3 month old with messy naps/messy feeding times

[Jpbaby]

Hello! It's been so long since I posted on this forum, very nice to be back and get awesome advice from all of you!
I have a 3 month old boy. We don't have a set schedule but I have been following EASY since birth. Our days never look the same, and that's fine. He falls asleep on his own in his pack and play with a little soothing from his paci and when he needs it a little pat on the back.
We encounter any kind of nap on our days, 30 minutes, 40-45-50  minutes, 1 hour or 1 hour and 10-20-30-40 minutes, up to 2 hours. Usually if he is going for more than 2 hours I wake him up. The thing is I never know how long his naps are going to be, and I end up sticking around watching him on and off to help him transition in case he is waking early from a nap. So I don't get much time for myself, since I work from home I really need his nap time for myself. My main concern comes from the following though, he just passed his 3 month growth spurt as well as his 12 week wonder week, or so I think. But since then he keeps eating every 2, 2.5 or 3 hours never in a consistent way like before, actually this has been happening since 10 weeks. For some reason I thought once we passed the 3 month spurt/wonder week, his feeding schedule would be back to 3 hours and therefore he would start napping 1.5 hours. What is throwing me off, is that he keeps waking from his naps at odd minutes, like 50 minutes or 1 hour and 10 minutes, almost never fully finishing the 2 sleep cycles, but well passed the first 45 minute cycle. And when this happens its usually around the 2 hour mark from his last feed, or 2.5. Almost never gets to 3 hours, although he does sometimes.
As you can see all this inconsistency in his routine, makes it very hard for us to follow his needs. I feel like I no longer know when he should eat, if I put him to nap too early or too late, etc.
Could it be possible that he's still going through the grow spurt, and this keeps throwing off our naps? It's been already more than a week since it started, one day after a few days in he slept for 3 hours and started eating in longer stretches, which is why I thought we were through, but now we are back to 2 - 2.5 hour feedings. Not sure what to think. Any advice?

Yesderday looked like this:

E-6:15
A
S-7:25

E-8:30
A
E-9:15
A
S-10:00

E-12:00
A
S-1:30

E-2:20
A
S-3:20

E-4:30
A-bath
E-5:30
A
S-6:00 bedtime

E-8:00 and straight to bed

Night feedings at 12 am and 3 am

I don't DF because I have noticed it doesn't help DS, when he wakes between 10-11 pm for a feed he still wakes for his 3 am feed.
He is EBF.
This morning we woke up at 5:45 and had his feed and our day started afterwards. I give him an early bedtime because he usually wakes between 5:30 and 6 am. His afternoon naps are short and poor, so he is usually too tired to catnap one more time in order to have time to extend his bedtime.

Can't wait to hear your thoughts! Thank you!!!

[creations]

Hello and welcome back to BW

Sorry to see you didn't get any replies yet.  It could be that your question is kind of tricky to answer.  It looks to me like you want predictability with consistent E times, S times and nap lengths but at the same time you appear to be saying that days are never the same and that this is fine for you.  Do you want to move to a more structured routine or not really?

Looking at your times from yesterday it looks like he went for his first nap too early and didnt' sleep long enough, I'd move towards a 1hr 30 A time for all the A times and see if it helps.  The second nap came at 1hr 30 A time and it looks like he slept 2 hrs.

With the E times, it is your choice of course, but many of us have had A time after S and before E if it has not yet been 3 hrs so that the E routine is predictable and to avoid small meals being taken on a shorter E time. for instance here

E-6:15
A
S-7:25

E-8:30
A
E-9:15

he is fed at 6.15am so next feed due at 9.15am but you give another feed at 8.30am which means he is eating at 2hr15 and again another 45 min later.  Is he taking proper feeds at these times??  I would have just waited until 9.15 to feed unless he was obviously crying for food.

Other than this I am not really sure what to advise - it is up to you if you want to move towards a more structured routine but routine changes are generally led by the parent in response to LOs needs rather than led by LO which can result in snacking, short naps and props.

[Jpbaby]

Thank you very for your advice. I am not looking for a structured routine, so sorry if that is what it seemed I was looking for. Mostly I was trying to fix our routine so that he gets a proper feeding and a proper nap so that he is not OT at bedtime and doesn't wake to feed at night more than he needs.
Anyway, it occurred to me that I just kept feeding him on one side instead of both at the same time. Since 2 days ago I have been doing this, and he's now eating between 3 and 3.5 hours, therefore not waking early from his naps. Sometimes he's able to transition on his own sometimes we help him do it, but over all is going great.
I now have another question, how many naps is he supposed to take at 14 weeks? How long should his naps be?
Thank you very much for your help!

[creations]

Glad to hear things are going well for you.
There's a link here with guidance sleep amounts:
https://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=85130.0
Do remember it's just guidance though. My DS barely reached the lower end of the number of hours sleep but his routine was predictable and he was well rested.  some LOs are low sleep needs and sleep even less than mine did.