12 week old bedtime routine

[Worried271]

I’m hoping someone can give me a bit of advice on our nighttime routine. I have no idea if we’re doing the right thing. Advice would be greatly appreciated and I’d love to know how your routine works around this age. My daughter isn’t a great daytime baller either and naps for 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there.

6:45 bath and pjs (she loves it)
7:00 bottle of milk and a book (she’s always really unsettled and fussy during this feed - possibly colic)
7:30 we try all the soothing techniques under the sun to settle her
8:45 ish she usually falls asleep on our chest
10 we give her a dream feed and possibly a nappy change (we go to bed at 10 so we feed her to give ourselves a few extra hours before she wakes)
3ish wakes for a feed and goes straight back down after
5:30 ish wakes for the day

Helppppp

Have you established a dummy?

The main problem you have is lack of daytime sleep, which is then giving you a very unsettled baby come bedtime and night time.

What is your usual feeding/sleeping schedule in the daytime. I appreciate it's unpredictable, but what would be an average day?

Agreed with PP that you need to have plenty of daytime sleeping, sleep breeds sleep so they say. Also helps to remember after about 2 hours of being awake my dd is ready to go back to sleep. My DD is 13 weeks on Friday and her current routine goes somewhat like this (give or take depending on various things).

5pm wake from nap
6:15pm bath
6:30pm book, babbles, cuddles
6:45 bottle
7pm into bed awake with dummy, self soothes until asleep which can take a lot of persistence but is getting quicker and quicker as the nights go by.
11pm dream feed
4am bottle
7am bottle and wake up
9am nap
11am bottle
1pm nap
3pm bottle
4pm nap
5pm wake from nap

Like I said to varies from day to day but that's pretty much a rough idea what she is doing at the moment. Hope this helps!

Sounds like she’s overtired at bedtime. I’d ditch the book and cut the routine back to just the bare bones for bedtime cues (quick bath, PJs, bottle), aiming to have her feeding 3-4 hours after her last bottle (this is presuming you’re formula feeding) and in bed 2 hours after she woke from her last nap. If daytime is a bit all over the place then accept you need to be flexible with this and some nights bedtime might be 6pm, other times 8pm. Working on the naps during the day will also help with the over tiredness. One of mine has a dummy, the other is a thumb sucker- sucking is great for helping them get to sleep. That said, if she’s sleeping 8.45pm to 5.30am with a dreamfeed when you go to bed plus the one quick night feed then I don’t think you’re doing badly at all for 12 weeks!