DS is coming up to 20 weeks on Mon and has been ebf (apart from an expressed bottle at around 11pm) since birth. He feeds for a max of 10mins from each boob and has only recently started taking both.
Anyway, he has (& I know how lucky I've been- but then I do carry around a plank of wood as penance for my lucky stars) always gone down to bed at 7pm, waking at 730am with a feed around 11pm and 3am. Anyway, bar holidays/ jabs etc he kept this up until about 2 weeks ago. He now wakes himself at 10.30/11pm for a feed (takes 5oz of expressed from bottle) then again at 1am, 3am and 4.30am. He seems to be starving and want a feed at 1.30 but then half heartedly sucks away at 3am & my dh just pats him back to sleep now at 430. I know he needs food at some point in the night, but the broken sleep and feeding at 130 & 3 is getting to be a bit of a killer especially as I'm on tenterhooks at 430 too in case he needs feeding. I wait to see if he'll self settle before going in to feed but he has stopped doing this. However, I wonder if it's habit as the waking is so uniform? Have read about sleep regression / growth spurts etc and guess it could be this, but he seemed to have a better feed and more settled when it was just once at 3am so want to try to get back to this.
Any advice about eeking out feeding from 1.30am back to 3am as I reckon could get back on track if can do this.. (Maybe I need to start carrying around a lucky trunk of wood under each arm). Obviously an issue is that apart from the 5oz of expressed I have no idea how much he takes though he feeds well- every 3 hrs in the day. I have no plans to wean him till 6 months & he has never wanted a dummy & will just spit it out, so that's a bit of a non starter. Any thoughts much appreciated.