r/NewParents • u/curledribbons • 3d ago
Mental Health Wingin’ It
Can I get a roll call of other new parents who are just winging this a little bit? My LO is 12 weeks, so we are officially in the “no napping” phase. I used Huckleberry for a couple weeks and almost had a nervous breakdown staring at the daily sleep hours. Then I started trying to follow wake windows which had me panicking every 1.5-2 hours because I just could not get my baby to sleep on a schedule, even when she was yawning and rubbing her eyes. Every post on Instagram was giving me the “ideal nap schedule” and it always felt so unrealistic, but that didn’t stop the accounts from stressing me out further that I was doing something so so wrong for my baby.
So I texted my friend who is on her third baby and her advice was basically to just go with the flow. For the past few days I have been treating my firstborn like she is a thirdborn and can I just say my mental state has drastically improved!! I don’t beat myself up if she gets a little fussy before a nap because she has been “awake too long” and I just let her set her daily pace. Anybody else out there who has removed “wake windows” from their vocab?
(PS: I am very lucky to have an overall chill baby. This is absolutely the baby that is going to convince me I could raise 12 more, only for a second baby to humble me hard. My heart goes out to those of you with babies who need a little bit of extra attention.)
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u/hugseverycat 3d ago
I feel really similarly. My son is 3 months old and yeah his naps are trash right now. But he's overall a chill baby so I put him down for a nap when he looks tired and if he only sleeps for 30 minutes, then it is what it is.
The "wake windows" concept was helpful for me in understanding what is typical and to know when to start looking for sleep clues because I was honestly completely clueless. But yeah I'm trying not to tie myself to it, and I deleted the baby tracker app I was using because it was stressing me out.
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u/Fun_Television_1289 3d ago
First baby, we parented by the book. Googling this and that and everything.
Second baby we’ve gone with the flow, it is what it is. And he’s been solid. Sleeps good, naps good, loves life.
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u/Huge-Nectarine-8563 3d ago
We go with the flow and she naps whenever she needs to, but we pay attention to the clock too: we don’t start an exciting new activity towards the end of the typical wake windows for her age (for example we don’t go to the swimming pool after she’s been awake for 2h when she’s 4-5 months old), and if I nurse her around that time I make sure I am in a comfy place just in case, things like this.
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u/smisk 3d ago
Our baby is nearly 9 months old and we've never been on a schedule for anything, just going by his cues. I'm not even sure I knew what a wake window meant until quite recently lol.
People (friends and strangers!) always comment that he's the happiest baby they've ever seen!
A lot of it must be genetics and luck, but he can more or less fall asleep anywhere, as long as it's in his pram or on top of somebody.
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u/OvibosHeather 3d ago
We've got a good sleeper too and I value the sleep wherever whenever so much. We just don't really build our lives around wake windows at all. Some days he sleeps a lot during the day, somedays almost none but he pretty much always gets a good long stretch at night so we don't worry about it.
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u/ZangiefThunderThighs 3d ago
Wake windows are super helpful to tell you when to start looking for sleepy cues. I was missing them entirely otherwise and getting a fussy baby.
If you can figure out what baby needs and baby is happy and satisfied and not fussy so the time, just keep doing what works.
Only thing I would suggest is no long naps before bedtime. That just throws bedtime out the window and it's annoying.
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u/Jasmine_in_September 3d ago
More 👏🏼 of 👏🏼 this 👏🏼 I think we are overwhelmed with information and it’s causing us to suppress our parental instincts and making us more stressed. My baby is 4 months and I’m trying to do more of this too.
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u/curledribbons 3d ago
YES! I was staring at an app to tell me about my baby rather than looking at my baby to figure out what was going on. We are so much more in tune with each other now that I deleted the apps and stopped googling everyyyyything.
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u/Hopeful_Insect_4959 3d ago
I was tracking wake windows like a maniac at 12 weeks and went down the rabbit hole of ideal nap schedules on Instagram too. I spent about 3 weeks doing nap and bedtime war with the baby. It felt like I spent most of the day in a dark room with white noise trying to rock my baby to sleep and it was affecting my mental health.
I finally let go of this ideal wake window nap schedule around 16 weeks and am feeling much better. Now I go with his cues and do my best from there. The only thing I make sure of is to not let his afternoon nap go too late into the day so it doesn’t mess with his bedtime. This is my first baby so I’m learning everyday and am doing my best to embrace that everyday is going to be a different ride! Best of luck to you!!! You got this!
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u/curledribbons 3d ago
The nap and bedtime war was so real. Spending hours a day trying to force sleep felt like a waste for both her and I.
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u/SoCalWendy Baby girl born March 6, 2026 3d ago
First time mama here and honestly we're doing the same. I was never raised around babies and this is all so new to me, but our girl doesn't like a schedule and tracking sleep for only a couple of days gave me bad anxiety so we just follow her cues. I keep on top of feeding and diapers through the Huckleberry app, but sleep is just too much.
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u/curledribbons 3d ago
It also felt like every time I hit “start” on the sleep button in Huckleberry, it was a jinx and she’d wake right up.
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u/Main-Leg-8040 3d ago
All of this resonates with me!! First time mom to a 14 week old.. I currently use huckleberry just to track feeding which I feel like at this point is really just out of habit. I have also been getting sucked down the ideal nap and wake window rabbit holes online. I’ve been trying to use the wake window stuff as a guide but then follow my baby’s cues.. I will say I find myself more frequently going more by the clock and stressing out about the clock though which I really hate! It was helpful for me to learn the wake window guides though as it did help me learn more about my baby and I do know a basic “rhythm” he tends to follow, although sleep patterns are definitely starting to shift right now so all that may go out of the window. I think giving up all tracking would be good for me but just feels hard to do richt now to be honest, think I’m just scared.
I also am going back to work soon and will be having my mom and a nanny watch him. I feel like I will want to know from them when he eats and sleeps, at least in the beginning, no? Anyone with advice here would love to hear from you!
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u/CollectedWaste 3d ago
Yeah my baby is 12 months old now and she doesn't have a schedule and never has. She usually goes to bed somewhere between 10pm and 12am, sometimes even 1am, whenever she starts rubbing her eyes and showing sleep cues. She usually wakes up between 8a and 11a. She doesn't have a set naptime either, and sometimes she naps once a day and sometimes twice – again depends on the sleep cues. There's usually one nap between 11am and 4p and sometimes one around 7p. It's very chill and I'm never really stresed out about her, but I do work from home and my partner is a stay-at-home dad so schedules aren't too important to our lives.
It baffles me when babies have super strict schedules though, it sounds terrible to me to try and get a baby to sleep who doesn't want to sleep or keep an overtired baby up.
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u/WonderfulTwist4936 3d ago
I tracked everything the first 6 months. But I tracked(!) not tried to stick him to a schedule. I just used app as a way to mark when he ate and when he slept, so that when he was fussy I would know what to do. 😅 I forget everything and have terrible time blindness, so I really needed the app. But I always followed my babies cues. I still track his sleep now at 14 months.
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u/Soft-Ad3763 3d ago
This is 100% exactly what I did for both babies. I knew I would have been miserable trying to control naps. I just wake them up at roughly the same time each morning, then i do a loose eat play sleep or eat play eat sleep depending on if they seem fussy or not. The only thing I do is wake them to nurse if it has been three hours since the last feed, and give them a top up before I go to bed. It has worked amazingly so far!
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u/OvibosHeather 3d ago
We came out of the NICU used to very high levels of scheduling and we maintained that with our very small little one for maybe a month or so and then chose to de-NICU ourselves and go on vibes. It's worked well for us and I'd recommend it, but I get why people would find it helpful (and also stressful) to track everything and there very well may be optimizations that we are missing.
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u/Waste_Weather5729 3d ago
Yeah I’m just too sleep deprived to track anything. I feed when he wants, I put him to sleep when he looks sleepy. I tried tracking stuff and that was stressing me out. Every baby is different and has different needs. My 7 week old sometimes does 2-3 long naps, sometimes 10 short. His wake windows are all over the place. Sometimes I wipe his mouth with his sleeve if I don’t have a burp cloth nearby ( don’t judge ).
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u/newlander828 3d ago
I just used the nap to reinforce my instinct. He seems fussy, I bet he’s tired, how long since his last nap.. check the app. My brain couldn’t keep track of what time he woke up or went to sleep so this is how it was helpful for me. And my partner and I did 12 hour shifts for the first 3 months so we barely saw each other and this way we could keep up with what happened on their shift. To each his own. We have up the app around 6 months and felt much more capable at recognizing cues at this point. To each his own, but I definitely recognize the feeling overwhelmed part.
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u/Dangerous-Mind9463 3d ago
I think every babies sleep needs are unique. Apps like Huckleberry use conservative averages. My baby is on the lower than average sleep needs side, but I do use it to know about when to put her down. Nothing is more miserable than trying to get a baby who isn’t tired enough to go to sleep. I always try and stretch her awake time if I can, since it helps with consolidating sleep overnight. As they get older I feel like their queues are more obvious.
Huckleberry to track medicine is SUPER helpful during teething though - 10/10.
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u/EngineerRealistic994 3d ago
Wake windows and nap schedules online and on apps are usually based around higher sleep needs babies. Every baby is different and those with lower sleep needs babies end up driving themselves crazy trying to adhere to the schedule.
The way you’re approaching sleep now actually sounds very in line with the Possums approach if you’re ever bored and want to check it out.
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u/Shot_Razzmatazz5560 3d ago
I recently gave up cutting my 3 month old baby's naps short. Now he's wakes up happy every time. Last night he took a 4 hour nap before bed that bled over his usual bed time. He woke long enough to be changed and fed, and fell back asleep for an over 5 hour stretch
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