When did your BF baby start feeding 4 hrly through the day??

[caspercat]

Currently DS (9 wks) still feeding 3 hrly. Actually feeding him this often is no prob, but am having trouble sorting out his naps. The prob is that i have to do the nursery run twice a day for DD, so DS has a nap about 3ish at home, then again at 5 in the car (is a 50 min round trip!), waking about 6 ish, but is then not tired enough to go down for the night at 7.30, but not happy enough to stay awake any longer. And he's often screaming for a feed at 5 which i can't do as driving.
We've jiggled things about to try so many different things, but nothing works & we end up with a screaming baby at bedtime.
DD was ff by this stage, which meant she was feeding 4 hrly, having a good long sleep at lunchtime with another nap at 4.30ish after her 3pm feed. If i could get DS to do this, it would make our afternoons/evenings more bearable as they're pretty hellish at the mo.
The reason i ask is DH wants me to switch to ff so he'd go longer btwn feeds & we could get into a better routine, but i keep telling him he should get to 4hrly by himself on BF if we just give him another 2 or 3 weeks.
And i know lots of you are not into routines, but i'm struggling with the erraticness (sp) of it all at the mo, the routine with DD really helped me out as was suffering with PND & i needed the structure to help me through it. DD thrived on it too. Any ideas???

caspercat - I sympathise with the juggling!

Strikes me that DS would benefit from a later nap in the afternoon if you can manage it. He may then stay awake better in the car and be readier to sleep in the evenings.

I don't see how a four hourly routine would help much. To be honest, most human beings eat or drink something more often than this.

Whatever you do, time will resolve it somehow. 9 weeks is still young and he will change anyway - becoming less grumpy/tired at 7.30.

DS never went to 4 hours - he was 3 hours until we started weaning at 6 months, then gradually dropped the day feeds.

If it helps at all our routine was roughly

7am feed
9am short nap
10am feed
11-1 nap
1pm feed
3pm short nap
4pm feed
5.30pm bath, followed by 6ish feed and bed.

tiktok, thank you so much for your quick reply. it's the grumpy bit that's upsetting, cos it seems no matter when he feeds or sleeps, the minute i sit down to feed him after his bath he screams and is really distressed, which was distressing for me. dh tried him for a few eves on a bottle of ebm, but no better, so bf him again now. he gets so upset, no amount of cuddles help, and he ends up crying himself to sleep, and i also end up in tears. at the mo it doesn't feel like it will ever pass, and i worry what it's doing to him in the long run xx

Oops sorry meant to say that was not till he was older, around 4 months. Certainly up to 3 months he still fed a lot more than that and cluster fed in the evening. You will get through it, like tiktok says you just need to give it time.

tinierclanger, that's the sort of thing i'm aiming for. we're nearly there, it's just from 5pm it's tricky, cos he naps in the car, but then dd has her bath about 6.30pm before bed and ds has to fit around that, but is too tired....and i'm on my own in the eve, so have to do it by myself, so impossible to put ds down earlier as have to feed etc dd. it's so difficult ...

You have my sympathy, must be a lot tougher with the two and no help in the evening. Could anyone else help out with the nursery run occasionally?