My 3 months old still wakes every 3 hours for feeding

[firsttimemum889]

Hi all ,

My 12 weeks baby still wakes up for feeding every 3 hours which means he gets less than a 3hour sleep in between at nights ! Is this normal ? All the babies in my nct group seem to have at least one long strech of sleep .
He did sleep 5 hours at 8 weeks betwen 7 pmand 12 pm but that didnt last long he now has the following schedule at night
7 p.m Feed and sleep
10:00-11:00 wake up for food
2: 30-3 wakes up again hungry
6-7 wakes for the day

Is this normal ? And is here anything ican do to make him sleep better . I Am exhausted and i see no light at the end of the tunnel i really thought it would be getting better by now

It is so tiring but perfectly normal and age appropriate to be waking that much.

I'm afraid to say that mine were all over 2 years before they had a nighttime schedule anywhere close to as good as yours . It has driven me to the brink of sleep deprived madness.

Other people (better at getting babies to sleep well) may have some good tips. On the whole the best tip I ever had was to just shift your expectations so that you removed the stress associated with your kid not sleeping as 'well' as others. And don't forget, other parents may be overstating the good nights, AND the really sleep deprived ones may not even be making it out of the house to tell you about it!

I wish my 1 year old slept for 3 hours at a time! Lol In all seriousness though yes it is completely normal. When they're teething it's worse!

But... T good news is that they do grow out of it, eventually.

Sounds brilliant - my DS is nearly six months and hardly ever sleeps more than two hours in a row...

Completely normal. Ds1 fed every two hours 24/7 until he was 10mos. He wouldn’t take a bottle so I didn’t sleep for longer than an hour and a half for nearly a year.
Three hours is actually not that bad at this age. The only thing that got ds1 to stop feeding every two hours was stopping bf. I couldn’t go any longer anyway.

My 8 month old doesn't go as long as that at night so sounds like you've got it pretty good to me, sorry!

I disagree with the "perfectly normal" chorus above. It can be expected at 3 months for a baby to have one longer stretch of sleep of several hours. And it's not wrong for a tiered mother to want to encourage this.

Can you feed more frequently in the day? Perhaps a dummy?

My 6 month old is the same if not worse.

You're not doing anything wrong, I'd say that's quite good, although I appreciate the sleep deprivation is an absolute killer.

My advice is to stop thinking about how to fix it and start thinking about how to make it easiest for you to deal with. So, for example, if bfing co sleeping might make it easier for you to feed lying down at night so you are less disturbed. If ff, can your dp share the night feeds? White noise? A dummy? Etc etc.

It will improve but in all honesty I started coping better when I stopped ploughing all my efforts into finding a solution and just focused on getting from one night to the next.

I forgot to mention that he is on formula so not breastfeeding ! I know its normal to wake up at night am not expecting him to sleep through but i was expecting a longer strech of sleep according to the experience of friends and family with their own babies .

He is taking a dummy and i used white noise etc
He is taking naps during the say but usually only on me if i put him down he will only sleep for half an hour but of o let him sleep on me he will aleep for 1 and a half hours sometimes 2 .

So this is supposed to last for a year ? Dont think i can cope sleep deprivation is making me mizerable !

About feeding more often during the day what will that achieve ?

Sadly my 5 month old is on almost exact same schedule

Trouble is, babies are all so different so can't really compare... I go to bed early to make sure I get a few extra zzz's! Could you go to sleep at 8.30 so you get a bit of extra rest before his 10pm feed?

It is normal, in fact pretty much any sleep pattern with babies this age is normal as they're all so different. You will probably find it changes frequently though. So he might be doing something completely different in a couple weeks. The important thing to remember is you're not doing anything wrong, ignore what other people's babies are doing, they really are so different. I have three and they are all completely different. Try to get the rest when you can and know that it won't last forever!

Very normal for a three month old. It sounds quite 'good' to me.
My baby would wake more often than this. Keep on going, things will get better (and then probably a little worse again if your baby has the 4 and 9 month sleep regressions).

For me things got so bad at 9 months (with 4-5 nightly wake ups). Then suddenly out of the blue he started sleeping through every night at 10 months. Phew!

It isn't forever

Mine did until 6 months. Once I started weaning on to food & a proper bedtime routine she slept all night. It does get better remember 12 weeks is still super super young

OP feeding more often during the day may mean he takes in more calories and therefore won't need to feed as much at night. It didn't work with mine but that's the idea behind it anyway.

Lack of sleep is terrible! My first was 18 months before he stopped waking every 3 hours so I totally feel your pain. I did find I eventually adjusted to lack of sleep

Yep, it's normal. Some babies do start to sleep longer stretches for a bit between 8-12 weeks. I know mine had a few nights when she went like 6 hours around that time. But it doesn't last usually and things get rocky again around 4 months. But yes, mine was about every 3-4 hours until 9 months for a feed. She dropped her night feeds on her own at 9 months (was no longer interested when offered, so I just stopped offering). But sorry to say that doesn't mean you necessarily get a full night's sleep for a bit. Mine was still waking at least once between 10pm and 6am (and sometimes 2-3 times, which is about every 2-3 hours) until she was 3.5. We just road it out as bedtimes were generally pretty easy and as long as they go back to sleep quickly, it's not so bad. When she was ready to sleep all night, it happened on its own.