Is this a normal sleep pattern for a 15-week-old?

[snottagecheese]

He goes down between 8.30 and 9.30pm, depending on how long it takes me to settle him (often he wakes a few mins after he's fallen asleep, and this can happen multiple times). Then he usually does a 3- or even 4-hour stretch, followed by waking every 1-2 hours until about 8-8.30am (he's probably ready to get up a bit earlier than that, but I'm not, so I feed him back to sleep ).

Does this sound usual for his age? I'm worried about a) feeding him to sleep each time, but he howls if I don't and while I can grit my teeth and try to rock him to sleep at the start of the night, I can't be doing that on an hourly basis from 1am to 8am! I'm also wondering b) about whether I can/should try and lengthen the very short stretches after the first (relatively) long sleep - or is that unrealistic at this point? I feel so clueless!

It sounds normal, just not nice for you unfortunately.
There's a section on babysleepsite.com about 4 month old baby's sleep.
It talks about how babies sleep deeply for the first few hours of their night, then very lightly thereafter. It's also common for babies to have a major sleep regression at 4 months - see the many thread on here.
In the meantime, would you be able to go to bed at the same time as your baby? Not ideal I know, as those few hours in the evening can be so precious I know.

My 15 week old is exactly the same. Bed at 9/9:30pm, sleeps till 1/2am then wakes every couple of hours till 7:30am. And is fed back to sleep through the night. He does have a stinky cold at the moment which doesn't help. He had been sleeping between 6 and 8 hours until a couple of weeks ago so I'm putting it down to regression and being a bit poorly. Happydaze is right, the first block of sleep tends to be the deepest and longest, then light sleep from there on in. Fingers crossed he goes back to his previous snooze pattern!!