Night feeds increasing - help!

[marzipananimal]

DS is 14.5 weeks. Nights have always been quite variable but we would typically get a 5-6 hour stretch at the start of the night. Then around 12 weeks he went through a growth spurt and fed very frequently at night. That has passed but he now wants feeding every 3 hours ish at night (sometimes 4 if I'm lucky).
This has coincided with more of a daytime routine where he feeds every 3 hours approx (I never make him wait if he's hungry though).
It's been like this for a good 2 weeks now and i'm very tired!
I know every 3 hours isn't too bad and could be worse but given that he has in the past gone 7 hours it's pretty frustrating.

Any advice or should I just suck it up?

No advice, but my ds is similar. We were getting 8 hours from 7pm-3am, but now it's 6.30pm/10.30pm/4am/7am (though last night he squeezed in feeds at midnight, 2am and 6am too)

I'm hoping it will settle down once he's weaned, but he's only 18 weeks at the moment so that's a while off yet.

Yes I was thinking that but 6 months is a long way off - I hope things improve before then!

It's the 4 month sleep regression - their brains are really busy working on a huge developmental spurt which happens at around 19 weeks.

There is a great book explaining it called The Wonder Weeks by two scientists who researched all the developmental spurts up to 13 months.

They say "Your baby may not settle down well at night now. It may be more difficult to get her to bed in the evenings, or she may lie awake at night. She may want a night feeding again, or she may even demand to be fed several times a night. She may also wake up much earlier in the morning."

The good news is that is passes on its own ? and isn?t a sign of babies needing to start solids either.

There?s useful information on the sleep regression here, here, here and here.

I'd recommend co-sleeping, even if only on a temporary basis (if you're not already).

So it's over at 19 weeks then?

DS is currently lying awake and whinging in my bed while I'm hiding in the living room trying to ignore him...

thanks angeldog. could it be that even though it started at 12/13 weeks? Though he was 2 weeks late and is fairly big and advanced for his age

marzipananimal, if he was born late, he's likely to hit the regression early - it goes on the due date rather than the birth date. There's some variation anyway - it's around 19 weeks from the due date but is sometimes earlier, sometimes later.

My DS was born early so hits regressions late.

There is often a 12 week growth spurt, so it could be that and the regression running together.

The Wonder Weeks says: "The fussy period preceding the developmental spurt will often last 5 weeks, although it may be as short as 1 week or as long as 6."

My DS went from feeding once or twice a night to feeding 3 or 4 times a night. It just went back to once or twice without me doing anything different.

The thing which might stop them lengthening time between feeds again is if they've developed a strong sucking to sleep association so they think they need to feed to get off again after every sleep cycle (my DS had this at 6/7 months). If that's the case, they'd probably be waking every 1.5-2 hours. The No-Cry Sleep Solution has some good ideas for dealing with this - but won't help till the 19 week spurt is past.

HTH