E.A.S.Y.

I know, this isn't a very good picture. You can hardly even tell that it's Steph sleeping on the floor of Evan's room. Posting it is really just an excuse to talk about how the process of readjusting his sleeping and eating schedule has been going.

"Readjusting his schedule" is really being a bit generous to Steph and I... he didn't have much of a schedule. Evan had been eating every two or three hours throughout the day (when a baby his age should really be able to go four hours between feedings), and he was waking Steph up twice at night to eat (when he should be able to sleep through the night, and certainly shouldn't need the extra meals). He would usually take a nap in the early afternoon, but not always, and it was anyone's guess for how long (sometimes three hours, sometimes only half an hour). Maybe most annoying, we couldn't get him to go to bed until 10 o'clock on most nights, even though we could tell he was tired much earlier than that, and we had to walk him around to get him to sleep at all.

This was obviously tough on both of us, especially on Steph given that she's the one who had to feed him all the time, but the straw that broke the camel's back (Steph would be the camel in this scenario) was when he stopped going back to sleep promptly after these wee hours feedings. Having to get up every 3 hours is bad enough, but having to stay up for an hour or more each time quickly became unbearable. As a short term fix we let him sleep with us for a week or two, but that was only marginally better, and it had its own set of problems.

So, Steph started looking around on the internets and talking to friends to try and find a strategy for dealing with Evan's sleep habits that would work for us. She pretty quickly happened upon a book by the Baby Whisperer (as I mentioned before, we're suckers for all things whisperer) called "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems". That sounded pretty good to us, so we high-tailed it over to the library, checked it out, and decided that was the way we were going to go. With a newfound sense of resolve (born out of desperation and exhaustion, as so many of the actions of first-time parents are) we girded ourselves for battle against our ever-hungry, fitfully-somnolent infant.

I won't go into too many details of the E.A.S.Y. Method (you can read her book if you're interested), but it all comes down to establishing a predictable routine (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your time, repeat), and really tuning in to your baby's cues so you can tell when they're getting sleepy and put them to bed before they have a chance to melt down. There are obviously more details to it than that, but that's the gist of it. She also has her own way of dealing with the "cry it out" question that is essentially letting the baby cry but staying with them while they do it.

And now, the question that is undoubtedly on your mind at this point: "Does it work?" For us at least, the answer is fortunately "Yes." The first three days and nights were a challenge - I got a total of five hours of sleep the first two and Steph had to deal with several minimally-sleepy naps. By the fourth day, though, Evan started to get with the program, and ever since things have been going much better. Not perfect, but better. Some nights he sleeps all the way through, and some nights he wakes up crying once or twice, but he's always in his bed, and he never needs a 2 A.M. snack anymore. In fact he's taken to only eating every four hours splendidly.

Of course, the early appearance of his first tooth is threatening all of our gains, but I'll deal with that some other time.