I am desperate to regain our evenings. how do I do it?

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I know that people on here sing the praises of the bath/boob/bed routine in the evening.

We have managed to introduce this to some extent, but DD is just not interested. She is now 20 weeks, has been having an evening routine for some time (about 10 weeks now) and the evening is deteriorating rather than improving.

She has a morning and lunchtime nap very well, and by the time she falls asleep for her evening nap it is frequently 4:45/5:00pm. I only let her sleep for a max of 30 mins, and then begin the evening routine, which will typically go:
4:45 pm - fall asleep
5:15 - I wake her up and give short feed
5:45 - bath
6:15 - feed (40 mins or so)
She then appears vaguely sleepy for 10 mins or so, before getting a second wind, then:
8:00 - another feed and attempt to settle. She is not remotely interested in settling, and screams if we take her upstairs into her dark, quiet nursery. By about 9pm she is totally over tired and the only way to get her to sleep is to rock her in her pram. I then wake her for a feed at about 10-11 before going to bed, but she is so tired from having a poor evening sleep that it is a struggle to feed her enough, and she is waking more and more in the night.

DH and I are thoroughly miserable. We were quite happy to dedicate the evening to her when she was cluster feeding (she is exclusively BF), or if she had a tummy ache or something, but now that there is no real reason for her being up, we are both desperate to get her asleep in her cot for the evening.

She sleeps in her cot happily at night (settles v easily after 10pm feed as she is so knackered) and at nap times - I use shhh pat to settle her for all of these sleeps, but it doesn't seem to work in the evening.

So, should I:
a) try to force her to do without her afternoon nap (she wakes from her lunchtime nap any time from 2-2:30pm, so it would be a long time till bed even if I put her down at 6:30)
b) suffer her screaming and shh/pat until she falls asleep in her cot in the evening. I will willingly do this for a week or something if you tell me it will make her understand that the evening is for sleeping, not sitting in front of the telly with her parents
c) both of the above
d) put up with the above situation until she is 6 months and do CC (really don't want to do this, desperate to find a solution, but I will resort to this if we are still in this situation in 2-3 months time) to get her asleep in the evenings
e) do something else we haven't thought of.

She currently has about 45 min nap in the morning, 2 hours at lunch, 20-30 mins in the afternoon, then sleeps for about 60-90 mins before 10pm feed, sleeps from 11:30pm-4am, quick feed then wakes at about 6:45 to start the day. She is usually fairly sleepy and grizzly on waking at 6:45, but is ready to go by the time she has had a feed.

Can anyone help? please? DH and I are desperate to do something to help our little girl get enough sleep in the evening, as she is currently only getting a maximum of about 11-12 hours in 24, and I feel this isn't enough.

agree 100% with Goodomen

Another 'go with the flow' mum, here. Tried and failed with the whole routine thing with my DS (started way too early) and made life a misery for everyone for months. Have surrendered to the fact that DD (10 weeks) doesn't settle until 10pm. But she does sleep then until 5 or 6am. Good enough for me. I'd rather have a chilled baby staying up all evening than spend hours fussing and trying to get her off.

thank you so much for all of your thoughts and ideas, I really appreciate it!

We are going to try to chill out a bit, but it is difficult when DD gets so overtired in the evening. We are going to try actually letting her have a slightly longer afternoon nap for a while, as at least if she has a long nap she is happy in the evening while she is awake till 9pm, rather than overtired and awake.

If she is not showing any signs of either dropping that nap or sorting out bed time in a few weeks, we are going to try just not letting her have it, letting her lunchtime nap go a bit longer and putting her to bed earlier and see if that improves things a bit.

Thanks again, you've all made me feel a lot better and more confident that I'm not necessarily doing it 'wrong' and making my dd miserable!

Could she just need lots of extra feeds in evening? Like the cluster feeding behaviour during other growth spurts that you may have experienced earlier? And then after a few days she might settle in evenings again. Try feeding thread?

You are not doing anything 'wrong'!!! There is no handbook unfortunately, but that means tha nobody can say anyone else is doing it right or wrong. Go with the flow for your very individual child. What works for one won't necessarily work for another, even in siblings!!! I let my DS sleep as long as he likes at nap time, it never affects his sleep at night. I also put him to bed at 7.30 no matter what. Sometimes settles straight away, sometimes chatters away to self for half hour but never cries. Amount of day time sleep, and letting him stay up later than 7.30 never affects his sleep. Even if I kept him up til 11pm he would wake same time every morn!!! (which at min is 5.30) so you are definitely not alone in the tired field!!! Keep us posted and good luck x

My DD only ever naps in the sling, if I try and get her to nap in her cot/bed she'll just scream, jumping in here but does anyone think it's good to sit with her and put with the crying and see if she'll sleep, or not? I hate her crying and don't want to do CC at all, but this hours of waling every day is getting to me. Oh dear, I always seem to be on here moaning about stuff!

My friend's DS refused to sleep in cot for a long long time. He wouldn't even go down at night. She was at her wits end, did controlled crying going in to him every 4 mins and stroking his head or lying him back down, it took 9 days but it worked and now he sleeps like a dream! How old is DD tenacity?

16 weeks, I can get her to go to bed at night with a bath/feed/singing routine which isn't too bad, if she cries I pick her up and comfort her, and if she cries again after going back she has another quick bf and then pretty much passes out, I always make sure she is awake in the crib even if it's for a second! I think she's too young for cc, I can just about stand it if I'm there with my hands on her and very occassionally she will go to sleep, but never for more than 10 mins if she was crying.

i agree perhaps a little young for cc.Try lying on your bed with her, nap together?

tenacity please don't worry. DS was like this for months (he wouldn't even go in the cot at bedtime either though so you have a head start!). He napped in the sling or the puchchair or on my shoulder for the first 5.5 months then slowly started to get OK about being put down - asleep in the cot. A few months later he would go down in the cot with some patting on his back. Around his first birthday he went to sleep fine in his cot. And has done ever since, give or take a few arguments about the duration of bedtime feeds/number of bedtime stories/the cat not joining him in bed etc! - now 18 months.

Disclaimer DS was pretty extreme, yours will probably be 1000000x better!

Napping in bed together.....I'm gonna try it, I do co-sleep at night so maybe in the day it might just work....the exercise is brilliant on the grounds I've lost 6 pounds in a month and I've been eating pies and cakes....but the thought of a nap in the day is very appealing....I did try it before but she didn't sleep longer than 10 mins but she was younger then, I'll try it again.Good to hear that your DS did change, I am hoping/guessing the more active she gets the better the sleep will get, she's very active all ready and seems desperate to stand up, she will stand for ages with me holding her and she really pushes with her legs. I'll give it a go tomorrow, and we'll see.