I wanted to jot down my journey of breaking LO from demand feeding and co-sleeping. It has made my usual easy going baby fussy and demanding and leaving us both sorely lacking in sleep. The worst thing about it is that I knew better! Both my older children were on routines and I saw first hand how it benefited them and myself. Because Jax is my last I wanted to hold and cuddle him all the time and I read Dr. Sears and listened to advocates of demand feeding/co-sleeping. If Dr. Sear's where standing here in front of me right now I would kick him in the shin. So for those of you who find yourself in the same position I will write down our experience so we can track how long it takes to break these bad habits of sleepless nights and cat naps.
I began with last night because well that's when I finished reading the book Baby Whisper by Tracy Hogg. Last night I did the E.A.S.Y. (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You time) or really the E.A.S. putting Jax down at 9:45 in his bassinet. Luckily I have put him in his bassinet on a routine bases so he is not terrified of if but he ends up in our bed around midnight. So midnight comes and like clock work he wakes up and cries. I try to give him a pacifier and soothe him but he is very angry thus leading me to understand he is hungry, as our day was all over the place. So I gave him a dreamland feeding. This is normally for younger infants but we practiced it tonight but I hope for this to be the only instance as he will eat on a regular routine today. So he ate fully on both breast and drifted off to sleep while nursing and I laid him down. He woke at 2 am and I gave him the pacifier in his bassinet which he easily took to my surprise. I have tried this before but when he was in bed with me so obviously my boob was just as close and he preferred a boob to a pacifier. He took this with no struggle, suckled for a little, sang to himself and under 5 minutes he spat the pacifier out and was back fast asleep. This happened again at 3:15 again at 4:19, again at 5:14, and finally he woke up and could not be pacified at 6:30, he was hungry! So this started our day as I dragged my weary rear end out of bed I took him to our living room turned on the light and gave him a full feeding. Talking to him and stimulating him to keep him awake, which was no trouble. He ate fully and now he is in the Activity stage and I will lay him down at around 8-8:30 depending on his sleep ques. I will post again tonight to tell how our day went!
~Kara
