Unrealistic to expect my 11 week old to sleep more?

[AlmondFrangipani]

We have a lovely 11 week old DS. He's never been a good sleeper and if anything it's getting worse. At the moment he naps well in the day (3-4 hours in total, normally 8am ish, 11am ish and 4pm ish). We have a good bedtime routine and he's down by 7.30pm. He then tends to sleep for 3 hours and has a feed. Then sleeps for another 2.5 hours and has another feed. From 2am ish on it all goes wrong! He thrashes around, groans and shouts. He rarely sleeps from then until his morning nap!! We've tried feeding, changing, soothing, ignoring, swaddling and nothing helps.

We are exhausted and out of ideas. I'm also soooo fed up of people telling me that he should be sleeping longer...

Any tips?

IME this is completely normal. Sorry!
It's all very well helpful () people telling you babies should sleep longer, but at 11 weeks, apart from introducing a gentle bedtime routine, which you already have, there isn't much you can do.
At that stage, I found it much easier to accept that I didn't have natural sleepers, and made sure I got a decent sleep during the day at some point, and tell myself that this is a phase that will pass.

My situation isn't as bad as yours but my DD is the same age and if she wakes up anytime after 5am for a feed she doesn't like to go back to sleep! The past 2 days instead of giving in and getting up we've had her in bed with us after 5 because she seems a lot happier there. She did drift off to sleep at 6 so we managed to get an extra 2 hours sleep which did was amazing!

I realise that after 2am that is still the majority of your nights sleep but maybe it's worth a go for a few nights just to get a little more rest? I hope it gets better soon :)

It is unfortunately quite common for babies to sleep really badly during the second part of the night - I read a thread in the 'sleeping' section about this a while ago. Think it's something to do with their digestion/wind etc - I just wish I'd read it before my son was 4 months old so I'd have known I wasn't alone!

The only thing you could try is to really reinforce the difference between daytime and night-time to encourage him to recognise that he should start to sleep more at night. It will happen soon, and to be honest he's not doing badly - up until 4months my son slept like yours at night and we were lucky to get a 45 min nap out of him during the day!

Thanks for the messages. It's nice to hear I'm not alone as it does feel like that sometimes. My Mummy friends are sympathetic but none of them have experienced this. I really think it is a digestion thing as the way he thrashes etc. Hopefully things get better soon as functioning in the day is tough!

Maybe he could do with a touch more day sleep because it sounds like over tiredness with the restless latter part of the night (I've read somewhere!)
But as he gets older it should resolve itself. How does he go down for a nap? Would he settle if nearer you?

I really try to get him down before he's over tired as it's a nightmare otherwise! For his naps I look for cues then out him in his cot which is in our room. He has a dummy to go to sleep with so I tend to put that in a few times before he drops off properly! Bit of a pain but he won't go off without it!

Yes it is hard - I remember it well! In the end it was super early bedtimes (around 6pm) which did the trick until they got a bit older (5/6 months) and could cope with being awake a bit more!

I also had better naps when they were in the sling - which didn't impact on their ability to nap in the cot.