Give it a week for the OS to settle down and you should be able to get better battery life.

A restart wouldn't hurt either. 

Re battery draining issue.

My phone is a pixel 3a  and before android 12 I was charging once a day, now it's three times a day.

I did do the restart and also shut down for a awile unfortunately nothing had helped.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks to the Koodo community for your help 

It doesn't help you now, but I always recommend to not try to fix what isn't broken. Unless there is a phone issue, do not update.

I have been burnt many times when an update changes things for the worse and makes "improvements" that I don't want but I can no longer get rid off. 

Does your Pixel 3a battery charge to 80% or 100%?

To help preserve battery health, your phone automatically limits charging to about 80% under certain conditions. The conditions and instructions on how to turn off battery optimization are listed in this link: Manage your Pixel phone battery see heading “Charging temporarily limited” (Pixel 3 & later).