Bath and bed routine for (almost) 3 month old - advice needed!!

[haleysunshine32]

Hi everyone,
My little girl is 10 weeks old and has either 'colic' or a very long case of the evening witching hour(s)! She is currently EBF, still feeds about every 2 hours and doesn't sleep for longer than 2.5 hours at night, and I spend large portions of the day getting her down for naps as she is a sleep resistor and therefore obviously gets overtired by the evening time which I think is the reason for her nightly screaming sessions.

When she gets to 3 months I want to start trying to get into a bedtime routine. My first question is how do other ladies who breastfeed on demand time their baby's bath? I try to loosely follow the eat, play, sleep routine but this doesn't fit with the idea of bath, feed, sleep for the bedtime routine!?

Secondly, I'm hoping (and praying!) that her evening meltdowns start to dissipate over the next couple weeks or I just don't see how any evening routine can be established when she spends the most of it screaming and us just trying to soothe her. Anyone experienced this too and has a routine actually HELPED anyone calm the colicky behaviour?

Have you tried feeding through the crying time?

I just tried to do bath time at the most convenient time after 6 and then from about 4 months I make sure she is awake for 6, either by waking her or keeping her up or bath time. Bath time is 6 because she has to fit into my older girl’s routine.

@haleysunshine32 can’t help with BF side. My little one had terrible colic /reflux and we tried everything, Dr Browne’s bottles, infacol, prescription only meds, nothing worked. We just cuddled her the whole time (6pm -11pm) ish every night. There’s no way I could’ve got her into a routine at 3 months, that came much later. Probably more like 18 months! I think a lot of it books down to luck, my friends had babies that slept all night I was very miffed lol

Can't help on the breastfeeding, but we bottle feed on demand and still have a "set" bed time (7pm - bath etc starts around 6:15). We just used to follow his cues when feeding but just give a final bottle before bed regardless of when he last ate. Sometimes he would only have a bit and sometime he would have loads! In terms of the colickiness - I feel your pain. My DS was awful. We just did the bath routine anyway, as we found he was actually calmer during it. So instead of screaming non-stop he would have a break during the bath etc. It started getting significantly better around 3.5-4 months when we got in a great napping routine. I am convinced what I thought was colic was actually over tiredness but I could be totally wrong! 5.5 months now and bedtime now rarely involves crying (apart from the bit after the bath but before the bottle!!)

I wake dd at 7:15 to put her in the bath if she is asleep, as I bathe her before dd1 (age 5). I then feed her as soon as she gets out, and continue to feed on demand through her witching hours until about 11:30 when she goes down to sleep

I just used to get in the bath with baby and breastfeed, really used to calm him down. I didn’t do the eat play sleep thing though. Routine of bath each night did actually work though as he started sleeping through the night for quite a while he even self settled in the cot. We’re at 8 months now but it hasn’t lasted though due to teething and regressions

Also wouldn’t worry about timing too much i just did between 7-8 x