4pm to 7pm what to do with my 11wk old?

[maxsmom]

Hi -
My son is 11 weeks old, EBF and I have had him on a 7,10,1,4,7,10 EASY routine since about 2wks...the last 3 nights he began sleeping through the night...from 10:20pm until 6:45am, which is great!....but the other new development is that from about 4pm until 7pm bedtime he wants to nurse and/or be held the entire time (he has rarely been a cluster feeder in the past). also he seems to have dropped both the afternoon and early evening naps....so he is basically awake from the 1pm feeding until I put him to bed at 7pm....I don't seem to be able to do anything to help him get to sleep.  Tues, Wed, Thurs and Fri looked like this
eat/awake 7-8:30/9am
asleep 8:30/9am-10am
eat/awake 10-11:30
asleep 11:30-1/1:30
eat/awake 1/1:30-7pm!!!!
eating at 4ish, 6ish and finally at 7pm at which point he is zonked out!
My questions are....what is going on with this? has anyone else had this experience? how long will it last? doesn't he need more sleep during the day?
any thoughts or similar experiences would be helpful....i am worried that i might be creating some habit that will be difficult to break...or maybe the little guy is just "tanking up".  tell me what you think.
thanks - maxwell's mom

[liacarmen]

I worried constantly too when my son was that age if he was sleeping enough - he's 5 months old now. We had a lot of days where I couldn't get him down for much more than an hour all day. We did seriously almost all evening nursing from about 6 to 13 weeks (how did I do that?? It's just a memory now!) I'll bet he's tanking up for the night and/or having a growth spurt and if you hang in there it'll sort itself out. I don't think you can create too many bad habits with an LO that's only 11 weeks old, I'd just go with it. Good luck!