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I gave up with EASY pretty early on because E would only take half hour naps - and she needed them after an hour of awake time. So it was more like EASASEASAS and I never got round to the Y bit!!

By three months I had also given up sticking to her three hour feeding schedule. On the rare occasion she takes more than a half hour nap, I just wait for her to wake up and demand food!

In short, I feed her when she's hungry, I put her down to nap when she's tired, I get her when she wakes up and I rarely even look at the clock any more!!

@illumina: Aaw, bless her! E went through an "eating's cheating" phase - she just got so distracted by everything, I think - but we're definitely out the other side of that now thank goodness.

I think the big no-no as far as EASY goes is feeding the baby to sleep, so that feeding becomes a sleep crutch. I think you'll be fine with what you have suggested, because she will have awake time between her feed and her nap..... try it and see because you can always try something else if it doesn't work as you'd hoped.

Never, we pretty much kept to the guidelines until my son dropped his second nap at 20 months.

@illumina: I never wake her to eat, but she has always been VERY vocal letting me know she was hungry. For a while I pretty much did EAES, but then again, I was nursing to sleep so obviously that wasn't following the 'rules' anyway. Now that she is consistently napping at all, I don't follow it so carefully, more like I keep an eye on the time and know she will be hungry about every 3 hours, will be awake for 1-2 hours, and will probably (hopefully) nap for 1-2 hours. If it's getting close to nap time and I know she will be hungry (ie close to 3 hours from last feeding) before I want her to wake, I feed her before nap. That means sometimes I feed her at 2.5 hours. Lately it all has actually shaken out to a 3 hour routine but that is based on her, not the book.

I don't think there is a problem with feeding right before nap, just make sure to break it up with a book or two, burping, etc, before putting her down.

Around the same age that your LO was, I noticed that she would nap longer if I nursed her before her nap. So I started doing that. Honestly, she really didn't seem to get a "sleep association" with it and it worked better for us. So that was the end of EASY for us.

I never followed it. DS only took 30 minute naps so whenever he actually fell asleep I let him. He just ate when hungry and slept when tired - no real "schedule" at all.