Routine for 3 month old

[KimchiLaLa]

Hi all

My baby just turned 3 months and I'd like to start some sort of routine with her. We've just started bath/massage/bottle/bed properly and we put her in her cot at 7, she then wakes habitually at 8 (not for a feed), 2.30/3 and then 6/7. We want to try and get her to not wake at 8 - not sure why she is doing that...

I'd like to know about other 3 month old routines so I can see what is realistic. She can only stay awake for 1.5hrs at a time max or gets really overtired and hard to put down so she can't have loads and loads of awake time.

She feeds 4-5 ounces every 3.5-4 hours. Gaining weight well.

Any advice?

Hey,
My DD is 3months on Thursday and we started a routine with her about 2wks ago-before that we had a rough routine but we now stick to the same thing. We bath every other night (in the event we couldn't bath on a night we didn't want her relying on it every night) so on bath nights she has a bath around 6:45 and then her bottle and a story at 7 and will often then fall asleep on the bottle or very shortly after and is put straight in her next to me cot by our bed. On the nights she isn't bathed she has a clean sleepsuit and her sleeping bag on with bottle and story at 7 and then goes straight to bed. DD will then usually wake around 4am for a feed and will go back down and wake up around 7/7:30. DD does have approx 7ounces though and feeds every 3.5-4hrs through the day, like your baby is only generally awake for up to 2hrs and then has a nap usually around 30min-1hr.

I do think we are very fortunate with her that she is a good sleeper as I hear others are still up every 3hrs or so, I'm sure we will get hit with the 4month regression!!!
Since doing the routine though she seems to be thriving with it and starts to get grizzly around 6:30 to start the bedtime routine!
Only advice I could offer is maybe see if your baby will take a bit more milk and not sure if they have a dummy but that can really help to soothe them.
Good luck

Or maybe try putting her down a little later at 8 and see if she will then sleep through to 2:30/3 as once she is doing that you could then maybe try and bring it forward an hour after a few weeks. We started with putting our DD down for 7:30 but once she got into the routine she wanted to go down that bit earlier so we brought it forward to 7.

I found they when my 12 week old DS woke 45 mins - 1 hr after being put down, it was overtiredness. He also can only stay awake around 1.5hrs (although it's slowly increasing recently) It seems counterintuitive but I make sure he has a nap close enough to get him through to bedtime (2 hr gap absolute max) and he stopped doing it. He sleeps better at night when he's not tired. I can even let him sleep till 6 and go down at 7 and it doesn't affect his sleep. Try a later nap?

Thanks both!
I will try a later nap, to be honest I read the last nap should end 1.5 hours before so I've ended her naps at 5/5.30. I will let her go on until 6 though.
If that doesn't work I'll try a later bedtime
Do either of you dreamfeed?

Totally agree with lemondrop on later nap. Id also read that you shouldn't let them nap past 4:30/5 and when I tried that my DD was so overtired and took a lot longer to settle whereas now I will let her nap until she needs it (her last nap usually ends around 5:45). I did try a dream feed a couple of times but just found our current routine worked better as I'll top her up before I put her down so she just takes what she wants then but I have heard dream feeds work well for a lot of people.

Well for the past two nights she's been only going 3 hours (having done 5 hours and then another 4 hour stretch). Not sure what is going on but it's so frustrating. Im hoping it's the 12 week leap as she is also much, much more clingy.

I also used to top up before she went to sleep so I may start doing that, rather than wait it out which I was doing.

We tried a dreamfeed for a week. It didn't help him sleep longer, it just pushed his next night wake a bit later. I found he was starting to stir at 11pm in anticipation of the feed so I stopped sharpish. I also felt a bit like I should probably leave him undisturbed for his longest period of solid sleep.

Anything could be happening. Leaps, growth spurts etc. A lot going on, developmentally, at 12 weeks. Baby sleep drives me potty (I have a chronic cat napper 😒) but I'm trying to make my peace with the fact that the only consistent thing about baby sleep is inconsistency!!!