Nicole,
I had the exact same problem with my lo, he wouldn't for the life of me sleep longer then 45 min almost to the min every nap, which meant that he was only able to be awake for an hour or so before he needed another nap. This was fine until he started waking up every hour at night as well.
I read Tracy's book and found that I needed to putt him on a 4 hour schedule, and try to lenthen his naps by doing pu/pd and patting and shushing. the first day went better then expected with him waking at 45 min and after about half an hour of patting he went back down for 10 min, then after about 5 min he went back down for another 45. The afternoon nap was much harder but after about a week I could get him back to sleep for the morning nap in a few min and he would sleep for about 10 min at a time with the afternoon nap. Then just this week he started to sleep for 1 1/2-2 hours for his morning naps without waking up and after about 15 min with his afternoon naps he's back asleep for 45 or so. He did regress quite badly after about 6-7 days (see the second post I put up) and I was so frustrated because I thought we had fixed the problem and I was ready to give up. Thanks to Jo and my mom I stuck with it and he's back on track.
All of this has affected his nightime schedule and it was an absolute mess for those 2 weeks but now we're a bit better on track with him waking at least 2 times after his dreamfeed. If he can't be patted back to sleep in a few min I feed him. It seems to be working better then before, but I think, as Jo said, they need to be fed 1-2 times a night at this age, and I found that when I stopped feeding him at night he started waking more often.
As for the daytime feeding I find my lo has all of the sudden become very distracted at the slightest noise, so I'm starting to bring him into a room where nobody is to feed him, just to help with that. And I also try to give him about 20 min before sleep with no t.v or noise and just a quiet song or even just humming (he seems to really like it when i hum......
) to calm him before going into his room and his crib. I realize that I only have one kid and therefore this is much easier to do then when you have 3! But hopefully something about this can help you. I know just how you feel it is very confusing and hard to tell what the right thing to do is, but the best advice I can give is whatever you do, be consistent and try not to worry so much (easier said then done, believe me I know!).
I hope this helps and you get some sleep!! Also, check out the nap board, they may have more tips.......
Jasmine
