3.5 mo eating every 2.5hour day & night!

[Duby]

HI
my DS is a big boy, eating only 10 minutes per feed since he was born, and gaining weight steadily.
But he is eating mostly every 2.5 hour, or 3, day and night! I cannot see the end of this trend.
At night DH tries to resettle him with the paci, sometimes he succeed but most of the times he's not able to - DS keeps on crying or, even when he falls asleep he wakes every 5 minutes till I feed him again.
DS falls asleep independently (I put him down awake and he sucks his hand) both for naps and night sleep, so I suppose there's not a prop dependency involved.
Moreover, given that he can now stay awake for 1.5-2 hours, eating so often means that his naps are really short.

what do I have to do?
Just wait for him to overcome this phase?
I'm quite tired and have to take care of his 2 year old sister too. I'm so happy to breastfeed (I weaned his sister at 14month) but now I'm seriously considering to give him formula too, at least at night.

thanks!

[Erin M]

If he's eating every 3 hours at this point, he'd be within the range of normal -- though every 2.5 is definitely a bit frequent!  My ds ate every 3 hours day and night for the first several months, which is not very much fun.  He did work through it eventually though. 

Are you feeding both sides at every feed?  You can try doing some breast compressions during the end of the feeding or massaging the breast near the chest wall in order to make sure that he's getting all the fat that there is for him.  In the case of him short napping because of being hungry, you can feed, and then do a top up feed about an hour later so you know he's not hungry. 

[*Ali*]

Also it may be worth starting a sleep post as I found short naps actually led to more frequent feeds. If my DS1 woke early from a nap he would be hungry early. By extending his 45 min naps around 4mo I was able to extend his feeding intervals. Being awake longer burns more calories and hence they will often need to feed more frequently. Plus once they are awake they realise they are hungry whereas they don't feel the hunger when asleep.

[Duby]

@Erin:
I'm feeding him one side each feed as I've always done, with his sister too. I tried to feed him longer than 10 minutes but he starts playing with the nipple and he often backs up the exceeding milk. Next thing I'll try is expressing milk in the morning and have DH giving it to him for the DF and see if a richer milk helps him sleeping longer.
@Ali:
I'm sure there's a short nap issue going on. When I can I try to put him back to sleep using shh-pat but I've never been able to. He won't fall asleep in my arms and as soon as I put him down he starts to cry

[Erin M]

If he's a bigger baby (ds and dd2 both were fairly huge), I'd try double sided feeding if he'll take it.  They both moved to double sided feeding earlier than dd1, who was consistently smaller.