sorry to hear that he has been ill these past weeks. hopefully everything will be better soon. i hope some of this helps...
My concerns are not during the night as i think he does really well. But i need those naps in the day to just keep on track of things and he just wont go for long enough. How can i get him to sleep more? The only way he goes to sleep is in the car or if he is in his buggy being walked around the shops.
I think the reason Josh takes so long to go to sleep and then does not sleep for longer than 30 min is he is probably overtired. if with the timings you gave you said he went to sleep easily and did 1hr 30 on average i woudl say leave it alone, but most 12 week olds cannot stay up 2 hrs and be ok with it (the problem is often not during the A time, but shows up when you then try to put down to sleep)
my 8 mo old only extended A time past 1hr 30 when she was 4-5 months old and it really depends on their temperment and how they go to sleep , etc
i understand about the extended feeding time as i have gone through that issue with olivia since 3 months when we switched to the bottle and feeds would drag on. I was finally advised to set a shorter limit on the feed because they do learn that you will keep offering it and then get into a habit of taking little and taking the endless top ups. we try to stick to this as often as possible now - we offer the bottle and she takes what she wants (for Olivia it is usually 3-4 oz) then she gets a play break of 15-20 minutes and gets offered the bottle again. whatever she takes in tose 2 offerings is it. they can make it to the next feed fine (it is us who think every feed has to be a "full" one) and if let's say they only take 4 oz, the next feed is likely to be better KWIM? when i was taking up to an hour to do feeds that seemed like all we did, so cutting down that time will allow for more normal A time and then get him to bed earlier in each cycle.
the first day you change this on him he MIGHT need more help than later on, but he will quickly realize what is going on. within 3 feeds olivia started eating better (not perfect but better...)
I would try to get him in bed about 1hr - 1hr 15 max after waking and see how that goes. if he still takes 30-40 min you know it is too long and try 1hr etc moving backwards until he does not seem overtired when you go to put him down.
12.00pm- Sleep. Refuses to drop off unless his dummy is coated in gripe water and will wake as soon as you put him down.
are you putting him down asleep for all his naps/bed?? are you trying to teach him top go to sleep independently? if you put him to bed asleep he will wake when put in the cot because of the change and/or wake during transitions because he is not where he was when he fell asleep. a major part of EASY is putting the babies in bed awake (can be drowsy, but not asleep).
My other worry is that 7am is really early for me. By getting him up at this time will i put him in a habit. 8am would be lovely for me, maybe even 9am, but he does wake up for 7am for a feed. Should i treat this as a night feed and put him back to bed, or accept that the day has started?
babies are different to adults - they go to bed and then wake up according to the rhythms of the day/night so in spite of what parents would love, they usually will wake between 6and 8am with 6:30-7:30 being the most popular natural waking time for majority of babies. if they go to bed later most babies do not then sleep later, they still wake up in that "window" and are just less rested than the baby who went to bed at 7/7:30pm or earlier. it seems counterintuitive to adults but sleep begets sleep so if they nap well in the day and go to be early, the will actually sleep longer at night! when he is older he might extend towards 8 am but for now i would not advise treating a 7am waking as a night feed - it is usually light out in most of the world at 7am, birds are chirping, the day begins. he is acknowledging this and getting into the rhythm of the day and i think it is counterproductive to try to change that - but that is my opinion. i just don't have any experience with working on a 9am - 9pm schedule so you could ask if anyone specifically has experience that can help you.
I would also like him to go to bed earlier but there is no way he will go from earlier than 11pm - any advice?
when you get rid of the overtiredness this will vanish - that i know for sure. it took us until olivia was 7 weeks to realize she was overtired and another few weeks to get everythign back on track. prior to that she woudl be awake fo rup to 5 hours at a time and the evenings were as you described - even when she fell asleep we never knew for how long. once she started napping better it all fell into place and she would go down until her dream feed and we would not hear from her.
He seems to want to be awake a lot of the time, but he does get bored quickly and wants attention a lot of the time - will he grow out of this and eventually play himself?
not sure what he is doing that tells you he wants attention - if it is grumbling he could be telling you he is getting overstimulated or wants to go to bed - think about when these were happening- if it was 45min - 1 hr after waking it is probably his cue to you to take him to his room and have some quite time and start winding down for bedtime/nap.
