Please tell me what I'm doing wrong - 14w DD routine

[whereismy]

At 4.5w my DD suddenly dropped daytime sleep to only a few 10-15 min naps. Since then she has some better days with a few 30-45min naps, and (very few) days when she'll have a 3h nap along with some shorter ones.

I've tried everything that I know of, midwives, GP and health visitors all concluded that she just doesn't want to sleep much. If that's true then fine but she seems so overtired and has so many frustrated meltdowns, I feel so guilty!

I aim for a nap every 1.5/2h during the day - I start winding her down after about 1h15min. Each nap is a struggle, I have to put her on my shoulder and bob around or rock her til she sleeps, but she cries and fights it. If I put her anywhere, eg in bouncy chair, to nap she would just stay awake for hours.

I've gradually set bedtime for 7.00pm, getting up for the day at 9.00-9.30am.
Last nap ends by 5.00pm, then bedtime routine = 5-10mins of subdued play time, bath (which she loves), then into dark-ish bedroom for baby massage if she'll tolerate it, bottle, bed.

99% of the time this will involve a meltdown, usually when I try to feed her - I have to offer bottle and remove it several times before she remembers she's hungry and accepts it! I have to hold her, rocking, swaying, jiggling around for up to 45mins til she's asleep.

She wakes every 1.5/2h at night. Very rarely she'll do a 3h stretch. She doesn't fully wake, just has a feed/wind then straight back to sleep with no problem. I can't get her to take a full feed at night so of course she's waking as she's not full.

DD is FFOD, perhaps I should introduce more structure there? GP ruled out reflux as she happily lies flat on play mat, in pram. We've tried soya milk to no avail. Dentinox drops work really well for her, she doesn't seem to have any probs with wind. We go out every day either for activities or a walk, so plenty of fresh air. At home (daytime) she stays in living room with me, on play mat/bouncy chair/my lap, I don't let her watch TV.

Thanks for reading, I will be SO grateful for any advice!

...she also gets v frustrated in the sling, and we tried to introduce a dummy for a couple of days when she was about 7w, she hated it and would spit it out instantly!

Will she nap in the pram or car seat? DD is 5 months and has slept through since 14 weeks (sorry, I know you don't want to hear that!) but only if she gets enough sleep during the day. She is offered 6oz of milk every 3 hours for 12 hours (so 5 bottles a day), but doesn't always take the full amount. She will fight naps like crazy but can't resist movement, so she has lots of long walks/drives during the day. We also found that bath time makes her excited rather than sleepy so we do it in the morning rather than evening.

Oh and she only slept through after we introduced the routine for feeding, before that she was fed on demand all day/night, but the HV said she was "messing us about"! I was but it made all the difference.

Thanks for reply mango, that's interesting re feeding, as I leave it up to her really but maybe I'm expecting too much from her!
Will try that routine from now on.

DD occasionally naps in pram when I take her for a walk, but it's quite random and deffo not the magic solution. Without fail she wakes up as soon as we're in the front door. We don't drive so we don't have that weapon unfortunately!

As a rule, good day sleep breeds good night sleep so I woukd really work on those naps. worth trying a sling again?

I used to walk for hours and hours when DTs were tiny - about an hour to get them to bloody sleep an another couple of hours to keep them asleep. The pram COULD NOT STOP at any point. Did the trick though.

We had that problem, I have a 15wk old and only recently has he been better at night, we FF every 3.5hrs-4hrs starting with 5oz-6oz, see how much he takes, give him a 15min break then try the rest whilst he is sat in his chair etc, seems to take it better in there for some reason? Even if it takes an hour I will persevere with the same bottle.
Has a nap in between every bottle either 30mins to 1.5hrs. I do have to initiate the nap by either rocking or walking about but after 5 mins he is gone, as he could also fight his sleep all day.
We also swaddle at night which helps massively, he now only wakes one time at maybe 3am, I just rock back to sleep gently as he isn't waking for a bottle, then wakes between 5-6am.
Sorry for long reply but I hope some of it helps.

Thanks so much all replies appreciated!
I think my problem is I've been working on the naps for 9 weeks now and I've lost the plot a bit, I'm not sure what to try next. She really doesn't like the sling, but it might be worth getting a different style, something I need to look into.

I've put her down early this evening as she only had 1x 30min nap this afternoon and looked exhausted, but she screamed her cheeks off for 45mins as soon as she got out of the bath

Bear thank you that gives me hope! - can I ask was it the 3.5/4 hourly bottle routine that got your baby more settled?

It's pretty sunny at the moment, maybe try a Kool Di shade? We've put that on our carrycot and it makes our 15w old sleep without fail.

Yes I think it was, we started off on demand but he would have 1-2oz every 2hrs ish, it was getting ridiculous and every time he woke at night we would feed but now is settled within minutes with just a cuddle, start by making DD wait an extra 15 or so mins for a bottle and encourage more over the space of an hour, by end of the week should at least be going an extra hour, this is what worked for us, hope you get some results.

Thank you Bear that's really helpful - yes that's just what DD is like, 2oz here and there! - by making her wait do you mean during daytime? Sorry if that's a silly question my brain is a mush now!

Thanks Melchett will def look into that too