Feed, play, sleep...

The short answer is no, I tended to wait for hungry cues before feeding, rather than sticking to a "routine".

But even if you want to follow a routine it's hard at that age to get the timing right because either their sleep isn't long enough or their wake period isn't long enough to get the feed perfectly 3 hours apart. There were many many times that my DD woke and it was still 30mins or an hour until her next feed time then she was ready for sleep almost immediately after that next feed.

It depends on your approach as to what you might do. I roughly fed 3 hourly but I also demand fed. So if she wasn't hungry I didn't push it but if she was rooting around after 2 hours then she got fed (didn't try stretching things out until after 3 months).   There were definitely lots of times that the feed and sleep bits bumped into each other. What I just used to do was make sure there was some awake period after a feed, even if it was 5 mins, so she burped properly and didn't get in the habit of feeding to sleep. I'd recommend aiming for the feed, play sleep idea but still be guided by your bub, particularly since he's still really little.

Everyone does things a different way though - you just have to find one that works for you. Hope that helps.

Thanks, my original routine was similar - feed roughly every 3 hours (but flexible) and let him do his thing, watching for tired cues etc. It just seems to not be working at the moment.

TBH, after today I don't know if it's the routine that's the problem, so maybe I should start a new post.
I think he's just not wanting to eat. No matter how awake or hungry he is, when I put him on the boob he takes a few gulps, pushes and scratches me and then finally starts to scream. I thought it might be wind, and somethimes he does bring up a burp or two, but it doesn't seem to be a major problem. Sometimes I get 2 or 3 minutes, then he's done.

He's still having heavy wet nappies, but they do smell a little stronger than usual. I don't know why he won't eat... and the crying really stresses me out. When I do try to feed him I know I'm going to have to spend some time settling him again. If I persevere and try to keep him on the boob he really starts screaming (like blue in the face screaming).

*sigh*

I would attribute it to a growth spurt, but it's kinda the opposite

2 thoughts about the short feeding;
I wonder if he's a bit refluxy. I know when my DD was having problems (before we got it under control) she would suck frantically for about 2 minutes then pull off screaming then latch again for about 30 seconds then pull off etc etc until she was too distressed even to latch.
BUT also maybe he's just a really efficient feeder and he only needs 3 minutes at the moment. There was definitely an age where my daughter only took 5 minutes to feed and I was worried about it but plenty of wet nappies and seemed fine apart from that.

Have you got a Plunket Family Centre near you? They could watch you doing some feeds and give you some ideas. I did this when my daughter jumped to those really short feeds because I was worried about it and it was great.

I feed on demand here so wait for her to be hungry, we did 'eat, play, sleep' and at first I was doing feed when she woke and then before I put her down but we changed it at 4 months due to getting too much foremilk and so she'd get up and about 30mins-1 hour after she was up she'd feed, so really she'd play, feed, play then sleep!

We didn't get to 3 hourly feeding until she started solids though!