Odd nap schedule for 3.5 month old

[BCMommy]

Hello,

My son is exactly 16 weeks today and I’ve been trying to put him on an EASY routine over the past 2 months. Over the past few days, his naps seems to have gotten longer during the day and it seems like he’s transitioning to a 3.5 hour schedule, but I can’t seem to figure out what kind of schedule he is on. In the mornings, he will usually nap anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hours. His average A time is 1 hour and 10 to 1 hour and 30 minutes. However, he always wakes up around the 30 minute mark for his mid-day nap, and yesterday I was able to put him back to sleep but today I was not. He then goes down again for his third nap after being awake for about 1 hour and 40 minute to close to 2 hours around 3pm.

My questions are:
1. What am I doing wrong that’s causing him to wake after sleeping for 30 minutes during the mid-day nap? I’m also scared to keep him too long that he becomes overtired...
2.  Does he still need to catnap at the end of the day or should I have kept him wake for longer and put him straight to bed?
3. How can I tweak his schedule so he takes more consistent naps?
4. What can I do to prevent him from waking every 3 hours at night?

Please see below his schedule from yesterday and today:

Tuesday
7:10am wake and feed
- 8:13am sleep

9:45am wake and feed
- 11:04am sleep, brief waking after 30 minutes but went back to sleep

1:13pm wake
- 2:50pm sleep
- 3:57 brief awake but went back to sleep with soother

4:40pm wake and feed
- 6:00pm catnap
- 6:40pm wake and feed again but he was tired and had a hard time staying awake during feed

9:30pm wake and feed

1:30am wake and feed

4:40am wake and gave soother

7:20 wake and feed

Wednesday
7:20am wake and feed
- 8:32am sleep
- 9:26am wake briefly and went back to sleep within 5 minutes

11:03am wake and feed
- 12:40pm sleep

1:10pm wake and feed
- 2:55 sleep

Thank you in advance for all your help!!

[Katet]

In answer to your question about what you are doing wrong...probably nothing! Babies still strughle to link sleep cycles together at a young age and they change so much in the early months. Its not abnormal to have as I was told 'one unsettled period a day, one unsettled day a week and one unsettled week a month" It's not easy an there is a BIG growyh spurt around 3/4 months so it could be that or developmenal or if you tend to time watch more than looking for tired signs it could be that you are miss judging the tired signs and a bit early or a bit late. Also at 3/4 months the can start to act tired when they are bored or what they are doing is too stimulating. So sometimes they need a change of scene rather than sleep....its a steep learning curve that keeps changing.

In terms of sleeping longer at night, are the wakings for feeds at the same time or do they change, if they are the latter then there isn'tmuch you can do as they are hunger, if they are set your watch on them then they are more habitual. I found I could delay them by resettling without a feed. BUT it is normal for babies to still feed twice a night at this age esp if going through a growth spurt.

If a growth spurt is the reason for the naps and night feeds, if you are BF then try to cluster feed. If you FF then it maybe you need to increase the volume of day feeds.

[BCMommy]

Sorry about the delayed reply! Thank you for your suggestions ~ I will keep observing and try some of your suggestions!