14 week old waking for 3 hour feeds now.

HI there,

My lovely girl has suddenly changed her sleeping patterns over this past week and I wondered if you all had some advice.

She was a 4 hourly feed baby with a 3 hour just before bedtime. She sometimes slept for a 4-5 hour stint at night (between feeds), in the early days she could even go 6 hours between feeds but not often. On Sunday night she did a good 6 1/2 hour between a feed and then suddenly everything has changed. She wakes every 3 hours and is not that hungry either. Last night I waited another half hour to see if she would be hungrier, but no.

We have our day naps down really well too. She has 3 naps and they last about 2 hours - could this be too long during the day now?

I just want to know what has happened to my little night sleeper! Any advice appreciated!

I would hazard a guess that all it is that she turned three months old It's at about that point when babies start waking more fully between sleep cycles. Most find it a bit harder to go back to sleep for another sleep cycle, and consequently wake more (even if they're not properly hungry).

Some seem to get used to it quickly and go back to being excellent sleepers. Some, like my two little ones, are dreadful for a few months. I think it's basically luck of the draw.

There are things you can do to help - like making sure there isn't any sleep associations making things hard (say they're used to you rocking the bassinette to get them to sleep... now when they wake up after a short sleep its no longer rocking and they find it hard to settle back down without it). Or put in some sleep associations that might make things easier (if they're used to going to sleep with white noise, and they wake up and its still playing, they might find it easier to settle back to sleep). But mostly I think it's just a matter of going with the flow and knowing it will get better again one day.

Edited by Hopes

Yup sleep patterns changed for us regularly but DD was pretty much 2 hourly for many months!