What next with this routine...?

[TSil]

Hi all

This is my first post but have been reading lots

My daughter is 15 weeks old tomorrow, exclusively breastfed and always slept quite well since birth. It took us a while to get into the swing of daytime naps but we are ok now. Well she only seems to do one sleep cycle at a time in the day but I dont mind that too much.
I have been trying to do easy for a while, at least doing the order even if the timing goes a bit off sometimes. At the moment her wake time is about 1 hr 45-50 mins and our day goes something like this:

7am feed
8.45 nap
10am feed
11.45 nap
1pm feed
2.45 nap
4pm feed
5pm start bathtime
6pm asleep
1-1.30am wakes for 15 min feed, straight back to sleep
5-6am wakes

Our problem areas are the last nap of the day and her early bedtime. For 6 weeks or so now she has gone to bed about 6pm and if I try for any later she just screams and screams until I put her in her moses basket. I am happy to go with the flow for now but she then wakes up so early and she will eventually be going to nursery so cant go to bed at 6pm!
My question is, when should she drop the one feed and should I be encouraging her to drop it?
Most morning she will wake around 5am but its not for food. I usually give her the dummy and she will snooze on and off until closer to 7am. I try to make her wait til 7am for a feed to start our day.
Any tips to try and stop the early wakings? Last night she woke at 4am, 5am, 6am but I kept giving her the dummy which seemed to work. She isnt crying when she wakes, just shuffling and cooing loudly etc.

Overall she is sleepinv well, I am just not sure what happens next with this routine and woukd love some thoughts

Thank you x

[jessmum46]

Hi and welcome

In terms of night feeds, it's completely normal for EBF babies to need night feeds until well after they are established on solids.  My DD was similar at this age (we didn't DF) and had one quick night feed until seven months when she dropped it herself.  To be honest though we were 'lucky' if you can call it that, and many EBF babies will need more than one night feed at 3-4 months and will continue to need it well past 7 months.

Routine wise she looks like she's doing well for her age.  Short naps are really really common around 3-4 months - have you seen these?  How do I address habitual wakings? (wake-to-sleep and other methods) and Why is it important that my baby gets more than a 45 minute nap?

The reason she's so tired by 6pm is because of the short naps all day.  To an extent you just have to ride it out and do your best to resettle her or help her through sleep transitions as in the link above.  Your A times are about perfect for her age - do you shorten them a little after a short nap?  A lot of mums find naps settle down a lot after six months, and if you start getting longer naps you'll likely be able to push BT a bit later

Waking/stirring around 4/5/6am is common as LO is in light sleep and has less drive to go back to sleep, given by that time they've already had a lot of hours sleep.  Disturbances such as temperature, hunger, noise can all affect them more at that hour.  OT at bedtime can also cause unsettledness in the early hours, but I think you're doing everything you can on that front with an early bedtime.  Have you ever tried feeding when she first stirs just to see if she will go back into a deeper sleep?  It's a common time for a night feed and wouldn't be unreasonable to feed at that hour if its 3h since the previous feed.  Usually babies do one long stretch of sleep (which she is doing 6pm-1am) then go back to a normal feed cycle which is 3h at this age.

What do you think?