14 week old only sleeps 2 hours

[Graced2015]

Hi, this is my first post on here so hopefully I get it right.
I have a little girl who is coming up for 14 weeks in a few days, she's a happy little one who doesn't often complain at much. But we're having real problems with her night time sleeping. Since she was about 9 weeks she only sleeps 2hours at a time on average, and it's really tiring me out. I've tried nursing her back to sleep and also rocking her but however she gets back to sleep she won't sleep for long. Last night she only slept an hour at a time! She's my first baby so don't really know where to start on sleep training and was wandering if anyone could help me?
Thanks

Hi Graced

While many babies are sleeping for longer periods overnight at 14 weeks old, many babies are not and are waking 2 hourly (or indeed more frequently than that).

So firstly please know that you are not alone and consider altering your expectations rather than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole (as it were).

sleep training isn't needed at this age because basically your baby is waking and crying because the baby has a need, so you just need to meet that need.

The most usual cause of sleep problems in the first 4 months is hunger - waking because she is hungry. So feeding more often through the daytime and making sure she is fed when waking in the night time will help with this.

Also babies (especially breastfed babies) like to comfort suck since this helps them sleep. So allowing your baby to comfort suck might help her sleep. This can either be done by allowing her to suckle you freely through the night (maybe by co-sleeping?) or others use a dummy for this to allow for some independent sleeping.

Over tiredness can also cause difficulties in staying asleep and lead to disturbed nights. If your daughter getting enough daytime sleep? I find a 2 hourly routine through the day helpful - aiming for 30-45 minutes sleep and at least one full feed in every 2 hours through the daytime.
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She's too little to sleep train.

All you can really do is encourage her to feed as much as possible at the times you do want her up and then make life as easy as possible overnight.