Bedtime advice 3month old

[BabyBobbins32]

My 3 month old's routine (I use the word very loosely!) isn't really working at the moment for bedtime and I'm not too sure what to do about it. She will only take 4 naps a day regardless of the time. She is only awake for about 1.5hrs max in between naps, her first nap of the day is usually about an hr long and then the next 2 45mins and then 30mins last one. All of this means she wakes from her last nap about 3.15pm. This makes it 2.45hrs until bedtime which is way too long for her and she gets really upset and overtired in the last 45mins of this time. A 6pm bedtime already means I'm starting bedtime about 5pm with bath and feeding time so not sure how I can bring bedtime forward but also not sure how to stretch naps she self settles quite well for her naps. Just wondered if anyone else has had this problem and what they did about it? I also have a 3year old so also have to factor in her dinner time and bedtime! Thanks in advance

I only have one dc and she's only 5 months old so I'm no expert, but my dd does have an excellent sleeping record so far. I think from reading your post that I would suggest not bothering with a full on bedtime routine at that age. They don't need a daily bath so what about just letting her sleep when she needs to and feed when she needs to? So maybe she will nap again at teatime then get up again mid evening for a feed then final bedtime? Then fit baths in at other times of the day or dip her in your 3 year old's bath a few times a week?

My 3 month old only naps between 30-45 mins so has about 4/5 naps per day.
Depending on last nap she usually goes down between 6.45pm-8pm.
We have a 5 year old so it's definitely harder when juggling the two.
We don't do bath every night, only 2/3 nights.
Baby basically just has bottle in our room which we black out and we have her white noise bear on.
When she is completely asleep we transfer her ninja style into the cot.
She generally has a nap every 90 mins but it's changing to two hours sometimes more now.
She goes to bed two hours after wake up from last nap

Thanks for all your replies ladies...I eventually managed to get the 4 naps working for us as we managed to extend 2 of them...she is now 4 months and starting to fight the 4th nap though doh!...I think dropping to 3 naps is fine but need to either extend her awake time (currently still 1hr 30 max) or extend her nap time...here we go again 😂

@BabyBobbins32 in a not too dissimilar position! Out of interest how did you manage to extend the nap times?

@WonderfullySunny I extended the nap times by firstly if she wasn't crying when she woke up leaving her in bed for longer rather than going to get her up straight away...I left her anything up to an extra 15minutes if she looked like she might go off. I also would go in when she woke if upset (as actually often when she was upset it meant she wasn't finished napping) and I put my hand on her belly and really gently rocked her back off (wouldn't make any eye contact with her when I went in though and actually sort of hid most of my face/body so she wasn't distracted by mummy being in the room 😂). Eventually she started just sleeping longer herself (she still often wakes after say 45mins but she usually goes back off after a few minutes)...not always though! I hope your little one starts doing same for you soon it's so hard to get it right isn't it x

Thank you @BabyBobbins32!! That's handy to know what worked for you, its really is hard to know what to do for the best sometimes and I'm finding the books aren't helping. The 45 minute nap is the golden standard at the moment he won't do longer than that unless he sleeps on me which he can happily do for 2/3hrs or today 4hrs, not helpful for doing things...

I know what you mean...the books are full of great theory but it doesn't always work as smoothly as they imply! Does your little one get himself to sleep for his nap in the first place (however long he then sleeps for?). If he does that then I think that's half the battle and the longer naps will come (sometimes they just aren't ready to nap for longer than 45 but they'll get there) x