Constant unlatching with 3.5 month old?

lorahbora

My DD, who is nearly 16 weeks, has always been a great breast feeder, she had a great latch from day 1 and hasn't had any issues up until now. She went from nursing every 2 hours (which she had been doing since she was 6 weeks, every 1.5 hours before then) to nursing every 3-4 hours just this past weekend. We were traveling and visiting family, so she was more distracted than usual. She even went 5 hours at one point without asking to eat, and I eventually just fed her anyway because I couldn't believe it. Since we got home on Sunday night, she's continuing to go 3-4 hours between nursings. 

I don't know if the previous information is relevant, but it coincides with this new unlatching thing. She'll start off the nurse for maybe 1-2 minutes of normal nursing, but then it changes - she'll suck for 2 seconds, turn her head just far enough so that she unlatches, then immediately turn back to relatch, suck for 2 seconds, etc. etc. She does this for the entire rest of the time. This used to be her "I'm done" sign toward the end of a nursing, but when I try to unlatch her and sit her up, she gets fussy like she isn't done. If I just let her go until she's ready to be done, it can be upwards of 20 minutes on one side (she's normally 5-10 on one side). 

I've read that around 4 months, babies can start to get really distracted and become bad nursers. With that in mind, I made sure to nurse her in a quiet, dark area with no distractions, but it didn't seem to do anything. She does this for her middle of the night nursings as well. Her eyes are closed, she isn't looking around when she does this head turn thing, and it's very rhythmic so it doesn't seem like she's responding to a distraction.

Any ideas, or is she just going through a weird phase? It kinda hurts after a while!