Feeding 3 hourly = better night sleep?

I have been following a basic eat/play/sleep routine throughout the day for my 6.5 week old boy and it's going ok for us so far. However I don't wake him during the day and let him sleep as long as he wants (because traditionally he didn't sleep much during the day but is doing better now). So sometimes he sleeps for 2 hours, other times 3 hours and sometimes even 3.5-4 hours. However he doesn't really do very long stretches at night, the longest is 4 hours but often it's 2-3 hours and I'm wondering whether I should follow a stricter 3 hourly daytime routine and ensure I feed every 3 hours even if that means waking him.....??

I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences, especially those who used to not follow a 3 hourly routine, but then instigated it and the effect it had on night time sleeping.

Thanks in advance!!!

I used to let Lily sleep as long as she wanted and tbh she now feeds 2-3 hourly during the day at 4 months. Her nights are still the same as yours. When I let her sleep as long as she wanted she still woke during the night frequently as well.

Babies, especially young babies, need to be fed quite frequent.

You could give it a try (feeding closer together) and see if it works, no harm in trying.

Edited by Lil_Nic9

I'm waiting for my own baby to arrive but have been a nanny off and on for the past 10+ years - and would have to agree with the feeding regularly during the day at 3hr intervals (and possibly shorter cluster feeds from 5pm till bedtime) and then letting bubs go for as long as they want during the night. Even if that means waking them during the day. Stick to your eat play sleep routine but make it a 3- 3.5hr routine and hopefully he will settle down.
best of luck!

Kiara used to cluster feed in the afternoons feeding 1-2 hourly from about 4pm until we put her to bed. Her choice, not mine though. Now she only does 2 close together (5pm on the breast then her big feed from the bottle at 6:30 which she's always frantic for).

She went from the 3 hourly feeds at night to lasting from 8pm to 2:30 (5:30, 8:30 etc). Then about the next week this extended all the way to 5:30am (actually thinking about it now this is what she was doing at 8 weeks). It was about then that I tried the dream feed but I just couldn't get her to feed without waking her properly and I was worried about then making her get hungry for that extra feed so I didn't persist. Then at about 3 months old she just jumped herself to sleeping right through to 7-7:30. So we started putting her to bed earlier. We did introduce her evening meal of EBM in a bottle at about 8 weeks so I'm not sure if that helped the longer night sleep because I'm convinced she takes more from the bottle than from me. But it sounds like you bottle feed anyway so that wouldn't help.

Just remember every baby and mother is different. But personally I'd try the 3 hour feeding during the day and closer together if he wants it in the early evening and see if it helps.

We did cluster feeding and my PN told me not to and if I didn't do it I'd get a break (don't know why she said it as I wasn't complaining) she told me to use a dummy but dd hated it!

She seems to have out grown the cluster feeding, although does it when we have a growth spurt.

When they are young I didn't see any harm in doing it, just cuddling and feeding... Meant we didn't get much done but oh well!

What would happen if your dh didn't do the dream feed?
We do our dream feed about 11/midnight, any earlier and she wakes sooner iygwim.

doesnt and never did work here:) though i guess for a while he fed a lot and didnt sleep in evening and then had a long sleep..

we dont do a dream feed he wakes at 10-11 anyway

Lily has awesome day sleeps! And is a good night sleeper too, just not long stretches, in fact she sleeps longer at night when we are out all day e.g 10-5 or something ridiculously long like that!

We went with the 'never wake a sleeping baby theory.' Our daughter slept as long as she wanted. I put a lot of effort into distinguishing daytime and nightime sleeping though - nighttime sleeps after 7 were always in her room, in the dark and I tried to keep things very quiet (no talking). During the day she slept with the curtains open (or out and about in the pram/ carseat). We had big chatty feeds and a nice play. She had roughly a three hourly feeding cycle, so would never have slept longer than 2.5hrs during the day - she would have woken herself up. She starting dropping night time feeds around six weeks, and by about 12 weeks she could do about 10 hours overnight - but never increased frequency of feeds during the day - still three hourly (I suspect the volume of milk increased). Good luck - it feels like ages waiting for them to start dropping feeds!

I always followed the eat/play/sleep routine as much as I could, DS was waking once or twice through the night at 5 weeks and a friend suggested I try 3 hourly feeds instead of demand feeding, which I did and honestly it worked wonders for us, that coupled with putting him in his own room from 6 weeks and he has slept through ever since (started doing 8-9 hours and now does 12 hours every night). Obviously now he's on a different schedule (4 hourly feeding) but I've always found schedule feeding so much better for him than demand feeding.

I would usually wake him if he passed the 3.5 hour mark for a feed during the day to start the routine over. And I too have always kept night and day extremely different for him - lots of talking and laughing during the day, curtains open, lights on etc. Then at night for that last feed, all lights off, no talking, no eye contact (although his eyes are usually closed during his last feed anyway)

We also didn't wrap for day sleeps past 6 weeks, only at night and I've kept that going now.

So I have been following the 3 hourly routine more closely since I posted but it hasn't made a difference to night time sleeping.

Spencer usually sleeps for 4 hours from 7pm and then does 3 hours and then maybe 2 hours!

He's now 7 weeks - is this normal??? It seems a lot of other babies his age are doing much longer stretches....