12 week routine and nighttime sleep.

[Ninjapig]

Hi all.
Looking for some advice on our routine, baby's nighttime sleep appears to be regressing and I'm not sure why.
A few weeks ago we were getting 5/6 hour blocks at night but now we're back to 3/4 hour blocks.
I'd love to get to the position where I'm only feeding once in the night... is this possible?

LO is 12 weeks old and is very big for his age (91st centile)
He's not a great napper, most naps are 45min long unless he's in the sling when he will sleep for 2.5 hours if I allow it.
He occasionally goes down on his own but more commonly I have to put him down and softly jig the sleepyhead while patting his thigh. We use white noise and a swaddle up suit which he loves.

He's big so potentially he could be ready for a 4 hour routine but I worry that he still won't nap for longer than 45 minutes. As the day progresses I find it impossible to resettle him to achieve a longer nap.

Here's our routine, apologies for the essay!!

Wake: 6:00
E: 6.30
A: 6.50
S: 8:00 (80min in two 40min block. I have to resettle him in between)

E:9:45
A:10.00
S:11:15 (45min)

E: 12:30
A: 1:00
S: 2:30 (45min)

E: 3:20
A: 3:30
E: 4:00
A: 4:20
S: 5:10 (45/50 min)
A: 6:00
E: 6:30 4/5 Oz bottle
(He's quite easily distracted in the evenings so I feed multiple times to try and get enough food into him. )

Bath : 7.00
E: 7.15
Wind down: 7.30
S: 8.00

Sleeps usually from 8:00- 12am.
Wakes up hungry at 12 and then again at 3am.

I don't dream feed because I go to bed at 9.30 and he suffers a bit from reflux and gas so I worried about being able to burp him properly without completely waking him up.

[creations]

Hello and welcome to BW forums

The additional feed you are seeing at night is likely just a growth spurt.  It's totally normal for a LO this age to have 2 feeds at night, one may or may not be a dream feed and then the other is called a night feed.  Your LO is still doing a long stretch between E from 7.15 - 12 midnight which is almost 5 hrs and then the next feed at 3hrs which is expected.  Los are only expected to do one longer stretch between E overnight and believe it or not "sleeping through the night" is a 5hr stretch, not the 8 - 12 hrs you might think.

I notice there are a few times in your EASY you feed at less than 3hrs during the day. it is possible that LO is hungry earlier than expected as he is awake and using more calories than if he was asleep, if that's the case go ahead and feed him but otherwise I'd aim for the 3hrly E for most of the day with perhaps a cluster in the evening.

He's big so potentially he could be ready for a 4 hour routine

Really the 4hrEASY is not based on LOs size. For a baby any size if they are around 4 months old and are showing less interest in one or more of their feeds then the E times can be moved to 3hr 15, 3hr 30, etc up to 4hrly to suit LO so that they feed well at each feed.  Some LOs are not ready for 4hrly E at 4 months.  As your LO is only 3 months and is feeding at less than 3hrly intervals I would doubt moving to 4hrly intervals would be of any benefit to the routine.

Hope this helps

[Ninjapig]

Hi Creations,
Thanks so much for your reply. I'll look at pushing the feeds to 3hours, if I can crack slightly longer naps I think it will make this easier.

[Ninjapig]

Hi All,
Little one is now 15 weeks old, I've pushed his feeds to 3hr intervals and he's taking 2 x 1.5hr naps and two shorter cat naps each day. 

Unfortunately his nighttime sleep just keeps getting worse.
Last night he was up at 12.30am, 4am, 5.30am, 6.30am.

Tonight he has  already woken at 11pm and 2am which means I'm staring down the barrel of yet another horrible night. My partner tried to put him back down without feeding him (he had 6oz formula  +breast milk so should be able to go for longer than 3.5hrs) but he was unsuccessful. It seems like his sleep just keeps getting worse and I'm wondering if all this effort to get him into a routine is worth it?
Help please. 

[creations]

Hi there
It's good to see the day time routine and naps are going well for you now

Ordinarily I would split your last post and move it over to the Night Waking Board as it is a new question and more appropriate for that board since your days are going so well.  At the moment there seems to be a glitch in the system which is not allowing me to do this for you so I suggest you begin a new thread on the NW board then copy and paste what you have posted here into that new thread.

Let me know if you have problems though.