY baby needed… Ugh!! Eventually at about 2 months I came upon this website and changed my whole way of thinking, just wish I would not have spent 2 months trying to put my baby on a schedule that he did not want!! Thank you so much!
I like how you say “I don’t usually do stuff like this” with the same tone that one might use to say, “I don’t usually steal silverware from restaurants…”
😉
My unscientific guess is that MAYBE 30% of newborn babies will nap for 1-2 hours. Which means you and the rest of the 70% are all in the same boat of going nutz with the plan.
I’m in the “wish I had read this sooner” boat. I tried desperately to make EASY work for a full 2 months. I am ashamed to say I let my son basically cry himself to sleep in my arms while I rocked him to *almost* asleep for weeks and weeks before finally throwing my hands up and nursing him like he wanted. And all because some stupid book (which i didn’t even own) told me to. I emailed Alexis frantic because he only slept for 15 minutes at a time. I cried, I screamed, I turned my husband and myself nuts. Turns out he sleeps a lot longer on a full stomach! And doesn’t cry! And at 5.5 months when he started waking up all the time at night because he was addicted to the boob we did CIO (per this websites instructions) and he cried for 25 minutes the first night and almost none since. I still can’t believe how much time I spent worrying about something that never would have been a problem in the first place instead of just listening to my instincts and common sense–babies fall asleep nursing for a reason! Babies are hard enough as it is, use the power of the boob! I think what did make a difference (for my baby, not all of course) was always trying to put him down as close to awake as he would stand for (no crying or even shush/patting because it didn’t work) and making him sleep in his pack n play and later crib for as much of the night as I could stand. Then the transition to crib/fully awake was no big deal for him.
And one more thing–putting him down at the first signs of tiredness didn’t work for my son either. He has to be TIRED to sleep. I started by keeping him up 15-20 minutes after he was clearly tired, then stretched it out to 2 or 3 hours (this was at 3-4 months). He now does the 2-3-4 thing that I heard about on askmoxie.com (another wonderful website). It’s a nice way to game some sort of schedule for those Type As like myself who find EASY doesn’t work for them.
I agree, Barrie! My LO doesn’t yawn when tired but fusses. He will however yawn after a nap! So the put ‘him down at first yawn’ advice messed me up at first! I do try to go a few minutes past initial fussing to ensure that he’s tired enough to put down awake.
Alexis, you are such a gem!! I’ve been reading your website since my little boy was just 3 weeks old (4.5 months now) and it has helped me enormously!!! Not that everything is going super smoothly (otherwise I wouldn’t be back reading your website) but I’m getting there and your website + other people’s comments have been so informative. You truly are amazing – the Mike Tyson comment is gold (who’s next? Obama?). Anyway as I said, I’ve been reading your website for a while now but never commented – simply because I’ve never had the time…
However since I stopped following the EASY approach (and the pacifier since 5 days) things are much better. When you think about it: do we grownups exercise after a meal? Simply couldn’t think of anything worse (unless perhaps you’re the great Mike Tyson?) course).
So why do “experts” expect babies to want to do tummy time after a big meal? Right, like you – I don’t get it and ever since we changed things around and started “play, feed, sleep” things improved significantly. Still not great, which is why I decided to also go cold turkey on the pacifier (mainly encouraged by your website and other mums who did it). We took away the pacifier on Saturday morning, and had some tough days since (but I’d like to think we’ve done the right thing, and things have certainly improved). Our boy definitely realised something had gone missing, and oh dear he screamed and cried, and screamed and cried a bit more. But I persevered, and rocked (and rocked… and rocked… and rocked) him to sleep for the first few days. Then I slowly started rocking him a bit less, but replaced it with a solid nap routine: fresh diaper, sleeping bag, boob, nap time story, his bed time music, rock him a little, put him in his cot half sleepy on his side, put a little cloth over his eyes (too distracted otherwise), hold his hands with one hand, and gently rhythmic patting on his diaper with the other hand…. There’s still crying but at least I’m not rocking him to sleep anymore, and above all: no pacifier involved. It’s still early days, but I’m excited and couldn’t have done it without the wise words of you & those that went cold turkey on the pacifier before me and shared their experiences on your website. Today we had a 1.5 hour nap, a 2 hour nap and a 40 minute nap…! Fingers crossed it wasn’t just because it was a Tuesday (Australia time). Anyway, again – huge thanks to you for sharing all your wonderful knowledge with the world!
E.A.S.Y. was a giant FAILURE for us! We followed the 3hr. cycle to the tee but the moment my pediatrician asked me why on earth was I waking up my baby because it was “time to feed him” instead of letting him (and myself) sleep as long as he wanted… I realized something was off. I have the thing in video for crying out loud!
Some others have commented already that they wished they’d not read/used the EASY method. I’m one of them. My son is 5 months old, and I don’t think I would have given him a paci had it not been for the strong advice for it that I got from the Baby Whisperer that a pacifier will help your baby fall asleep easier. It did, but then it created more issues. Since this is our first baby I have no idea what might work/may not work and what consequences some decisions may have. Alexis wrote in the post that neither Baby Whisperer nor Babywise take into the account growth spurts, teething, gas, and other issues that can get your baby off the 3-hour schedule. I do have to admit that the schedule worked very well for us until the baby hit 4 months, and then his schedule went out of the window with teething, growth spurts and more awake time to which I’m still trying to adjust. It’s been a rough month going back to square one with our sleep training, also trying to feed the baby that is not becoming more distracted so he won’t eat much when he’s supposed to eat according to the “schedule,” but then when I put him down he won’t fall asleep because he’s hungry. He’s a big boy and may need more solids, but I’m still breastfeeding. So, if I were to do it all over again, I’d 1) never mess with the pacifier, 2) nurse him to sleep when he’s 0-3 months, 3)nurse him on demand (not worry about the 3 hours), 4)adjust the schedule to be eat-play-eat-sleep, 5) not be intimidated about growth spurts, sleep regressions and teething… Anyway, I now have to go cold turkey on the paci which is not going to be pretty, go off the 3-hour schedule especially considering the fact that he is awake longer (any thoughts on how long a baby can be awake? we keep ours awake for 1.5-2 hrs now), and feed him if and when he is hungry, even in the middle of his play…
Lena,
I wrote above that my son doesn’t nap well unless he’s been up for awhile (‘first signs of tiredness’ thing didn’t work at all for him, he just took forever to put down and slept for 15 minutes). If he starts to get fussy before 2-3 hours of awake time I either take him on a walk in his carrier outside or sing songs in our rocking chair. If you can find one or two quiet calming activities that your son likes that distract him from fussing but wind down to nap time I think that might help. Fresh air works best for mine. Hope that helps!
Barrie, thanks for your advice! I, too, have found over the past two weeks that taking him for a walk is a great way to stop the fussing, extend the wake time and give him a better sleep afterwards. I also wanted to share with everyone that after I read this post I was so relieved to get off the eat-play-sleep routine and also free to feed him when he was hungry (which is now more often since we haven’t started solids yet). And – wow – the first night after I fed him pretty much every 2 hours he slept much better at night, woke up only twice instead of the usual every-two-hour routine… I might be repeating many moms here, but I love this website because it’s so real, has real stories and real support. I’m tired of reading success stories of kids sleeping through the night at week 2 and following a schedule flawlessly. It just doesn’t happen with the babies, and if it does – only for a short time, a lull, and then again lots of figuring out begins. Wow. Thanks for everyone’s input!
Alexis,
Help. My baby is 9 months and CIO is not getting better night after night – we’re in week 2 – interrupted by 5 days of her being sick. It’s about 45 minutes of crying every night. I do boob at the end of the ‘routine’ because if I do it first she would fall asleep before PJs.
She’s taking horrible (2 – 30-45 min) naps at daycare so that isn’t helping.
Once she CIO, she sleeps pretty well. Maybe 1 wake up depending on dirty diaper or how much food she got during the day.
But how many nights is she going to CIO for 45 minutes.
She wakes up as I’m transferring her from boob to crib so she sees me and I reassure her, say goodnight, then walk out.
Help!
Hi Julie. I’m no expert just a comment surfer. But every now and then I feel the need to share our story and let eveyone know it will be fine! Honestly, we were in a mess, dummy, bottle to sleep, night wakings, the whole shebang. We moved our guy in to his own room as just went for it and now he is asleep by 7pm without fail with no crying AT ALL, I kid you not!
A few points for you. When is bedtime? If your little one is falling asleep before pjs then it sounds like bedtime is too late. We had our guy in bed by 615/630 most nights because he too was a 30 minute napper and he was just hysterical if we put him to bed any later. So maybe you should bring that forward until she gets the hang of it.
Also, if she falls asleep at the boob then wakes up when you put her to bed, she is going to want that boobaloo back. After all, as far as she is aware she falls asleep with a boob in her mouth, and she doesn’t give a flip that she has been woken up, she was just asleep and it was thanks to boob goddamnit
So you need a new routine, a more suitable sleep aide (teddy?) and almost definitely an earlier bedtime. Alexis suggested moving the sleep association you want rid of to twenty minutes before bedtime. Our routine is milk, top n tail, book, lullaby, bed with a lovey. It takes no more than twenty minutes.
I hope that helps a little bit. It’s really tough but if you follow the guidelines to the absolute letter it will work.
Thank you for the suggestions, I really appreciate it. I’m going to try moving feeding up to the beginning of the routine, to avoid the boob to crib shock. She almost instantly falls asleep after a few minutes of BF so this will be interesting. We probably need to move the bed time up a bit. I’ve been consistently putting her down 7-715. Then crying stops by 8. She hasn’t had the patience for book as part of the routine because she’s over tired by this point.
Hi Julie,
I just wanted to chime in! Like Josephfc, I am not an expert either. I think you should move up bedtime. My son also takes crappy short naps (30-45 minutes) at daycare and he is a mess at bedtime. When he was 9 months, he would fall asleep at the boob, too (I did bath, PJs/sleep sack, boob, book, bed). We never had a strong nurse/sleep association, as I never fed him to sleep. I would wake him up, sit him up/burp him and then read the book. We would put him to bed (he would be asleep in the crib) by 6:30. Yes, it sucked because we didn’t get to spend that much time with him after work, but it is what he needed. Good Luck!
Hi alexis
I wrote to u a while back about the nighttime dummy shuffle and u suggested he possibly needed extra comfort? Well I think u were right! He has improved and is still waking up in the night between feeds but it has improved immensely. I haven’t taken away the dummy- he still only has it at bedtime. Still swaddle, white noise, dark room. But I give him more soothing from ME rather than the objects. I give him just more love and cuddles right before bed. He still goes into his cot awake but a bit drowsy. But I think it has really helped. I often take him for a little walk in the baby bjorn sling right before a day nap too. And he chills and almost goes to sleep so we come he and go to the cot. He has really responded well so thank you! I feel a bit silly as I love him sooooo much and I was thinking more cuddles would get him in a “bad routine” or ” made a rod for my back”… Just goes to show I really have to STOP listening to well meaning busy bodies that say irritating things like that but really either have no idea or they raised their children in the era of u must feed four hourly etc.. So my advice? Listen to myself, and listen to alexis!!!! Thanks heaps. 😉
Also what is a lovey???
Hi Alexis, I’ve been following your blog for a while and first of all let me thank you because I completely love it, and you for that matter. I have a five month old baby boy and since he turned two months we began to struggle with his sleep, he was a catnapper so days were endless and he would wake up three times or more at night for feedings and after a month of trying everything we bought the swing and finally heaven was here and now 🙂 he began by just waking one time to take 4 onz at night then after trying the varsity aproach for naps he began to take long naps of 1:30 to even 2:30 hours, bliss. But after a month or so of this we had a step back wich now feels worst than it was before because we got a taste of how good it could be, suddenly around the time he turned four months he began to wake up every night after we put him down to sleep around 7:00 pm when only 30 minutes had passed, so we try everything until we figured 2 onz of milk did the trick, then he was down again and only woke once more in the night around 2am and drank 4onz more and woke up around 6:00am. Then a few days later he began to wake up another time at night wich we thought was a growing spurt but instead of getting better now this last couple of days he’s naps also changed and he is sleeping again for only 30-40 minutes tops during the day and waking up every 2-2:30 hours in the night. He sleeps in our room in the swing at full speed, we were thinking of beginning to wean of the swing but now seems like a bad idea because we could not tell if he’s ready or not, I still feed him to sleep an 70% of the time I’m able to put him awake for a tiny second awake and the other 30% he’s quite sleepy. Please shower me with your words of wisdom I have little to no help and It’s killing me . Hugs 🙂
Hello. We had the same problem at months. Our son only woke once at night from being 6 weeks old! I used I feed him to sleep but that stopped working, the minute I put him down he woke up. At first a littleore feeding worked. Then it didn’t. And suddenly we’d spend three hours getting him to sleep and he started waking every two hours.
Alexis talks about object permanence and it sounds like this might be the problem. Your little one goes to sleep with a bottle and when he stirs on a night and the bottle/breast isn’t there he needs it to go back to sleep with. Our problem was the dummy but its the same thing I would say.
Your first step would be to remove the feed to sleep association. It’s tough and most people would probably say five months is too young to start CIO. However after over two months of waking every two hours we wished we’d started sooner.
We never used a swing so I haven’t got any advice there but I’m sure there is some advice on her on how to wean from the swing. I’d find that (sorry don’t have the link for you!) and combine that with removing the feeding to sleep.
As for naps, we have the same problem and I’m sorry I have very little advice. Get night time sorted first and think about naps when he’s sleeping better on a night.
Hello,
Our baby went through the same thing at four months old for about five weeks. She used to sleep for 5-6hrs at night and suddenly she kept waking up every hour. Turns out she was going through wonder week (mental development period). At this stage, baby might have sleep regression and you’ll find your baby can do lots of things at the end. Mine started rolling, sitting up and saying ”mamamama.’ Please google ‘wonderweek’ to find out more about it.
This sounds exactly what my baby is going through. He was sleeping 6-7 he stretches and right before he turned 4 months he started waking 3-4 times at night and lately waking every hour ( he is just over 4 months now). This has been going on for about 3 weeks and I’m hoping there is light at the end of this sleepy tunnel. You’re post is giving me hope that after this wonder week he will get back to sleeping better. I do follow the wonder weeks and according to it he has 25 more days until after this leap!
My first pediatrician recommended BabyWise and told me to put my daugher (9lbs 6 oz at birth) on a FOUR HOUR schedule at TWO MONTHS OLD because “we don’t want her getting any fatter”. When I took her to daycare at 3 months, they were horrified when I told them to feed her every 4 hours. Looking back, I feel this terrible guilt for holding off my crying HUNGRY baby because only 3 hours and 30 minutes had gone by. Ack. I’m so impressed by all of the moms on here who figured out way before I did to listen to your babies, for cripes sake, and not some old-school pediatrician who probably never listened to a crying baby in her life. (Wooo…still some pent up anger over that, apparently!).
Anyway – happy to say that, at 16 months, my second daugher (9 lbs 3 oz at birth) is fat, happy, eats vegetables, sleeps like a champ (largely in thanks to Alexis!), and is a joy and holy terror all rolled into one. Just like she should be.
Listen to your babies, mommas! Do what works, especially when they are itty bitty. There will always be habits to break at some point. Like Alexis says, if it works now, EMBRACE it 🙂
Tricia:
I am horrified by the advice your LO’s Doc gave you! As a first time mom I followed Babywise like a good soldier… it nearly cost me my and my husband’s sanity. I have learned the the lesson you give in your post, “Listen to your babies.” Like you say, when they are little don’t worry about schedules, every day is different with a newborn. Start working on the schedules and healthy sleeping routines when baby gets closer to 3 months +.
Thanks for your post.
That IS horrifying advice. Don’t want your baby getting any fatter? Honestly? What an anxiety-inducing fat-shaming redonkulous thing to say. It’s REALLY hard to go against doctor’s advice because we’re all taught that they have PhDs and we don’t so what they say must be right. And it TOTALLY wasn’t. But the fact that it came from a doctor made it 1000% harder to say “no” which is why I tip my hat to you for managing to find your way despite unfortunate medical advice!
Your doctor gave you TERRIBLE advice. Particularly since the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a warning about the negative health effects of “Babywise” already in 1998:
http://aapnews.aappublications.org/content/14/4/21.abstract
No one should be recommending this. I’m a pediatrician, too. And Alexis is right: listen to your baby!
Alexis: I came for the funny, but stayed for the good tips. I’m going to start recommending this to my sleep-deprived patients. You’re right, the 200 pages of “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” are hard to tackle on 45 minute chunks of nighttime sleep!
Babywise suggests a 2.5 to 3 hr schedule, not a 4 hour schedule. He also stresses for parents to use their best discretion, so if you are starving your baby you are not following the book’s instruction.
I know this post is old but I too wanted to express my outrage. I have implemented an eat play sleep routine/pattern since birth and it works for us. At my 2 month maternal health nurse appointment the nurse told me to change his feeding intervals from 2.5 hours to 4 hours because “you don’t want to overfeed them”. She was not the normal lady I see at the centre so I responded with a vague acknowledgement while staring out the window wistfully. But had it been the usual lady I would have told her that I would feed my damn baby when I thought it was hungry. The same “feed 4 hourly” nurse facilitated my mother’s group last week and was advocating that for babies that were only weeks old – including one poor baby girl who had just come back from NICU for bronchitis. Needless to say, when she left we all mentioned how ludicrous it was and we follow our best judgement.
I have only just now -3 months- increased to 3 hours. I couldn’t imagine the chaos that would ensue if I tried to put it off for another hour. No thanks!
I’m with you. I don’t understand where this idea even comes from. Do we have a child obesity epidemic? Sure do. And it’s likely deeply rooted in the quantity of sugar our kids consume, you know, once they’re old enough to eat sugar. But breastmilk? There is no overfeeding. There’s just feeding. When your baby is doubling their weight in 1 year they need food. It’s as simple as that.
I love researching everything to death and going into all my endeavours well prepared (prepared for a newborn? Ha!) so I loved the E.A.S.Y. Method. I found the baby whisperer book enjoyable to read, and loved all the tips that seemed like common sense to me. Having said that, I always take the tips of “experts” with a grain of salt (even you, Alexis! Though you usually add the caveat that we know our babies best yourself!) I was pretty sure our little minion in training would upend all the best laid plans of mice and men with her tiny fists of rage!
But she didn’t… She’s somewhere between what that expert would call “angel baby” or “textbook baby”. Sort of. I never did subscribe to the schedule aspect of the method, so when she was brand new with jaundice, we fed every two hours around the clock (do I ever not miss those 4-5 nighttime alarms!). After feeding, I would change her diaper, then make faces for a few minutes, then we would go back to sleep!
Now for the “sort of”. Our day times are a mess of short naps, with a random huge chunk most days. She’s cheerful as a lark, takes her three or four naps happily enough, but just doesn’t stay sleeping long (not to mention the unpredictability of the chunk!) My days are happy enough, but she’s only 3.5 months old, so when she’s awake (which seems like most of the day now) I don’t get anything done!
Part of me doesn’t want to change anything, because her delightful full 10-12 hours of straight sleep throughout the night… But I would give up that massive stretch for a midnight feeding if only my DAYS could have a little more predictability… Heck, I wouldn’t even mind two night feedings!
P.S. Also thank you for this blog. I have shared it around my New Moms group so they too can search and learn… Or just feel comforted that they are not alone! I found it at two months or so when she wasn’t napping AT ALL and I thought “my baby just doesn’t need to sleep!” I’m so glad I decided that was weird enough to google before she became too too overtired, and forced the napping!
P.P.S. I’m dreading this four month sleep regression I’ve heard of… If she doesn’t sleep during the day, and doesn’t sleep at night, I may lose my mind, instead of just my favourite jeans at the bottom of the laundry I’m not getting to!
Clean laundry is over-rated. Jeans can be worn when REALLY REALLY dirty. I have personally tested this theory on numerous camping trips and can attest to the truth of this. Just dig them out and put them on. Put some some lipstick and act like you’ve got it all together.
12 hours of night sleep is pretty delightful. Personally it may be as good as it’s going to get right now. Also you’re at the tail end of the “I can’t get anything done” zone. Soon she’ll be interested enough in OTHER things that you WILL be able to wash your jeans while she chews on your car keys 😉
Us!! EASY did not work for us!! My baby girl will be one year old next week, and she has only recently (like 3 months ago) started taking consistent naps and sleeping through the night. Even now, she cries 5-10 minutes before she falls asleep! As first time parents, we made the rookie mistake of going to her the second she “woke up.” I spent most of the first 7 months of her life just trying to get her to sleep. I don’t know why I didn’t give her the opportunity to fall back to sleep. Anyway, hardcore CIO boot camp at 8 months turned everything around and hubby and I watched The Hobbit last night!
On the other hand, the little 3-month-old I babysit has taken to the “schedule” with hardly any protest! He’s so darn consistent, falling asleep ON HIS OWN in his swaddle after a 50-minute waketime.
Yay Hobbit!
Boo first 7 months!
BTW – we ALL go rushing to pick up baby the second baby makes a squeak. It’s not just you.
Fast forward a few years, now my 6 year old has to wake me up in the morning by literally jumping on my head.
EASY – worked well for our first bub. He was very much a routine baby. We followed Gina Ford which in essence still follows EASY.
My 2nd bub is now 12 weeks old and barely naps, and EASY does not work for him. I haven’t worked out what does work for him yet (he has health issues), but I’m working on it 🙂
Sorry to hear about the health issues 🙁 That will definitely make getting things into a routine a lot harder. Good luck with everything!
EASY worked perfectly for us, I was a mess until I found this book. As A FTM it helped me read my babies cues. I started with LO at 6 weeks and began separating out nursing to sleep, we had no 4 month sleep regression that other babies were struggling with. I’m sure that it helped that my baby was pretty adaptable to this schedule.
I did do what worked best for my girl though, we were on a 2.5 hour schedule then 3 and now we are on 2 naps and I don’t pay attention to what the hours are but it is the same everyday.
I’m sure I would still have no clue what to do if it weren’t for the baby whisperer book.
So glad that you found something that worked so great for you – cheers 🙂
Hi,
Can you elaborate on what you meant by that you “don’t pay attention to what the hours are but it is the same everyday”? How did you know it’s the same everyday if you didn’t watch the clock?
Haha, I so have a cellophane-wrapped Pilates DVD under the TV. I can see it from here. HOW DID YOU KNOW?
Freaky
I am watching live streaming video of your house on YouTube. Wait, didn’t you know about that?
:p
Arrgghh so you saw me deliberate for five minutes last night whether I was going to wake the dog so I could sleep on the sofa (husband was snoring) and then saying loudly, she’s a darn dog!
I’ve had great success with more of a ‘routine’, with my now 7 month old baby. I agree with what Lana said about taking everything with a grain of salt. Having a bit of a routine to follow, while I wasn’t militant about it, made me feel confident. I didn’t follow any one thing in particular, I have loved lots of your posts ;), and kind of amalgamated a lot of different theories into what worked for us. I felt comfortable doing a routine and didn’t stress about it if she seemed hungry and I needed to ‘go off the schedule’ to feed her… She is a baby,and we are both learning. It’s definitely important to trust your instincts.
Absolutely! But to be honest, some people’s instincts are louder than others. For example my own voice of instinct was relatively quiet for a looong time. It was there – definitely – I just couldn’t hear it over the roar of what this book said, that book, this friend, that parenting class, etc.
So sometimes “listen to your instincts” can be hard advice to follow because the instincts need to be loud enough to drown out the din around you 😛
EASY worked relatively well with my first daughter (she was fairly textbook) but we still had to let her CIO at 6 months.
My second daughter is not a great sleeper. My ‘go-tos’ with my first daughter are not working…. And I’m totally operating on the mental capacity of a squirrel 🙂 I just found your site (thanks to MODG) and am excited to try a different approach.
I made the mistake of reading “On Becoming Babywise” at the advice of a co-worker. I’m a first time mom with an almost 4 week old. I learned quickly that it just isn’t logical for us. Early on, he would eat close to every 3 hours, but now there’s so much variance to it. He may go 2 hours, 2.5 or 3 during the day, and at night, it’s anywhere from 3-5 hours. Then now I thought that since he should be having some longer wake times during the day, I should implement a Eat, Play, Sleep schedule…mostly because when he wakes up, he’s ready to eat so why not do the play after? A mistake because he tends to fall asleep at the bottle like most newborns and of course, it’s easier to get him down to sleep since he’s already sleeping. Today was a mess for us as we’d play but then I think he became too overtired and wouldn’t go down for a nap or wouldn’t sleep for more than an hour. Wreaked havoc on our day and then I made the mistake of trying to transition him from the Rock and Play to his crib or Pack and Play Bassinet. Neither were successful. I was a mess by the time my fiancé came home.
Hi there, great blog. I’ve been trying EASY with ok results, not great. Just wondering what you would suggest instead for a 3 month old. Would it be play, eat, sleep?
EASY and all other baby schedules seem completely pointless to me and very very frustrating! Forget about any sort of plan, just concentrate on not keeping your baby up too long! Our little girl is 12 months old and has never done what the books say. Most days she still has her first nap within one hour of getting up for the day, and can easily handle 6 or 7 hours of waketime in the afternoon before bed for the night. She sleeps between 12 and 13 hours straight overnight. I nearly drove myself bonkers following the ‘Rules’ – Follow your baby and love your baby 🙂 and keep your sense of humour! Xxx
Hello! I am a certified nanny and new born care specialist. I love your blog!! I have cared for children of all different ages ranging from newborn to 11 years old. Currently, I am caring for a 10 month old who for just the past two days started this thing where he wants to sleep 20-30 minutes and then play. I go in once to let him know he has not been abandoned and also to check for yucky diaper etc. I like to do this in one trip so as not to keep going in and out of his room. He has been crying and throwing a true temper tantrum at 10 months. One day he did this because the poor guy was constipated and uncomfortable, fine. These past two days there have been no signs of anything. All I can assume is that it could be growing pains or teething but not all of those signs are making themselves present. He is learning a lot throughout the day but I feel he just wants to play. Ive been keeping him in there though, his parents agree to do this method. I guess tomorrow which will be the third day if this continues, i will really stick to my guns on not going in and out of his room or falling prey to his games : ). He is also a reflux baby and was colicky, I dont know if that effects anything now but its always a possibility. If you have any suggestions or comments ill be looking out. Thanks for your wonderfully helpful blog!
I wish had never heard of the EASY schedule from baby whisperer. This post on Eat Play Sleep Fail has been an eye opener. I kept thinking why won’t my baby nap for longer than 45 minutes?? Which led to four 45 minute naps a day. Which meant I had no time to do anything around the house. Well we are on day 2 of bottle before her naptime routine (15-20 minutes) and she has slept for 90 minute stretches. I’m still working on when her 3rd nap should occur since her bedtime is 6:30… Also by following your advice on letting her fall asleep in her swing by herself my baby goes down in her crib tired and sleepy but awake. Thank you Alexis.
I know this is an old post but Nicole, if you end up reading this…how did you transition back to bottle before nap?? I tried EASY and it sucks and now babys “schedule” is all sorts of wonky.
Christine I am no help. I have no recollection of how I shifted bottle time! Every time I would ask another mom friend (usually with kids past toddlerhood) how to do something or what they did in a situation, they often claimed they couldn’t remember and I was incredulous, thinking how can they not remember? Well it’s happenned to me 🙁
Did you make this happen???? Now I’m in this boat … HELP!
Easy worked for us. I read the book while pregnant and while I found the author’s tone slightly condescending, the idea of having a MAP to my baby’s needs during the day made me feel less panicy as the birth approached. Honestly for the first three months he never really adapted perfectly to the schedule. His naps long and short moved all over the day. He would often fall asleep after eating, which I just let him do. I used it like a road-map, and every time we veered off it, I just veered back. It helped me find structure and to know when he was tired mostly. He always ate every three hours and he’s the baby that wants to eat as much as he possibly can at every meal. Of course if he asked for a bottle a half hour early, I just gave it to him. I believe the book also encourages you to listen to your baby like this. Sometime just around 4 months, he became completely uninterested in eating every three hours so we decided to give the 4 hour schedule a try, he snapped onto it like he was just waiting for us to figure out that this was what he wanted, he started napping three times a day two long and one short immediately. He sleeps through the night 7pm-6am with one nighttime feeding. He honestly insisted on being put down awake and there has been no 4 month regression. This really is all him, you could set your watch by his desire to eat and sleep. Again if he’s hungry a half hour early I feed him and adjust going forward and if his bedtime ends up being immediately after his last meal, who cares…. I don’t believe this schedule is intended to be applied in spite of your baby’s needs. All that said, my baby appears to be a textbook baby with a bit of spirit thrown in for good measure, if I had only read “Healthy Sleep Habits” the results probably would have been the same. I think EASY mostly helped me help my baby and help me feel better about learning how to be a Mama. I think my baby just happens to like being on a schedule and because of this, using the framework of Easy made his 4 month transition so much Easier. 🙂 He is bottle fed, due to an unfortunate tongue tie situation that did not get resolved soon enough, resulting in a really rough first 6 weeks. Anyway, this may have had something to do with it, but honestly he was an aggressive eater from day one, so I think it would have gone just as well with breastfeeding…. I write this to say if your the kind of Mama who will gain confidence and peace of mind by using a schedule (with flexibility) and your baby seems to like it, then go for it. It’s all OK, and if it works for you, don’t let anyone poo-poo your schedule loving baby.
I didn’t even realize that my little guy was following EASY. Things just fell in place for us. Starting from the beginning, he would wake for a nap and I would automatically feed him. He would then be awake for a little while then back down for a nap and the cycle would continue. I simply fed him because I was told that babies wake up usually because they are hungry. It seemed true so I stuck with it. Also, I had an oversupply of milk so feeding was never soothing for my guy, it was a struggle. The oversupply has seemed to regulate and now my guy is 12 weeks old and only waking up once for a night feeding. He has been doing this since he was 7 weeks old. He takes 4 naps a day all of which are an hour to an hour 1/2 long. Our biggest issue is falling asleep on his own. He gets fussy really quickly and then needs my assistance with bouncing to help put him to sleep. Overall, I can’t complain.
OMG!!! This totally changes EVERYTHING!
Hi Alexis (and mamas everywhere),
I’m on my 3rd kid in 4 years and have become the baby-blog junkie. If you have a question, I can pretty much tell you which blog to read to help. But YOURS has to be the best and makes me feel the most sane!
So, I’m going to make this easy on you (for now)…
Yes or no…
If I feed my 4 month old before his pm nap (which he gets sleepy doing) and then pop his little eyes open before putting him in the crib, is this ok? Seems that you and Dr Karp say this is a-ok. I am trying to keep him at 5 BF per day as he is not yet making it through the night without 1-2 feedings. And the pre-nap feeding is actually a good one bcs not distracted by the other 2 pre-school monsters in my home. But I’ve been feeling that this may be causing the recent increase from 1 to 2 feedings at night bc I’m creating an association (even though he is always placed in the crib with his eyes open).
What do you think? And based on your answer I will continue to throw questions at you or will be content and leave you alone 😉
Day sleep/associations are different from night sleep/associations SO nursing around naptime (and waking up after) is OK. Also 1-2 feedings at night is pretty normal. Except that you have 2 other kids under 4 and thus probably feel that 1-2 feedings at night is insanely unfair 😉
Hi Alexis, I love your site! I recently stumbled across it when looking for some info on reducing night feeds. We seem to have managed to eliminate the night feeds, which is great. I’m now struggling to get my lo to sleep in her cot for her 10am and 4pm naps…. For her lunchtime nap I give her some bottle which seems to sink her, but my nanny friend says not to do this for the other naps because of the sleep association… And I don’t want the night wakings up restart. But at the moment the morning nap and afternoon nap must be taken on the move, and winter is setting in now. I was using the shush pat which was working until she needed me to do that all through the night….so we tried some crying out which worked for the night, but not the day…. And now the shush pat doesn’t work for the day naps either. And I can’t listen to her crying, poor thing. She just ends up crying through all her naps and hardly sleeping at all. So, my question is, if you think the day association is different. I can give it a try, I tried to put her in the swing this afternoon and although she was yawning, she didn’t sleep, and I’m sure a little feed would knock her out. Please help! I would like to follow
I had a love hate relationship with BabyWise. I LOVED that I had some feeling of control over the day buy once we dropped a nap all hell broke loose and we didn’t know when baby should be sleeping and when he should be awake! It was awful! Which lead to the downfall of naps and lead to me holding and rocking baby C for hours to make him sleep. Have you tried swaddeling an 11 month old? Don’t – it’s awful and leads to a lot of tears on from both parties. Anyways all ranting aside I think it really did help get some order into our lives and lay down a basic schedule for our day. We were VERY luck and C slept through the night at 5 weeks giving us a 1030-530 stretch. Once we had that to work with we tried to establish 7 am as the start to our day and work from there with a 3 hour schedule.
I just recently worked with a sleep specialist due to the napping issues – we had been trying the ferber method with no luck and she really helped us get the little guy sleeping so much better. All in all I think it really depends on your child and how many tears you’re willing to shed as a parent. CIO is great and worked well for us but that isn’t to say I didn’t cry too when C was loosing it in his room.
So glad I saw this! Hi, I’m Katie, proud mother to Emily, the chronic catnapping almost 4 month old who (knock on wood) sleeps through the night. We were doing eat play sleep and while we were never on a really predictable schedule, it worked for a while. And by worked, i mean we could get her to nap, short though they were. Since I went back to work a few weeks ago, Emily will only nap if she’s bottle-fed to sleep and refuses her paci or any other method. She doesn’t eat much so it seems to be a comfort thing. Thinking this to be a dangerous precedent, we just spent an exhausting weekend trying to break the nap time bottle habit and the end result is we’re all exhausted! I never questioned eat play sleep but I just don’t think it works for Emily since she only takes 30 min naps usually…my question is, is it futile to try to get her on a daytime schedule or routine at this point since she’s still so erratic? How can we find a routine with a catnapper?
Just an update on our bub. He is now 6.5 months (time flies) and I worked out his routine. He sets it, definitely!
It took me until he was about 4.5-5 months to figure out, but he is on the lower end of the required sleep scale in a 24 hour period. Wat does this mean? I hear you ask.
He is now 6.5 months and the average required sleep for this age is 14-16 hours in a 24 hour period.
Our bub has ALWAYS slept a 12 hour night with the occasional feed or disruption in between.
When he wakes for a quick feed and sleeps 12 hours, I can expect him to cat-nap (i.e 3x40min naps) This gives him 14 hours sleep in 24 hours.
If his night was more disruptive and he woke at 2:30am for a feed (for example), and again at 4am for 40 mins babbling to himself, I can expect a 40minute morning nap and 1.5-2 hours around lunch. That’s it. Whatever sleep he lost during the night, he makes up for during the day. If he didn’t lose any sleep, he has 3x40minute naps and he’s done with his required sleep!
Hi there,
I am Nanna to a three month old girl, my first grandchild, and have just recently taken over her care for four days a week while her mother has gone back to work.
Your blog and others comments have been very helpful to me, especially regarding the “not keeping her awake too long”.
I wondered why she was only taking 30-40min naps during the day and not very happy the rest of the time.
Today I put her down earlier than usual and she slept for an hour! A feed, a trip down town then after an hour of being awake and happy, she slept for an hour and a half!
Just fed again and she’s still happy.
Thanks for all comments.
Alexis,
I have read most of your latest blogs and I have to say they are great! Thank you for making us feel normal!
I have a seven month old son who is relatively “easy” to deal with but we have a dilemma. I lay him down for naps during the day (and I have timed it out to discover that he can only handle being up for 2 hours, max 2 hours fifteen min.). His first nap he generally lays down two hours later and goes right to sleep without help. I just lay him down and leave. Then for nap number 2 it’s a 50/50 for going to sleep on his own…then nap 3 he fights and fights. Any ideas? We have no issues with him going to sleep at night on his own at all. He lays down and goes right to sleep every night. He will wake up occasionally during the night but we’re working on ditching the paci for this reason. We do not rock him back to sleep. He sleeps for an hour to an hour and a half for most naps. He usually sleeps for anywhere between 5 and 7 hours at night before waking most nights. Although the last two weeks he’s been more wakeful. Please help!
EASY would never have worked for my son. He was very intense and sensitive and HUNGRY. There was NO waiting for anything with that boy. But he was also a terrible sleeper… It was all we could do to come out alive at the end of every night. I’m not sure what could have worked for him as a young baby. He nursed every hour, round the clock. He screamed for hours every day. Overtired? Yes! But could I have put him on a nursing schedule? No way. Our family Dr advised doing whatever it took to get some sleep, within safe limits, and to continue to nurse on demand. I’ve read that a schedule like this can derail breastfeeding and have 2 friends who stopped breastfeeding because they decreased their supply by not nursing often enough on an EASY schedule.
Hi Alexis,
I love your blog – all the advice/tips are great! I, too, have a problem with EAS, that being my 10 week old prefers Eat / Activity/ Eat / Sleep. My question is, do I time his next feed from the start of the first E or the second E? He’ll usually take a pretty good nap after the second E, but then I often have to wake him up in order to feed him 3 hours from the first E – does that make sense? I’m not sure if I’m doing this right (or any of it, for that matter!)and wondered what advice you might have.
Thanks much!
Heidi
Hi, I just recently found your blog and it’s been a life saver! I used baby wise with my first and while I eventually started to work, I was never great. We still have major sleep struggles with him at 2 years old. My 2 month old had a lot of the same issues of short naps, difficulty falling asleep, etc. After reading your blog I adjusted some things. I still use the same basic routine, but I’m not strict about times. If it’s been 2 hours and he’s waking up from a nap, I feed him. If he’s acting sleepy 45 minutes after waking up, I put him down for a nap. It’s been great! He falls asleep on his own with no issue and takes very predicable naps.
My dad got me the “Baby Whisperer” book for Christmas (my daughter was born early on Nov. 28th) and at first I was pretty excited about it. But, my baby has pretty bad reflux and gas, and cries pretty much all the time. Some weeks it seems like the routine works like a charm, and other weeks she’s just constantly unhappy (right now I THINK we’re in a kind of good week, but I’m so stressed and sleep-deprived that I can’t really tell anymore). She’s been doing that thing lately where she wakes up to feed at 1, or 2:30, or 3, and then doesn’t want to go back to sleep for at least 2 hours no matter what I do, and when she does won’t stay asleep for more than an hour. Man oh man.
How do you make any baby-related progress if you’re constantly in recovery mode with your little one?
My friend’s friend’s baby (okay, maybe MY baby) is almost 6 months old and the truth is that we’re still struggling to establish any kind of routine. There are still 2-5 wakings at night, the haps are always at different time of day and always different in length (ranging anywhere from 20m to 2.5hrs) and any sort of baby training is a huge struggle.
Every morning I make myself a cup of strong coffee and gear up for a battle, and every night I go to sleep (haha if you can call it sleep…) exhausted. Clean hair/lunch/playdates are a long lost dream. I’m scared to go online out of fear to stumble upon more discussion board posts complaining their babies “used to sleep through the night & suddenly started waking twice a night”. Sad => because I call 2 wakings my GOOD nights.
I understand E.A.S.Y. is not always an option, but what do you do when there is almost no structure/routine to your baby days NO MATTER how hard you try? For example, how do you decrease swing speed over a few weeks to wean off swing if the haps continue to be shitty? How do you decrease nursing time to wean off night feedings if your baby freaks out at the slightest attempt of this?
Basically, would you say there are “especially high needs” babies to whom none of the advice on this amazing blog applies?
Please tell me that’s not true. By all means lie to me if you need to.
I know this post is over a year old, but in case anyone does read through the comments:
I implemented the EASY method at 5 weeks for my Cub and it is working gangbusters for me. Prior to using EASY I was attempting to breastfeed on demand and letting Cub decide when to take his naps. This was proving to be disastrous. He loved to sleep during the day (3-4 hour stretches) and was already reverse cycling into the night. He was also gaining weight very slowly. He was still healthy, but because he would sleep instead of feed during the day, and since I am incapable of getting more than a cat-nap during the day I would be so exhausted I would rush him through night feedings.
Now I will say that I think the reason this works is that Cub does not use feeding as a sleep prop. He will doze at the breast but the moment he’s taken away his eyes fly open, regardless of his satiation. I also need to wake him up for feedings so ensure that he is getting proper nutrition during daylight hours. I know that babies do eventually figure out the day/night thing on their own, and it could be a coincidence, but 2 days after implementing EASY Cub shifted the bulk of his feeds into early evening. As far as nighttime, I can get him into his swing at 8, do the 11PM dream feed and we only have 1 wake up feed at around 3, the next time he wakes up is 6-7, where I feed him again and we take a early morning nap until 8-9. I have also become a lot better at reading cub’s cues. Because I know when he’s “tanked up”
I am also not hyper crazy about staying scheduled. When Cub throws us for a loop with a short nap or we have to make an adjustment to the routine we do the best we can to get back on track. As long as we can hit the 8-9 window for bed we’re in good shape.
Clearly, not for everyone, but if the plan fits the baby and provides some measure of reliability during the day its pretty nifty.
I have been doing a type of EASY plan but in fact before my daughter has her naps I feed her a bit so it’s more like EAESY. My daughter is nearly five months and I think I may have to sleep train her at 6 months as she only seems to be able to fall asleep nursing or rocked by my husband (when he’s at home she’s not nursed before her naps as he rocks her). Would you recommend this plan for a 5 month old or older baby? Also my daughter is able to fall asleep on her own when she hasn’t been up for long (20 minutes, half an hour) but during the day it’s hard to get her drowsy before her naps and that’s why I nurse her so she gets drowsy and falls asleep! Is there a more gradual approach to training her which doesn’t involve CIO?
Hi! I’m new to your site and must say that you’re pretty hilarious! Loved reading your stuff. 🙂
I just wanted to say that EASY saved my life. In all honesty, it could have been AESY, EAESY, AEAESEASY, or anything as long as it was consistent! With twins, getting them on the same schedule was essential; especially because I am on my own with them most of the time. I do agree that it’s not for every baby though. For my twins, it helped us get them to sleep 11-12 hours at night and take 3 (now 2ish) great naps during the day.
I think the problem with these types of schedules is that so many people look at it in a black-and-white, all-or-nothing way (I know – I had those moments!). I think that you can take a plan like this, listen to your baby, make tweaks when necessary, and be flexible and patient, then it can be very helpful. But having rigid expectations is never a good idea when it comes to babies!
Thank you thank you for writing this. As a severely sleep deprived mum, I have read every, and I mean EVERY book out there that teaches me how to help my baby sleep. I am not looking for sleep through the night, a stretch of 3.5 to 4 hrs without my 4 month old waking up crying for no apparent reason would be sheer bliss. I have tried to follow the EASY schedule which so many people have claimed to be helpful but it’s not working. Firstly, my baby now takes shorter naps, not sure if it’s hunger related, and I can’t get him on the schedule at all as he doesn’t sleep consistently the same duration for every nap. So if I follow EASY, I find that I could be feeding him every 2 hrs, 3 hrs, or 4 hrs… And there is no fixed time or schedule to speak of. BUT if I don’t do the EASY, what routine do I follow? His wake up time is erratic, differs between half hr to an hr everyday and his nap times are erratic so I find that he is taking naps at different times everyday as he can only stretch for 1.75 to 2 hrs btween naps. Or is he too young to start a schedule?
Eay Play sleep worked like a charm on my first. She had/has a big appetite and filled up every 3 hours. She is 3 now and is just like mommy! We love routines and predictability. My 5 month old just would not have it though! I wait until about 6-8 weeks to get a routine down, but after 2 weeks of trying I was a mess. She is a reflux baby and just needs smaller more frequent meals. It still drives me crazy when I can’t read her cues like I could with my first because of the routine. I am learning to go with the flow though:)
Just found this and already bookmarked!!
Reading all these comments (instead of sleeping.. Oh no!! Not more than 4h straight since baby born anyways…) has been a relief so decided to post my reality and maybe make another mom realize she is not alone!!
Baby is 4mo slight reflux and still feeding every 2-3h during the day (8am-8:30pm).
Has grown 10cm and gained 3.4k since birth. Doing very well.
Will wake up 2-(3 times max) at night (1:30/2:30 And/or 4:30/5:30/7.. You get the idea) but happy with 8:30/9pm-8/9am schedule as falls back asleep after each feeding ( when newborn we had nightmare nights gas/colics/mucho feedings… so no complaints here compared with that infierno!!! I Ouf!)
Very healthy and giggly/playful/observant good concentration.. Can stay 30-45mn absorbed on mat during the day.. We “read”, “talk” etc
Was following easy until.. 2 days ago
Worked fine as 90mn max play ( includes feeding etc) and then would nap ( usually 30/40mn but one bigger nap up to 2h always a surprise unfortunately)
Good: cues = helped me
Bad: recently getting a lot of EASES!!
Today it was a bit ?!? Plus big 2h nap 1hbefore going to bed!!! Aaargh
So..
Considering trying eatplaysleep(short nap)eatplayeatsleep (for longer nap)
This baby needs help to fall asleep since birth has only recently started to fall asleep in stroller.. Kind of (due to reflux only wants to sleep if on tummy – or carrier by day – since 7weeks/could turn head well) usually 2-10mn of crying/singing to self in my arms then tapping back/butt once in crib another 5-10mn ( add minutes).. Every week goes down easier…(used to b major screaming and mucho minutes)
Im fine with giving some extra tlc …baby wont need my help or my arms when older so ive accepted the extra (exhausting) work as something special and temporary 🙂
Every baby, mother .. And day is different… do what feels right and works for both of you..
Im grateful there are people out there sharing their struggles and advice!
Animo and gracias!!!
Hi – I’m hoping for some advice. After reading all of the comments (yes, two pages!), I can’t quite figure out if I know what to do. I’ve been loosely following EASY since our 13 week old was born, along with the advice in one of your posts about “Don’t Keep Baby Up Too Long” (the chart is AWESOME)! It has led to some great night sleeping (8-10 hours), in the crib no less, but naps are HORRIBLE!
Oliver never naps longer than 45 min. Sometimes I can get him back to sleep until the next feeding but not always. Is this an indication that EASY doesn’t work for him?
I’m stressing because I go back to work in 4 days and feel like I’m realizing this too late. Once I finally started feeling human again after a rough delivery, I’ve been taking advantage of being “on vacation” and going out and about with friends and errands. I didn’t take note of the bad napping until I was home for a day or two without a good car ride for one (or maybe two) daytime sleeps. Obviously day care doesn’t have a chauffeur around just to drive babies who won’t sleep…
Thank you for the great advice. FINALLY got my daughter to nap on her own after making adjustments to her nap room. I also followed your advice on helping baby learn how to fall asleep for the night. I had to let her cry a bit but she only really protested for a while and never had a melt down, which I was surprised at. Everything worked like a charm after 4 days and I am a happy mama. Thanks for putting things into perspective. It all makes sense.
I find it really strange how different people hear different emphases when they are reading. I read Babywise, and I got 3 things out of it: eat play sleep, be flexible and listen to your baby, and don’t use sleep props.
We used eat play sleep during the first 3 months, and right when he should have started having longer naps, we started having trouble with exactly 45 minute long naps (which the book does warn you about)that took nearly an hour to get him to sleep for in the first place. That’s when we found this site.
We also had pretty crappy nighttime sleep (as in the lightest sleeper ever, would stir if I walked *past* his room) and decided that the “no sleep props” rule was too rigid for us, and got a swing and swaddled and white noise and a lovey, and he sleeps pretty good now (sttn and night weaned at 8 months!) Basically we decided that we would rather have a baby who sleeps now, and worry about getting him out of the swing and swaddle later. (Btw, out of the swing at 4.5 months and out of the swaddle at 7 months)
I’m not sorry I read babywise, and I won’t throw the book out, but when my other mum friends are having trouble with baby sleep, I give them this site, not that book.
TL:DR; eat play sleep worked great In the newborn stage for us to keep us from setting up an eat-sleep association, but we had to modify it after a few months to save ourselves from short naps.
Well I guess there are tons of people who also like Babywise as it’s been a top-selling book for ages – I’m glad it worked for you!
But I’m also really happy to hear that you send new Moms here too 🙂
Hello!
We used EASY with our first born and it worked lovely. Now I have a 3 month old and as the saying goes- no 2 babies are the same. My 3 month old was sleeping beautifully. By a month old he was waking up one time at 4:15 am (yes that exact) then not again until 7:00. Life was good. For about 3 weeks we have been waking up almost every hour. I might die soon. My little guy did pop out 2 teeth around week 1 and 2 of this no sleep marathon but now I don’t know what to do. Is he not eating enough during the day due to EASY or is he in the middle of a growth spurt? He’s acting like he’s still teething, so maybe he’s just going to get all his teeth by 4 months. I literally don’t know what our next step is. I’ll try incorporating more feelings during the day, maybe nurse again right before nap?
And the secone baby is always easier right?! Golly!
To the comment about the scheduled feedings every 4 hours, I had a friend who told me she did this and recommended it to me. She said her boys would cry before it was “time” for their feeding and it was hard to listen to but she stuck to it. I can’t remember exactly why she stuck to it, I think it had something to do with maintaining a schedule and I think I started to tune out in horror at that point in the conversation! Every parent is different and I respect that. Maybe she just really needed to have that structure to feel good and go through her day having some control over a crazy transition time. I personally feel it’s worth doing a little research and understanding the physiology of a baby and prioritizing their needs based on that first, then figuring out how to structure a schedule. What exactly are we trying to teach our baby with letting them cry it out for feeding? That they need to just get used to feeling hungry??
Hi there! I have a one month old and I am BF on demand. I have a really hard time getting him to take naps in the day and the only sure fire thing I know to do is nurse him to sleep. I have two questions.
1.) my baby does not “pop off” the boob on his own like people say your baby will when he’s done. If I let him he would be attached 24/7. After a while of not a lot of sucking I switch him to the other boob. But then he’ll just stay on that one forever. Is this ok? My main concern is that we don’t have any type of “feeding schedule” and as far as knowing his “hunger cues”- he always will take it and acts like he wants it so I don’t know…
2.) so when he is 8 weeks I have to go back to work and my husband takes over for a week then my mom. If we have no feeding schedule
And he always wants to nap by nursing, what are they supposed to do when they take over? How will they know when to feed him or get him to nap?
Thank you 🙂
Kalen,
I know this is hard but honestly – don’t sweat it. He’s only 1 month old! There frequently isn’t much predictability around eating or sleeping at this age. Nursing to sleep at 1 month is find. Yes you want to be mindful that eventually nursing to sleep will fail you – typically between 3-6 months. But you still have time and JUST gave birth so today isn’t the day to fret 🙂
If you’ve noticed that he’s just hanging out on your boob (no more swallowing or significant jaw motion) pop him off. Put him on the other side – repeat. Many kids won’t pop off but prefer to suckle for comfort. You’re welcome to LET them but truthfully this is why pacifiers were invented. They’re immensely helpful and significantly lower the incidence of SIDS. Might be a great tool to consider. Good luck!
Hi there! Dad here – but as father of twin girls, I’m trying to find a good solution just as much as mom. Our biggest issue with any of these is that our 7 weeks adjusted babies have minor reflux, so playing after eating is basically a nonstarter.
It seems like there’s not really any great plan for reflux babies, except to wait it out, and try sleep training after that!
Hey Adam,
I’m not sure if there is no great plan for reflux babies (have you read my post on reflux management? – lots of helpful ideas in there especially for newborns!). Reflux babies often don’t sleep well with a full belly so you may need to move towards a schedule where they have some awake time, as you get close-ish to naptime you feed them then hold them upright for min=30 minutes post feed to help with reflux and get any bubbles out. THEN sleep.
Good luck!
– fellow reflux survivor
Hey Alexis!
It’s funny, I stumbled upon this blog days after I started scratching my head regarding my 12 week old daughter’s short nap/EASY schedule. We’ve been doing the eat-wake-sleep thing since 4 weeks and was working awesome as a 2 hour routine! However, 8 weeks later, not much has changed and it’s still pretty much a 2-2.5hr routine and I’m about to rip my hair out (mainly bc her naps are never longer than 50min). I feel like I’m on a baby merry-go-round from hell.
I will hand it to her, she is consistent. sleeps a solid 6-8hrs every night going down at 10ish. Wakes once and takes a long morning slumber until 9ish. Then it’s a 2-2.5hr cycle for the rest of the day. She’s clocking 5 daily 50min naps. I listen to her tired and hunger cues. Goes down within 5 min of soothing and is waking up a happy baby after every nap. Sometimes the cycles goes awake-eat-awake-sleep, but generally it’s EAS(Y).
However, is this routine preventing her from consolidating naps? I keep hearing that she’s approaching some magical turning point where she will take 3 chunky naps. Can I help this along or is this something she has to be ready for? She can only handle 1.5ish hours a wake at a time now, but I’m wondering if she had longer naps, she’d recharge better for a longer awake time. IDK…FTM. Trying to learn and follow from her cues, but then I think to myself, “she’s a baby…”
I’ll take any advice you have!
Kate
I actually think 50 minute naps are quite respectable for a 12 week old. It’s a little less than my preferred 60 minute minimum, but if my 11 week old wakes after 50, I take it and count it as a decent nap. A 1.5 hour wake time is perfect for a 3 month old. Sounds like your baby is doing great to me. This sheet helped me : https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GHo4keUb2TVJUlSL1kD6HQcEgaNFBmzoQoOzcpcyas/mobilebasic?authkey=CPXE1bsO&hl=en&pli=1
I’m following an EASY-ish plan (I don’t really know how my routine is very like the baby whisperer book since I’ve never read it). But my routine is very flexible and your bullets 2&3 really don’t apply. What I do is set the order of operations (wake, feed, diaper, play, sleep) and baby determines the length of each step. I do have some basic limits (for my 2 month old, I encourage him to stay awake and napping for an hour each at least, I’ll wake him up after a 3 hour nap, and I encourage him to get full feedings) but otherwise it’s determined by baby. Days vary widely, and if there’s an event we just work with it. I do make sure to feed baby at least every 3 hours regardless of anything else going on. There’s no schedule, no set times for anything, but I do try to make bedtime vaguely consistent. I think it’s gotten a bad reputation because of Babywise and the idea that it’s a strict schedule, but it really doesn’t need to be. I really really don’t do well with strict scheduling, but this routine is amazing for us!
An EASY routine worked great for us between 6 weeks and 3 months, but then my son got very distractible at the breast and stopped getting a full meal, which made it impossible for him to last until the next feeding in 3 hours. He sleep quality went all to hell. While it worked it was wonderful but for this distractible baby it didn’t work long. I started supplementing with formula and his naps lengthened and consolidated and he had less nightwakings. Now I’m weaning him off the formula. Now we’re mostly on an “EAESY” routine. Getting full meals is critical for EASY and if your baby cannot do that for whatever reason, it’s not going to work for long.
My little boy is 5.5 months old and I’ve been following eat play sleep for months. He’s always had 30 minute naps but I thought this was fine because he slept through the night (by which I mean 7.30pm-around 6am) so had no concerns. The last couple of weeks though he’s having all of the problems you mention above so I am going to begin making some big changes. However one concern I have is that I’ve been doing it for so long I feel like I wouldn’t know how to recognise his hunger cues now and he wouldn’t know how to give them, as far as he’s concerned he feeds when he wakes up. Any tips on this would be greatly appreciated xx
Thank you so much for this article. I firmly believe that because I tried the E.A.S.Y schedule with my new baby that it led to him being underweight and me struggling with milk supply. I struggled to get him to nap “on time” while he cried and cried. All he really needed was to eat more! We also misdiagnosed my baby with reflux and had him on medicine when it turned out he was crying after feedings because he was still hungry, not suffering from a reflux problem. I feel that if I had fed more on demand from the start, I would have had plenty of milk and he would have been at a more healthy weight.
Things are going well now with a more flexible baby-led schedule. I would love to have a set schedule but I really feel that it just doesn’t always work like that.
Thanks again!
Ditto! I foolishly tried the EASY method with my newborn as well. I really believe that newborns and “schedules” should not be associated with each other! the schedules can wait till at least after 3 months. I feel like the early months with my baby would have been much less stressful if I just followed the babys cues and accepted short naps and constant feedings instead of worrying why the newborn wouldn’t nap longer than a half hr or on a schedule. I wish books like baby whisperer or babywise or anything that promotes nap and feeding schedules for newborns weren’t allowed!
Okay, so I made the colossal mistake of trying the whole “eat, wake, sleep” thing with baby #3… and now I really regret it :/. However, I’ve had three babies in the last three years (oldest JUST turned 3, middle is 23 months, and baby is 10 weeks) so I can’t remember ANYTHING. I know… most people think I should be a baby expert, but I am so tired that I can’t recall what my “system” was for the other two now that I’m muddled everything up with this new “eat, wake, sleep” system. WHY did I try something different??? Uggggghhhh. Anyway, my question is this… HOW do I FIX this? What should a “routine” (of sorts) look like at 10 weeks old?
Did you figure anything out??? HELP 🙂
At 10 weeks I would focus on wake time (how long awake since they woke up from last nap) a la this: https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/are-you-keeping-baby-awake-too-long/
Because nap times are unpredictable the wake time “plan” makes far more sense. Ideally you focus on cues for hunger. Most kids are going ~3 hours between feeding during the day but there is no wrong answer – just what works for you/your baby. If you CAN avoid nursing/feeding to sleep that’s ideal. Thus you may want to offer a feed BEFORE you get into the nap zone because an “almost ready to sleep baby” will fall asleep on breast/bottle if you offer too close. Worse if they aren’t ready for a “real”nap that 10 minute feeding nap will be THE NAP.
I’m not so into “systems” for feeding and like to have more of a “when requested” approach for newborns combined with a focus on wake times for “when is it time to sleep next.”
Alexis, thank you so so much for this article. My four and a half month old has been taking tiny 30 minute naps since about three months old. I could not understand why she couldn’t stay asleep longer, and I even tried your other suggestion of slightly waking her right before I knew she’d be getting up. Nothing worked. After reading this article, I started feeding my baby again half an hour before her nap. She now naps over an hour every time!!!! I am so grateful. This article helped me I realize that the eat/play/sleep routine was the culprit in my baby’s case. I had read about eat/play/sleep in Baby Wise, and even though the Baby Wise schedules never worked for me, I clung to the eat/play/sleep routine to give my life some semblance of order. It worked until she was 3 months and then failed me. Now that I’m focusing on appropriate wake times, like you talk about, and now that I’m feeding her closer to her nap, I no longer struggle with the constant 30 minute catnaps. Thanks again!
Hi Alexis,
I was just wondering if you’ve read any of the books re the methods you are happy to criticise? The reason I ask is because I find your post somewhat inaccurate. Firstly the baby whisperer book is all about picking up cues and therefore being sensitive and flexible to your baby as an individual who needs to be understood. Secondly, it is not rigid or about the parents doing Pinterest boards for two hours rather than attending to their babies’ needs. In fact on that point and the comparison to a squirrel, I find your comments somewhat patronising and offensive. At the end of the day, one size does not fit all so different techniques will work for different families. The best we can hope for therefore is that, if one feels qualified to pass comment and judgment on others / other techniques, they at least remain true to the facts and portray an accurate view of the subject at hand.
For my part, I have a 5 week old and I have found the baby whisperer immensely helpful, less for the structure and more for all the wonderful advice on learning to understand my son – observing him, what he does, how he responds and therefore what different cries, faces, body language may mean. I also enjoy my baby far more now as I communicate with him and have time in the day to shower, have lunch etc. Before reading the book, I was treating him as a job to be done vs interacting with and enjoying every moment. Thanks
Hey Nataly,
Nope you totally caught me. I absolutely DON’T have a huge library of every baby sleep book under the sun and I certainly haven’t READ any of these books. I just glanced at their Wikipedia pages and drew broad conclusions from a few sentences. Totes.
Well I’m sorry if you find me patronising and offensive. Good luck finding a free resource with a sense of humor better aligned to your personal sensitivities.
Alexis
btw I almost literally LOL’d at this !!! =D
Hi Nataly,
I was wondering if you yourself read Alexis’ blog entry on eat,play, sleep thoroughly? If you had, you would read that Alexis clearly states that it works for some babies, and if it does, great! She is specifically commenting when it doesn’t work for some other babies and offering insight for those parents into why it may not be working for their baby. Which is so helpful! Nowhere does she pass judgement on those who use methods/routines different from what she recommends. She’s just offering some perspective and explanations.
Also, you even state yourself that you found the baby whisperer helpful “less for the structure” (and more for the understanding baby’s cues)- the structure is exactly what Alexis is commenting on. So it seems you and Alexis are both agreeing- the structure of baby whisperer may not be that helpful for some parents.
Hello,
I’m hoping for some advice. My baby is 13 weeks today and is EBF. He weighed 9.12 at birth and currently weighs 13.5 (around) He has always work up every 2 or 2 1/2 hours (sometimes less, rarely more). He won’t take a pacifier and I normally nurse him back to sleep when he wakes because it’s easy and I’m obviously exhausted.
I’ve tried to hold off nursing him and will rock, shhh, pat, swaddle, etc. with very little luck. He will just scream and get so upset he will be up for an hour or more.
When I nurse he back to sleep it takes usually less than 15 minutes and he’s back to sleep. Until recently, he hardly won’t even nurse back to sleep. He also has always been a cat napper, never sleeping more than 45 minutes normally.
I feel like I’m doing something wrong! Especially when I read that babies younger than him sleep 5, 7, 8, hours a night!
I’m going back to work in two weeks and really wish I could just get a little bit of a longer stretch of sleep. I’d love just 4 hours.. heck I’d take 3.
Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you.
Oh, I also tried the 90 min plan with little success. I feed him on demand all day. He rarely goes 3 hours without eating.
The EASY schedule was a godsend for me when I discovered it at 4-weeks old. My baby was born 4 weeks early, so I try to adjust me expectations by that amount. He was super colicky, not full on crying, just fussy constantly, but that routine really helped. Then about 12 weeks old (8 weeks adjusted) this routine started to go out the window as his naps are waaaay too short to accommodate the eating part of the routine. He is simply not hungry when he wakes up because it’s often only been two hours since his last feed. The longest he naps is an hour, most of the time 45 minutes, but is sleepy after 1-1.5 hours of being awake. He also has mostly lost his rooting reflex and doesn’t offer any hunger cues anymore (he is now 16 weeks, 12 weeks adjusted). I’m lost all over again. I’ve been a wreck the past month because the EASY routine worked so well for so long. Since there are no hunger cues, and I formula feed, I just offer him the bottle every three hours if he hasn’t shown any interest, and sooner if he seems cranky but not tired, and track how much he’s eating. I wouldn’t say that is working well for me, but I guess we will get there.
omg, 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.
I 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!
Hi 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!
Hi 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.
Hi 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 🙂
Hi! 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?
Hi, 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.
My 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?
This 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?
I 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.
Eat 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.
I 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!
“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.
I am a first time mom and I really, really needed this comment. My son is happier when I give a short feed before a nap, he sleeps better, and I’m not super stressed because I didn’t spend 40 minutes trying to get him to take a 20 minute nap. So then why does nursing before nap time make me feel like a such a failure??
Thank 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.
I feel so much better ready this article, I tried tizzy’s hall save our sleep, and that book needs to be burnt, I tried it with my second baby and it caused me anxiety and a lot of second guessing to what my baby girl wanted. So now with my 3rd I follow his lead, and he sleeps great at. Night, still catnaps during the day, but he’s happy, babies need to learn how to sleep, and we need to love and cuddle them, and not to put them in a room to sleep because a book tells you too!
Kind regards
Sherryn
Thanks for this post because I was trying the EASY plan myself and ran into issues. I Asked one youtube mom a question about her suggestion with the EASY plan and All I got was a “like” instead of an answer which didn’t help at all and made no sense, weird! Anyway I like the concept of Eat Play Sleep only because it helps me to decipher what “may” come next but it’s just silly to follow it literally because there are so many factors that don’t make it realistic. I say use it as a guide and not a set in stone path. For example if my daughter has been content for a long time after I fed her then knowing this plan helps me to know sleep will be next. (Who’s knows my daughter could be hungry and tired at the same time too.)
We had a a really good routine going that my baby developed on her own and then we tried the easy system because other people told me to when we didn’t have any problems . All that it caused was crap Naps and snack feeding .
People were telling me my baby should be feeding every time she wakes from a nap and then go back to nap 2 hours later from waking .
We had a system of nature that worked .
Wake around 7 and feed within 30 mins
Sleep 1.5 to 2 hours later for two hours
Wake , feed 30 min – 1 hour after waking
And so this went on all day and always had a baby that slept well .
The last two days I tried the suggested and it’s been really hard and exhausting mentally but also having a baby that doesn’t feed on waking from naps makes it hard to predict the day to go places when formula fed and feel like I’m waiting around . She is now 6 months old .
https://www.wattlehealth.com.au/2017/11/01/feedplaysleep-best-routine-baby/
Love this too.
Thank goodness. I don’t know know why I have listened to what other people tell me what I “should do” .
I am literally crying reading this as I sit here hearing my baby wake up for the 20th time since trying to get her to sleep 2hrs ago. I think as moms we push for this perfection and go with what the books say or what everyone else is doing. My sister in law has a baby only slightly older than mine and her baby has slept 12 hrs straight since 4 weeks old (they follow MOC). I never wanted my baby to cry it out and we have tried to schedule method for months now. I feel judgement from my parents because they see the one baby is so easy and sticks to a schedule fine. Well my baby is just unique and spirited in her own way and after reading your article I am finally ready to just let it go and listen to my baby and love on her as much as I can because I know it won’t always be like this and one day I will miss all the snuggles.
I have been doing the opposite and do play eat sleep and my 7month old naps well 1.5 to 2 hours…sometimes 2.5 (is that too much?) Just because it has always veen like that and he naps fine. I am worried however that he will have long term eat = sleep associations. If he naps fine with play eat sleep…is it fine to keep this system?