14 week old - awake once an hour. Help me!

[BoomKapow]

My 14 week old son has never been a great sleeper. Since about 11 weeks though he went down at about 8 and slept till 12 then was awake every two hours or so until 6 when I could no longer convince him to go back to sleep. When he woke he was easy to feed and then would go straight back to sleep.

This last week though we aren't getting that initial 4 hours, he is awake at 10 then 12 then once an hour after. He doesn't like being put down again and will scream unless I hold him until he is deeply asleep.

What is going on!? Is this the famous 4 month sleep regression? He learnt to roll this week, would that have caused this? I am exhausted.

He is breastfed but will take a bottle. He has a dummy but has started rejecting it this week.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can help him sleep for slightly longer at a time?

He has a dummy but has started rejecting it this week

This would suggest to be it is calorie related.

Gross motor skill developments (rolling, crawling, standing, walking) significantly increase calorific need. Massively - baby could need 25% more milk, or more, per day every day.

The extra milk might come through bigger feeds. It's likely to come through more frequent feeds too.

Calorie loading through the daytime means fewer calories are needed over night. So feed, feed, feed, feed, feed in the day.

Also ensure frequent naps - no more than an hour or so awake between naps at this age.

fate thanks for replying. I'm trying to keep feeding constantly in the day but he fusses and pulls away after a while. I will keep persisting! Any tips on how to encourage nappping other than feeding to sleep on me!?

Also how long would you expect a nap to be? The mind altering exhaustion is making me doubt everything I do!

Do you cosleep? You would get more rest.

Re: feeding. There is a fine line between over offering the breast in the day when baby is not hungry, leading to fussy distracted sucking. But also offering often enough to increase milk/calorie intake in the day. It's a difficult balancing act.

Any tips on how to encourage nappping other than feeding to sleep on me!?

Swaddle can help, it recreates the feeling of being held. But if baby hasn't already got use to a swaddle by 14 weeks it is too late to introduce one.

Another is to breastfeed lying down and then extract yourself once baby is asleep and leave baby where he falls asleep.

Another option is dummy and rhythmic movement. I liked the bouncy chair for this. Put baby in awake, with dummy and be relentless about constant bouncing. Keep going constantly.

The key is baby needs to go to sleep where they stay asleep - not being moved somewhere else once asleep. So if baby does fall asleep in your arms (not ideal, but it happens) the best thing to do is just let baby stay asleep there without any attempt to move.

Also how long would you expect a nap to be?

30-45 minutes at this age.

Awake time, as an approximation, wants to be about double nap length. Half hour naps mean 1h awake time between naps (give or take). 45 minute naps might give 90 ish minute awake time.

I wouldn't expect awake time longer than 2 hours at any time for several months yet. A good average would be to start settling baby to sleep after 1h awake with the aim for baby to be fully asleep with 60-90 minutes of waking from the last nap. That allows for up to half an hour to settle baby to sleep.