Help starting a feeding and sleeping routine with 3 month old

[cookiewuk]

Im looking for some advice as I've heard between 3-6 months is a very important time in establishing routine for your baby. Currently I am bf on demand and letting her nap when she is tired. She has always been a hungry baby and feeds regularly between every half an hour to every 2 hours. She doesn't like to be put down and spends her time screaming if Im not holding her or playing with her. When she does nap and i manage to put her down it is never for longer than 10 minutes which is a bit of a nightmare as i can never get anything done! She would sleep longer if i kept hold of her and generally i have to as she wakes up and screams as soon as i put her down even if she has been out for the count. At night she used to cluster feed from 6pm til 10pm then fall asleep and be out until 2pm but she was ill a fortnight ago and has now stopped cluster feeding and will just scream when she's tired for a few hours and we just have to rock her until she eventually goes to sleep.
So my questions are how much sleep should she be having? Can I get her to nap regularly for a decent amount of time? How can i get her into a good bedtime routine and what time should she be going down? Thank you

cookie I could have written your post - exactly the same here with our ebf 3 month old DD. only difference is generally there's no bedtime struggle - she's out like a light at 8.30 pm after bath/feed.

Exhausting, isn't it? Sometimes it feels like every other baby at this stage is more settled or having more spaced out feeds (every 3-4 hours...drool) or is sleeping longer at night. Can't imagine that luxury - oh for just four hours uninterrupted sleep!

Can't offer anything other than solidarity...and will watch thread with interest!

Same here (DS is 3mo) but I also have a very demanding DD who is a toddler going through the terrible twos.

I am at my whits end.

Good to know it isn't only me struggling! Although I would not wish the exhaustion on anyone it makes me feel better that she isn't the only baby in this non routine. Hopefully someone will come along with a great plan for us all :)

I had similar issues with my son who was BF - part of his problem was due to cow's milk allergy (through my milk) but here's what I did:

Feeding - there is a great book called "what to expect when you are breastfeeding...and what if you can't" by Clare Byam Cook (I think) and I found her advice really helpful. Firstly I spaced out the feeds a bit more to at least 3 hours - if you feed too often then the baby gets too used to snacking rather than taking a decent feed. I was still feeding on demand but by 3 months I wanted to gain a bit of control over the situation myself. The effect of this was that I started to learn more about why my son was crying each time rather than assuming he was hungry so just feeding him - before I had had rubbish advice from midwives/HV's saying "if he's crying, feed him" which meant I was never trying to find out if there was another reason for him being upset.
He responded perfectly well to having bigger, but fewer, feeds and actually never really seemed particularly hungry - if I fed him at 4 hours it was because I didn't want to leave it longer, not because he was showing signs.

Sleeping - changing the feeds slightly also helped with sleeping as he started to sleep for longer at night. His 'long' sleep by around 10 weeks was from approx 6pm-11pm - I tried the idea of a dream feed at 9pm but he still woke up at 11pm so I didn't bother as it wasn't gaining anything. Instead I adapted to his natural pattern and went to bed at 6pm as well so I knew that I would get 4-5 hours straight even if it was at a bit of an awkward time.
After a couple of weeks he was sleeping from 6pm to around 2am (because he was getting fuller, better feeds during the day) and then I was gradually able to space out the feeds further until bedtime was 7pm. Incidentally the day he slept through was the day he went into his cot (approx 16 weeks) - not sure if it was co-incidence but it seemed that it was being in the restricted space of the moses basket (rahter than hunger) that was waking him up at 3am as the day he went into the cot he slept from 7pm-5am and has slept through since.
Daytime napping - I used to let him nap on me as it was the only way he would sleep in the day but to be honest that's not feasible long term and it was doing my back in so I stopped. It's still a work in progress and most bathtimes are a nightmare because he's so knackered but the theory I'm working to is to put him in his cot as soon as he goes 'glassy-eyed' and quiet, go in and out to comfort him but I don't pick him up, and apparently the way they go to sleep is the way they like to wake up (eg, if he goes to sleep in a dark room in his sleep bag, he's gonna be pretty grumpy if he wakes up in his car seat fully clothed. Similarly, rocking him to sleep is a recipe for disaster because he's not going to wake up in your arms and he'll want rocking every time he wakes up in order to get back to sleep). At the moment he has maybe 2 45min naps during the day but even that is an improvement so things are going in the right direction.
One other thing I've found is that wearing him out is good for his sleep so there's lots of sitting up, tummy time, dancing and rolling!
I'm not in any way an expert but he is 5mo now and we do have a semblance of a routine even though I thought we'd never have one, so hope any of the above helps.
x

Cookie, re-reading your message, that book is definitely worth a read as she talks in it about babies screaming all the time and parents thinking there is something wrong or that they are always hungry but a lot of the time it's just that the baby is completely knackered! That was definitely the case with my son - it's as if once he started sleeping just a little bit more he realised how much more he needed and just kept extending the sleep by himself.
Good luck.

Greta - you're post has given me hope! I'm 32 weeks with DC2, and hoping to bf this time (DC just wouldn't - no idea why really, but that was many moons ago). I expressed with him and it was great, if time consuming.

I've been really uncomfortable with the whole "if baby cries, feed" mantra. I know babies have different cries and really don't want my nipple to be the answer every time! This probably isn't a popular view ...

Anyway - thanks, and sorry for butting in.

Yep, it was probably the worst advice I have ever been given and definitely delayed finding out that there was an underlying problem with the allergy, but also importantly for me I feel like it really affected my bond with my son for the first 3 months because I was constantly thinking I wasn't feeding him enough when actually I wasn't giving him the chance to teach me what he was saying because I was always sticking a boob in his mouth!

My DS became a lot easier to distract around 3-4 months and instead of being ABSOLUTELY STARVING NOW! you could begin to stretch him out.

I used some of the EASY principles to get into a routine of sorts, along with a set bedtime routine start time of 6pm.

At 3 months I was aiming for 3 hourly feeds, an awake time of 90 minutes and then shh-pat to sleep in his cot or a walk in the pram. I know it doesn't guarantee you can say, 'yeah he'll always be asleep at 11am' but quite frankly we're only just there now at 14 months.

Just a bit longer of waiting it out and I expect that you will have a baby who you struggle to convince to feed unless there are no distractions (believe it or not!)

Also emphasise AIMING. Illness, teething, growth spurts don't tend to go well with a routine