3 month old hysterical at bedtime

[JosieB68]

Any advice or experience welcome.
My 3 month old has been in a good bedtime routine for last month or so where she was bathed at 6pm then cluster fed until she fell asleep usually by around 8pm then could sleep anywhere between 4-6 hours, perfect.
Last week or so bedtimes have been awful. She feeds to sleep and this has been the case from the get go but now it seems she gets too full before she falls asleep and then eventually becomes hysterical as she’s so tired but refusing to nurse.
The same started happening during the day too so I have spaced out her feeds to every 2-3 hours instead of every hour which is what she was doing before and that seems to have solved the nursing refusal issue during the day as she is only nursing when she is actually hungry.
Last nap today was 5-6. She woke up starving so was fed at 6pm then bath and settled down, was quite calm and had another feed at 7ish but then became what appeared to be overtired at half 7 then screamed until she finally fell asleep in my arms at 8. How can I nurse her to sleep if she is only wanting to feed every 2-3 hours but after 1.5 hours of awake time she’s tired. During the day her naps are mostly in the pram or car seat.
Welcome to any advice at all!

DS is 4 months and he was like this at around 2.5 months, now sleeps through almost every night. The one thing I changed was his routine. Ensure you are being very consistent. You say her routine is bath then feed, but then today she has had feed at 6 then bath, then feed again. Do the same things in the same order at roughly the same time every day. I know that might mean a very quick bath because she’s woken up starving but even if you just do a 5 min bath then feed.

My other advice, as hard as it is initially, is try and break the habit of feeding to sleep. Feed before sleep but try to keep her awake.

Also if you say she needs a feed every 2-3 hours but can only have 1.5 hours awake time, that still should be fine? Feed at 4 for example, nap at 5.30, bedtime routine starts at 6, can feed her at 6.30/7 then bedtime?

Try a schedule with set timings. It will take her a little while to adjust but it’s the best thing I did for mine.

You may be entering the “four month fussies” - https://www.laleche.org.uk/what-happens-at-four-months/#:~:text=Then%20around%20four%20months%20(or,in%20your%20baby%20right%20now.

https://loveandbreastmilk.com/wp/four-month-fussies/

Basically everything changes at around 4 months!
My baby would breast feed beautifully to sleep then suddenly stopped, would cry at the breast and then have to be rocked to sleep. This lasted a little while and I thought breastfeeding to sleep was over but she came back to it. She still struggles to breast feed at times… but I have alternate ways of getting her to sleep now (rocking/singing etc) so it’s not too bad!
Only advice I have is go with you baby - if something isn’t working look for alternatives. I enjoy breastfeeding to sleep so glad it came back and yours may too (if that’s what you want).
hope that’s helpful x