3 month old baby girl

[Nanny9052]

Hello everyone! I was hoping to get some advice or how some of you mummies do things.
My baby girl seems to struggle with sleep.
For her bedtime I'm putting her to bed at around 9pm she'll sleep for 45 mins then wake up crying!!! Takes an hour to get her asleep again but then will sleep through the night and will wake up 2 or 3 times to eat and straight back to sleep. then through out the day she does three 1 hr naps. Unless we are out she might sleep a bit longer.
Am I doing something wrong? Could I add something to make her sleep longer..
it will really help as then I can do house work in the day or just some me time

She don't self soothe either!

Honestly, I wouldn’t put too much effort into it at this stage as it’s all likely to change in a few weeks. It’s easiest all round just to go with the flow at this stage!

This is all normal for a young baby. How long is she awake for?

This all sounds pretty normal to me at 3 months. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong. It will get easier, just go with it. If she has 3 daytime naps then you could use one of those to do housework surely, or does she only nap on you?

So why on books and some people are always saying, she needs a routine. She should be able to sleep on her own and self soothe
Sometimes she only sleeps on me.. we are getting there this week so far she has been doing at least one nap alone

My ds still doesn't 'self soothe' I HATE that phrase at 4yo. Your baby is barely past newborn and won't have read the books that you have. What she's doing is perfectly normal.

Have you tried a baby sleeping bag? Our daughter slept much better in her cot and for longer once we started using one!

This is very normal at three months. You’re only just coming up to end of the fourth trimester. Self- soothing is a big ask for a tiny creature who needs her parents to make her feel safe and comforted.

Hi @Nanny9052 - I have an eleven-week old DD and like you I was a bit concerned about sleep. The books I'm reading are telling me that she should be sleeping for about five hours at this stage - well, she's not, the most we get at night is about three hours and then for the rest of the night it can be anything from three hour blocks to forty five minutes. It's tough but I decided to let go of worrying about it and just see what happens in the next few weeks, hoping it will get better.

We've had struggle with feeding, though, and she's quite windy which I think is the main factor in waking her.

Hello
I was always told no point reading the books as the baby can't read yet to know what she is supposed to be doing :) in all seriousness we only had a routine when I started back at work as we had to have one, literally had no idea how to start one otherwise. Hope this helps, I wouldn't worry about what your apparently supposed to be doing, just do you xx

It is the only age/stage/subject of life where the books can cause as many problems as they solve

I have a 9 week old and was really keen to start a routine for my own sanity. I breastfed for the first 4 weeks so was feeding on demand. I did 3 days straight of her feeding every 30 minutes day and night. Although she eventually stopped cluster feeding I then got mastitis so I gave it up. I then started a routine straight away. I stopped demand feeding which was about 4 hourly and fed her every 3 hours to squeeze an extra feed in in the day. She still woke 3 hourly at night until 8 weeks and is now only waking once at night because the fills up in the day. To be honest I just concentrated on a night routine at first. I picked a bedtime that suited me and started bathing/washing and dressing her for bed the same time every night and stuck to it. It felt a bit pointless for a while because she didn't really respond to the routine right away. Now she is used to it and is asleep by 8pm every night. Wakes once between 3 and 5 and sleeps til about 8.30. I also do a dream feed about 10.30 to keep her asleep longer. In the day I keep an eye out for tired signs and make sure she's not awake longer than 1.5 hours as she then gets overtired and cries a lot. Most people I've spoken to said they didn't do a routine at this age but the few people who said they had said it worked really well.
Its totally up to you if you want to start a routine or wait til they're older.

It's so confusing in why do. Part of me wants a routine just so it helps me aswell. And another I just want to go with the flow.. but now she wakes up a lot during the night to eat..
Being a mum is hard work.. you should see the state of me 😩

She sounds normal to me. I'v been lucky with mjne sledping through quite early but going through regressions around 3 months where they'd be up for a few feeds. Mine also seemed to have a nap at 9pm and would only settle for a deep sleep around 12am, I ended up googling and apparently it's quite normal.

I tried putting Dd to bed about 9ish at 6/7 weeks, didnt work, left it a couple of weeks and tried again. Putting her in a sleeping bag was the key to it. 1st week or so we had to sit holding her hand till she fell asleep. Now shes 13 weeks and has been going off to sleep by herself happily all week, i dream feed her at 11/1130 and normally she'll sleep till 5/6.

Babies are pre programmed to feed more at night because more of the breastfeeding hormones are produced during the night so it's to stimulate milk production. Even if you're not breastfeeding it's their natural pattern. Carry on with the bedtime routine of bath, feed, bed at bedtime. After that time until morning keep everything dark and quiet and just feed her when she wakes. She will eventually start to sleep longer at night but 3 months is too early for a real routine. This won't last forever OP, it's hard now but it will get easier.