11 week old fussy in evenings still - best time for final nap?

[SpringTime2023]

Hello

Looking for some advice please on when and how to get my little one to nap prior to bedtime in order to reduce fussy/constant grizzlyness in evening.

They go to sleep at 'bedtime' for their main chunk at 9.30pm. But I really struggle knowing how to manage the 2+ hours of continuous grizzle prior to bedtime routine starting around 8.30pm (eg final nappy change / feed).

I tried bringing bedtime to 8.30pm, but they still don't fall asleep until 9.30! So essentially an extra hour of bum pats and rocking.

I also can't seem to get them to nap from 6pm onwards - eg walk in pram, no. Not even contact nap.

Basically finding afternoon naps really hard to navigate, and I assume their grizzles are just overtiredness, rather than something they'll grow out of at 3 months like colic (I wish).

currently cuddling my 12 week old…

I think it’s both over tiredness and something they grow out of. Assuming they’ve been ‘up’ since 7 ish, that’s a long day for a tiny one, even with lots of daytime sleep.

But they’re not ready for a proper bedtime yet…. So overtired.

Gradually bedtime gets earlier and wake windows get longer till they meet in the middle.

I can’t remember when that happened with DD1. But this time around I’m probably going to aim to properly put her to bed, rather than keep her down with us, in a few weeks. I’ll eat early and stay in her room watching telly after that, partly for safe sleep reasons, partly because I’m knackered!

Ahh that's such a good way of explaining it. Their bedtime being so late makes it tricky - from what I've read, the late bedtime IS normal for their age so hopefully it is partly a case of waiting for things to adjust naturally. I do find the short wake windows and therefore sheer number of naps needed each day makes it hard to manage too (eg as opposed to just one at midday).

Breastfed or bottle fed?
Do they just need to cluster feed in the evening?
At that age I would just sit on the sofa feeding all evening until they conked out for the night.

EBF - I did used to cluster feed (and this was how I got through the grizzle stages from 2 weeks onwards and just watch TV), but I think they slowly stopped being comforted that way all evening a few weeks back. BUT thinking about it, this also coincided with me trying to do more routine / set feeds. Maybe I actually need to go back to that for the moment and see if that was just a blip.

First step for us was to wake baby up at the same time each morning, we're early birds and wanted to eat dinner together baby free of an evening so we went for a 6:30am wake up and a 7pm bedtime.

Naps were roughly:

8-10

12-2

4-5

Bath/cuddles/bed started at 6:15ish.

We did all our feeds on waking apart from bedtime.

I do think we were a bit lucky with ours as the early bedtime always worked well for us, but I'll never know as I went a bit mental on the routine from about day 5! I was a very panicked ftm 🙃