Advice needed on sleep schedule for 3 month old please

[Listerbug]

I'm just looking for a bit of advice on a sleep schedule for my 3 and a half month old daughter. She has been getting cranky most evenings for the last few days and I think it might be that she is getting overtired.
She tends to have a morning nap and an early afternoon nap but now she's dropped her late afternoon/early evening nap and is awake from around 2pm or 3pm until bedtime despite getting crankier and crankier and harder to settle.
Any advice on how to break the cycle?

3 and a half months is much to young to be only having one nap a day and she won’t understand a ‘schedule’ at that age. Try working to a 90 minute/2 hour awake window and then put her down for a nap. It doesn’t matter how long she naps for each time, just keep putting her down after 90 mins/2 hours. We did this with our DD and it made a huge difference.

What time does she go to bed? How does she sleep during the night? Do you have a bedtime ‘routine’ yet?

She definitely needs more sleep - agree with @LakeTittyHaHa that trying to get her to sleep any way every couple of hours will help. I’m in the same boat - DS would stay awake all day if he could get away with it so I am trying to stick to a nap schedule. It’s sometimes good, sometimes crap & anything from a 20 minute nap to 2 hours sleep can happen (usually 20 minutes though...) but even if he has 6-7 20 minute naps a day I am happier that he’s getting nearer to the right amount of sleep he needs.

Agreed it is too early for her to be on 2 naps, mine didn’t drop the 3rd one until about 8 months! In the early days I found the app Huckleberry to be really helpful with sleep windows and knowing when they are likely to be tired so preparing 15 or so minutes before that. Plus it’s always fine to get that third nap any way you can - sling, pram etc etc

Thanks everyone for your advice, really helpful. I've just downloaded Huckleberry and I'm going to give it a go.
I say two naps, that's when I officially put dd down for a nap but she will also fall asleep in my arms after a feed sometimes and I'll let her sleep there for a bit as she needs to stay upright for a while after food because she has acid reflux so she is probably getting around 5 hours in the day between her official naps and drifting off in my arms.
I had no idea about the two hour awake window so no wonder she's cranky if she's awake from 3pm till her bedtime at 7pm, that's double the amount of time she should be awake.
I'm not sure if I should try waking dd after about an hour and a half rather than the two hours she normally has at her two other naps. Do you think that would make it more likely for her to have an hours' nap in the late afternoon?
Yes, we do have a basic bedtime routine of bath, feed, bedtime story and dd sleeps quite well in the night from 7pm to 6am usually waking for two feeds.

My little one just turned 3 months old last week and we have only in the last 4/5 days established a little pattern, although I'm sure it will all change again in time.

His pattern is roughly:
7.30am wake up
8.00am bottle, playtime
10.00am nap
11.15/11.30am wake up, bottle, playtime
1.00pm/1.30pm nap
2.30pm wake up, bottle, playtime
4/4.15pm nap until no longer than 5.00pm
5.30pm bottle, playtime
6.30pm bath
7.30pm bottle, bed
11.00pm dream feed

He wakes at 4.30am for a feed then goes back to sleep.

We noticed a huge difference when we dropped the 4th nap of the day and have been very strict in not letting him sleep past 5pm. He can get w bit cranky by his 7.30pm bottle but by that time he is ready for bed.
It'll all change again I know, but it seems to be working fine for us for the time being!

Hi @S082018 can I ask what your days were like before your LO fell into that routine? Mine is almost 11 weeks and sleeps quite well at night (8-7 with wake up to feed at 11, 2 and 5ish) but is a nightmare during the day. I cannot seem to find the wake time sweet spot and he is always either over or under tired and will not nap. Any advice or do I just need to ride it out?

@catsandchocolate before things settled down a bit, every day was different! He's have different wake up times in the morning and his bedtime would fluctuate. I did use and still do use the Huckleberry app to help with nap times although there are times I might bypass the app's suggestions based on my little ones mood! There will be times it suggests a nap however I know he's not yet ready for one and can ride out another 20 minutes or so. Overall though it is a great app and a good thing to start with.

I also now make sure we start our day at the same time give or take half an hour or so, so we'll both always be up between 7.30am/8am.

For the last two nights he's been a bit more restless at night and we've had one extra wake up then we usually do but I still wake him at the same time regardless of this!

I expect we will have off days and I think at our little ones ages that's fine, they're still so young. I've written so many threads on here about getting my son into a routine and nap schedule and really beat myself up about it in the beginning. So many people told me he's so young and it will fall into place eventually and it's so true!

I also know babies are forever changing so I'm not naive to the fact that his "routine" will change again (and again, and again..) as he grows older.

Re awake times - my little one is only now stretching to 2 hour wake windows. Not all the time, but most of the time. For 11 weeks I would aim for about 90 minutes max awake window. That's just my opinion although I know every baby is different!

@S082018 thank you for that super detailed answer. I have definitely been beating myself in the last few weeks as I have felt my baby hasn’t ‘got it’ the way others have and doesn’t seem to fit any of the hundreds of schedules or routines I have read. I have to remind myself that he is really young and not a clock!

I have downloaded the huckleberry app and will give it a go. I’m also ebf on demand so reluctant to try and fit him into a routine that will mess with that. It definitely seems that time helps most babies.

Sorry for hijacking the thread OP.