Next steps in 3 month old's routine - suggestions?

[Yukka]

I have a 14 weeks old and so far I think I've been pretty lucky with how she has settled. I don't know how much I can claim to have contributed to it or how much is just her being a chilled out baby.

Eitherway I feel like I've hit a stage that I'm not sure what steps I should take next in relation to a routine of sorts, or whether I should just let things be, and this includes the transition from bf to formula ( note not transition to bottle - she takes that already). Current routine, where it exists, is as follows, starting from the easiest point . .

4-5pm formula bottle, starts the winding down. calm play and sometimes 30 min cat nap till
6:30pm bath, story, BF and sleep, down by 7:15 pretty much guaranteed
10:30pm bottle formula dreamfeed
3-3:30am bf ( or whenever she wakes, longest was to 4am)
6am ish starts waking/wriggling, pacify to 6:30/7 BF
7am onwards - random feeding and napping until 4-5pm feed.

I guess I'm trying to improve the following;

1. baby going to sleep without crying/being rocked. Often I feel the crying is because she's SO tired, so needs more sleep in the day? some days she has 3 x 30 min naps, some days one 2 hour sleep at 3pm . . it doesn't seem enough?
2. baby sleeping longer at night time - appreciate her tummy might not be big enough yet, otherwise she potentially isn't filling up enough
3. plus a gradual transition to formula by christmas, roughly one feed every two weeks

So, if this was you - what would be your next step and why, ie, focus on day time napping, or focus on more formula feeds ( which in turn sorts out napping?), or do nothing and just let things naturally progress as baby led as possible.

I've been reluctant to change much yet given she sleeps well at night and I don't want to upset the apple cart.

Relax and think about it all again in about a year.

Feed them till they're full. Hold them and cuddle until they're content and don't put any pressure on yourself or them until they are ready.

I know Gina ford is slated on here but I found her routines helpful to give me a guideline.. note I say guideline, it's not the law! She suggests starting the day at 7am, feeds at 10:30/11, 2pm, 5pm and top up 6:30 and bed for 7pm.

Naps are around 8:30 for 1 hour and 11:45 for 2.5 hours and a catnap around 4/5pm if they need it.

As for settling to sleep I'm not too sure. Maybe work on getting her to nap consistently first then work on not having to rock her.

There's not much you can do about the nights just yet as she is still very small. Do you wake her for dream feed? Are you still up at that time or do you stay up especially? You could try leaving her and see what time she naturally wakes.

thanks both.

@inthethickofit19 - dh does the dreamfeed and it is literally that she doesn't fully wake and she takes about 4oz so its not an insignificant feed. if we don't do it she wakes around 12:30, then 4:30, so it has removed a night feed for me. when we first started the dreamfeed she went till 2:30 and this is moved on an hour in the last 3 weeks so there is progress there in terms of how much she has and how long it lasts.

Thinking about the timelines for napping you mentioned, perhaps I'll track this for a few days and see if there is a pattern that I'm not seeing, or jut try getting her to sleep at set times just to see if she actually might actually drift off On another thread someone was mentioning how over stimulation eqaully prevents napping/sleeping.

Yes it most definitely does in my experience. Sleep breeds sleep aswell.

Sounds like you are on track for the nights then.