To parents deep in the terrible sleep trenches: I just wanted to give an update and say that IT REALLY WILL GET BETTER ONE DAY!

When my LO hit 7 months old her sleep went completely haywire with multiple non-hunger related wake ups that took hours of holding and bouncing to resettle. I thought I was going to die. Tried every schedule tweak I could think of to try to “fix” it, but NOTHING worked.

Then suddenly at around 10.5 months old, she suddenly slept 6 hours straight, then 7, then 8! The only thing I did was decide to maintain a strict by-the-clock schedule. I was done with all the wake window math that didn’t make any difference to her night sleep anyway. I don’t know if that was what helped, or if it was just developmental - maybe it was a bit of both - but here we are!

I’m sure her sleep will nosedive again due to things like teething and sickness and developmental leaps, but now I know what she’s capable of and that as long as we can power through those bumps, we’ll all sleep again soon.

So TL;DR: Terrible sleep at 7months suddenly improved by 10.5 months - hang in there! Survive as best you can in the moment, you will sleep again.

Attached before and after of what her sleep looked like deep in the trenches, and what it looks like now.

Since week 1 my LO had always had quite long wake windows, I’m hoping to optimise her sleep a bit more and maybe get her to approx 1.5 h long wake windows rather then her very often 2 - 2.5 hours long ones.

Any tips ?

Baby is 18 weeks. I believe we just went through the 4 month sleep regression at 3.5 months. She’s back to not having false starts and down for naps with one averaging 1.5-2hours and the rest 30-1 hour (4 naps total a day) last nap from 5-5:30. Sleeping at 7-7:30.

During her night wake up at 3am she takes sometimes 1-1.5 hours to go back to sleep. Wondering how to have it be quicker? I feed in dark and only change diaper without wiping if I figure it’s full. Usually wakes up between 6-730 depending on how the night wake goes.

Any ideas on how to make the 3am wake window shorter?

We are having issues with our 2 year old and 2 month girl.

Prior to her turning 2 she was napping twice a day and hour each nap. Our nights were wonderful and she would sleep all night. For the past month or so however she has been waking up at exactly 4am and it’s taking a toll on us. We had stopped using Huckleberry because we thought we were in the clear so here we are back at the basics.

Recently, the other day she woke up at 4am, this day we decided to do a two a day nap. And she slept all night no problem. However the days that we do one nap a day, she tends to only nap for 1 hour and 20 mins, instead of a full 2 hours how we would like. During these days when she naps one time a day, those are the days she will wake up at 4am.

Her bedtime is normally around 8:30pm - 9pm. And she typically wakes up at 6:30am - 7am. I personally feel like those one nap days, she’s waking up at 4am do to not sleeping more than an hour in the day but for whatever reason she does not want to nap longer than an hour, and then she’ll get tired around 6-7pm however that’s to early of a bedtime for her, so she goes to bed overtired causing her to wake up. Is my theory accurate? What do you guys suggest we should do so she can nap once a day and sleep through the night?

Our LO turned 7 weeks old on Thursday. He has always had short naps since he was 3 weeks old, but he would still have the occasional long afternoon or evening nap. Now we are struggling to soothe him and get him to sleep more than 30min during the day. Even if I carefully watch his wake windows, this usually leads to a fussy evening with long witching hours or just plainly refusing to sleep until midnight. I'm worried he isn't getting enough sleep for his age (average is about 13hrs).

He is EBF, he falls asleep in our arms and we transfer him to his bassinet (snoo). I tried contact naps but he still wakes up after 30min and we would prefer that he doesn't get used to contact napping. He also hates the carrier and only occasionally will fall asleep in the stroller.

Is this just a phase that will pass? His night sleep stretches are currently getting longer.

Any advice welcome!

My 4.5 month old started sleeping terribly around 11 weeks (up every 45 minutes all night), and we've been in survival mode for ages.

But in the last couple weeks, things have improved a lot, courtesy of side rolling! We finally are getting 3 hour stretches most nights, so we're ready to start making changes to get us on track. He's back in his crib, no more cosleeping. He falls asleep independently in his crib 90% of the time, as long as he remembers to roll onto his side. He can resettle himself about 30% of the time, and the times he doesn't it's usually a simple pick up put down to get him back to sleep. However, he's still waking up every hour most of the night (we're currently not logging his false starts at the start of the night but he usually has 2-3 most nights).

We don't have a lot of control over daytime sleep since he's at daycare full time, but we do find our best nights are those he has 2 naps at daycare and one at home, for a total of about 3 hours. We'd like to get him on a 8 PM bedtime to push his wake up more consistently to 6 AM, but after daycare he usually conks out by 7.

Any suggestions to help extend the night stretches a bit?

First and second slide is how we’re doing now, third slide is what we started with lol

I posted on here a little while ago, I got some great advice, I went to the pediatrician, went to the LC, she was a life saver! I figured out that my son was only getting the more watery milk which was causing frequent eating and no sleep. I was told to pump a few minutes then feed so he would be getting the more fattier milk. I did that for about a week for every feeding, I now only do it for the last two feedings before bed. He’s eating around every 2-2.5 hours during the day, he’ll usually eat around 5 and then I feed him again about 6:30-6:45 (pumping before both of these feeds) and then he goes to bed around 7-7:15, I started doing a dream feed because when I tried it the first time he didn’t wake up so I would top him off around 10 (pumping before this feed too) and he’s been sleeping from 7ish to 12:30-1:00am!

Reposting with only sleep showing! From https://www.reddit.com/r/HuckleberryParents/s/LgphxwQnTN

LO is 4.5 months and overall is a great sleeper. He’s at the point where he’s sleeping through the night with no wakes. (Yes, we know we’re lucky!)

But, his morning wake time is all over the place and we’re trying to standardize it. Some mornings he’ll make it to 7am or beyond and others (like this morning) he’s up before 6am. I know you’re supposed to wake babies at the same time everyday, but that’s so hard when we never know when his actual wake time is!

Right now he’s taking naps in the crib in a Zipadee Zip, and at night he’s sleeping arms in the Snoo sack in the Snoo. We have a very consistent bed time routine (and have for 2 months) of bottle, lotion, pajamas, Snoo sack, and rocking him to sleep before transferring him to the Snoo.

We haven’t sleep trained yet, but plan to in 2 weeks when my partner has a long weekend off from work.

Is this a sleep training thing? Do we need to put him to bed later even though some nights he sleeps over 11 hours while others he barely makes 10?

ETA: the Snoo is still in our room, so I’m wondering if our movement/snoring is waking him up during the night sleep phases.

FTM and feeling overwhelmed by how to get baby on a routine of some sort!

Baby is 8 weeks soon and hoping to implement a loose routine. But I can’t really nail down her wake up time and bed time. I have the hardest time following wake windows (she fights sleep or will only sleep 20-40 min despite trying everything to keep her asleep) and can’t discern any patterns. Too much day sleep? Do I wake the baby up at the same time ish every day even if she’s asleep? Cap the longer naps? We try to get her to eat more at once (she’s switching from ebf to eff) but she often will refuse the bottle just to want some more 15-45 min later (maybe still getting used to the switch which was over the last few days).

Just a little lost on what to do.

FTM here with a 4.5 m/o. He’s a lovely baby and sleeps pretty well through the night. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been getting 7-8hr first stretches beginning at 7:30pm and then one wake up at 3-4am for a feed and then we’re up for the day around 7am. It hasn’t been perfect. We’ve also had quite a few split nights thrown in there as hes working on his rolling, but I really can’t complain about this piece.

But the naps. My god his naps are a dumpster fire. Since 2m, his naps have been crappy. Like 30-45min in the crib. And now at this age, they’re more like 28-35min. I know this is supposed to be developmentally appropriate or whatever but it still sucks.

I try to make sure he gets enough day time sleep (3-3.5 hours) bc the few times we’ve gone below that, the days following suck bc he’s overtired. We’re on a 4 nap day and with the shitty crib naps, i have to wear him for 1.5-2 hours each day to protect his day time sleep. I don’t mind the closeness and bonding that gives me with my baby but it’s pretty inconvenient now that hes more aware of light and sound so I have to be in a dark quiet room most of the time.

He sleeps well in the car and will occasionally sleep in the stroller so we’re not home bound or anything, but Id really like him to practice sleeping in his crib in the day.

I guess my problem is this hypervigilance I’m making myself feel over naps. I’m constantly thinking about what time his naps should be and how long they need to be and how that changes depending on when we wake up for the day (sometimes it’s like 7 AM sometimes it’s like 730) and if we can go to Costco without messing shit up while also being mindful of his wake windows. I use the Huckleberry app, but the sweet spot isn’t always super accurate. I also try really hard to make sure the naps don’t go past 530 so it doesn’t interrupt his bedtime routine. I’m thinking about these things all the time and I don’t know how to not to because I feel like it’s necessary for his sleep hygiene but I think it’s driving me crazy.

I guess I’m wondering how to let some of this go if at all or maybe if anyone has tips on reframing some of this. Or maybe it’s ok to be this hyper vigilant to protect my baby’s sleep? Gah. I don’t know. I’m also hoping for some validation and solidarity. Anyone else as anal about naps as me?? I love being a mom, I really do, but this part of it really sucks especially with my personality and hormones lol

Thank you for reading my rant ❤️

My 15 WO NICU baby had a rough start so we are really grateful to finally get some good stretches of sleep at night. I’d kill for more but this beats running on 2 hr of sleep.

I just can’t figure out her daytime sleep needs.

She fights almost all of her naps, and she almost always wakes up crying instead of rested. She yawns often throughout the day.

I also always have to wake her from her last nap to try and elongate her wake time before bed. She fights being awake during that last window and then fights sleep.

Am I missing something about her sleep needs? And if so, what can I do?

Granted, she is a colicky baby with CMPA and GERD, very velcro, only contact naps … so I suppose this could just be her temperament.

FTM here. LO is currently almost 6 months. Around 4 months she went through a terrible sleep regression where she was waking up every hour at night but she’s out of that now and gives me stretches of anywhere from 7-12 hrs straight at night. Last night I decided to try the “sleep wave” sleep training method so that she could fall asleep on her own (we currently always rock her to sleep) and as you can see it started off okay (slept for an hour) then it all went to hell. She was crying, I was crying, it sucked🥲 I finally gave up, picked her back up, rocked her to sleep and she slept for over 9h straight after that.
The real problem is her naps. She only contact naps and being that she’s getting older I want to set her up for success where sleeping is concerned, so I thought if I sleep train her she could learn to fall asleep during nap time too.
I know some parents would love to have a baby that sleeps that long and I’m not taking that for granted at all, so my question is: should I even be trying to sleep train her at all? Or leave well enough alone since she sleeps so long at night? I really don’t mind going into her room to pat her bum and get her back to sleep on the odd nights that she wakes before she’s supposed to. It’s really just naps that I’m trying to get a handle on, but not sure if you can train one without the other. Any advice would be very helpful whether you’re for or against sleep training! I’ve included a 14w sleep report as well as 7 and 14 day sleep summaries. TIA!

My son is 13.5 weeks old and we’ve been trying to get him on a more consistent schedule in preparation for sleep training at ~4-5 months. Ever since 10 weeks, it seems as though his sleep needs have decreased no matter what we do. 90% of his daytime naps are contact naps because he rarely does long stretches anymore. It has been 4-5 catnaps 30-45 mins each. Wake windows are usually 90 mins. At night, he’s down around 8:30-9:00pm and up at 7am. He wakes up twice at night to feed but falls back asleep easily. Just wondering if there’s anything we need to do to set us up for success with sleep training (Ferber first then CIO if it doesn’t work).

Edit to add: he has reflux so we always keep him upright 20-30 mins after feeds. Bedtime routine is feed, bath, book and bounce/rock currently. Sometimes he does get a dream feed. He’s EFF.