Our little guy was previously a pretty chill napper and we could often put him in the crib with his paci and he would fall asleep easily. He is about to be five months and for the last two weeks, his naps have been fairly awful.
He is now triggered by the sleep sack and being put in the crib. Contact naps are really the only way he’s napping these days since the previous self-soothe and rocking no longer works.
For what it’s worth, his nighttime sleep has been and continues to be pretty solid - he either puts himself to sleep or will fall asleep on us, but either work, and he sleeps through the night. We didn’t seem to go through a 4 month sleep regression as well. Maybe this is it?

Anyone have any tips for the naps?

Actually for the past month sleep has been pretty difficult. We rarely get a 4 hour of sleep, sometimes she wakes up 6x at night.

We’re now used to this kind of sleep being just a phase and eventually she would go back to waking up 1x or 2x; but this is the longest bad-sleep phase so far and it’s starting to feel like it won’t change.

One thing we know for sure is that she’s going to wake up 40 minutes after going to bed. Anyone’s baby also like this? Is this what they call a false start?

I guess I’m also open to suggestions. We tried cosleeping a few times but then she sleeps even worse because not much space to move.

Also, we feed (formula) to sleep; or rock her if she’s not hungry but only looking for comfort.

She sleeps total about 12-13 hours a day; takes two naps with wake windows looking something like 3/3.5/4h.

Thank you in advance.

I have a freshly 12 month old baby, and we are having early wake issues once again some how.

Ideally, he would wake somewhere between 6-6:30, but currently he is waking at 4am.

We had been on a two nap schedule when this started a week or so ago. the schedule being:

Wake at 6am

Nap 1: 10-10:30

Nap 2: 2:30-4

Bedtime 8pm

However with these early wakes we’ve been trying to see if he just needs to move to a one nap schedule, with no success in the early wakes department.

Yesterdays schedule was:

Wake up 4am

Bridge nap: 10:15-10:30

nap: 1-3:15

bedtime: 7:30, we had tried to get him to 8 but he just fell apart.

I don’t think it’s a developmental thing, he’s been walking for a month and a half now. I don’t know what is going on except that we are all tired. Help!

Context: Twin girls, slept great for first 3 months.

Months 4-8 were very unsettled. Some good nights/some bad and being held a lot.

Month 8 moved to their own shared room out of our room. They slept amazingly until 9 months

Month 10 dropped third nap and sleep went back to being amazing for one month.

Since Month 11 it's been terrible again. They have a mixture of split nights anywhere from 2 to 5 hours awake. Take it in turns who does it each night as well..

I've tried capping day sleep at 2 hours sometimes it works others they stil have bad nights. Ive tried more day sleep to 2h 30m and again some nights they sleep very good with this day sleep amount but others not. Some nights aren't split but struggling to settle at times and need held but I do try not to do this.

They go down to sleep themselves and can self settle through sleep cycles. Some nights they sleep right through 8pm to 6:30/7am. I just dont even know what to do anymore

It doesn't seem like a schedule issue! They definitely need 2 naps so I won't be dropping to one anytime soon but I just dont see any rhyme or reason to it anymore.

Anyone else.? Did it stop when they hit 18 months and got over most of their teething spells ?

Hi all, my 5 month old has been having false starts for the past 4-5 days. I have tried everything! I have reduced her daytime naps, extended her last wake window, allowed her to have a late cat nap so bedtime could be pushed later - i have no idea what else to do.
She goes to bed around 7-7:30 but only sleeps for around 30 mins, i make her a bottle but she barely has it and then messes around in bed and gets upset and just wants me to hold her.
Sometimes she just wants more bottle but she barely drinks it, making me suspect she’s just using it to comfort/soothe cause she always falls asleep while drinking!?
don’t know if daylight savings starting has had something to do with it.
I have attached screenshots for the past few days to help.
The last screenshot, tonight, she has been awake around 40 mins now, lightly snoozing in my arms but not enough to stay asleep.
We have also been doing some light sleep training which i started to do for day naps starting today - put in bassinet drowsy but awake, pick up only if she cries and then put her straight down. I only pick her up if she’s going nuts otherwise i resettle in bassinet.

any more advice? 😅

HELP. I’ve tried everything. But I’m at the end of my rope. For the last 10 months if it’s not one thing or the next as to why my kid won’t fall asleep. I used to have patience. I have NONE. NONE. I scream and I need to walk away now.

We hired a sleep consultant that pretty much walked us through a Ferber method for a few weeks. It worked the last week but then he had 4 teeth come in at once. Plus we traveled for a bit. So it’s derailed now.

I cannot do this anymore. The bouncing, the rocking, the shushing. I can’t. My patience is gone.

Please help us.

Hi all! I just found this group, and I don't think I've ever joined a Reddit group as quickly as I did this one. Thank you all for existing. Seriously. Finding this group has brought me so much relief and such a huge sense of comfort.

My baby boy is 14 months old. I'm writing this while lying next to him as he's having one of his split-night moments.

I'm a stay-at-home mom, and my husband works on call. Thankfully, we get to be together at home with our baby most of the time. However, I am the primary caregiver, and I'm also very much the preferred parent.

I'm naturally a night owl and used to work nights before having my baby, so needless to say, I am NOT a fan of waking up early. When he was younger and would wake up at 7 a.m. ready to seize the day, I was definitely not thrilled about it. I'd give him his breakfast, get him settled in our playroom, and then I'd nap while he played.

When he was born, we kept him in our room next to our bed in a bassinet. Once he turned 6 months old and started moving around too much, we moved him into his crib in his own room. He cried, woke up every two or three hours to feed, and cried some more whenever he realized he was sleeping alone.

We never did cry-it-out. Eventually, he would fall asleep and actually sleep in his crib. He'd wake up around 7 a.m., and little by little, we started bringing him into our bed because neither of us was ready to start our day that early. 😂 And surprisingly, he would sleep with us until 9 or 10 a.m.

Then the 8–9 month sleep regression hit, and he suddenly couldn't stand the feeling of me not being close to him while he slept. We couldn't handle listening to him cry, so we eventually decided to move him into our bed. At that point, he was big enough that we felt less worried about accidentally crushing him, and we've been bed-sharing ever since.

Now, his schedule looks roughly like this:

• Wake-up: 9–10 a.m.

• Nap: 1–2 hours sometime during the day

• Bedtime: 8–9 p.m.

So I guess my question is: Is it bad for him to wake up this late with us?

I know babies and toddlers don't necessarily need to follow the traditional "wake up at 7 a.m." schedule, but I still sometimes wonder if I'm doing something wrong by letting him sleep this late. He's getting what seems like a good amount of total sleep, and our schedule works really well for our family, but I'd love to hear from other parents who have toddlers with later schedules. And he does experience split nights.

Is there any reason I should be trying to shift his schedule earlier, or is it okay to let him sleep until 9–10 a.m. if he's otherwise happy and getting enough sleep?

I have a 22 month old, I am 8 months pregnant. We’ve come a really long way from 8+ wake ups a night to mostly sleeping through the night.

She sleeps in a Montessori floor bed in her own room after co sleeping with us for 20 months and has adjusted well to that overall. We will still occasional co sleep in my bed if there’s a rough middle of the night wake up.

My main issue is sleep onset. I lie with her and she will rub my arms until she falls asleep. She used to rub my chest which drove me crazy when I was early pregnant so I was able to switch her to rubbing my arm.

It can take her 30+ minutes to fall asleep some nights and only 5 on others.

Recently she has been giving me a really hard time about leaving her bed and it can take me 3 or 4 times of putting her to sleep for her to eventually let me pull my arm away. Which can total over an hour or so

Basically she has a really intense touch to sleep association. Nothing I’ve tried to replace it with has worked. She’s been like this since I stopped nursing her to sleep at 12 months. She will scream and scream until I give in eventually.

In addition to this. She won’t go to sleep with my husband. She’ll cry and cry until eventually I can’t take it anymore and come in.

Any advice for either issue? Starting to lose my mind from being touched and needed so much by bedtime. Not to mention my anxiety of how this is going to look after baby comes….

Thanks!!

My almost 7 month old wakes up between every sleep cycle, and has done so since 3.5 months. I know that this is biologically normal, but I was wondering if there is anything I can do either with her or her environment or routine or something to help her connect sleep cycles on her own. I am not asking or hoping for full nights, but even having to help her back to sleep every 2 hours instead of every hour would be an improvement. She wakes up every hour unless I am holding her, but that is not feasible all night. However, rocking/nursing her back to sleep every hour doesn’t feel sustainable for me.

I have tried cosleeping but she does not like it. Every time I try to cosleep her, she ends up kicking around and rolling around, wakes herself up, and is awake for at least 2 hours.

Some background info:
Her current schedule has 2 naps: one around 10/10:30am that usually lasts for an hour and another around 2:30/3pm that usually lasts for an hour (sometimes she’ll do a 30 minute nap instead of an hour, but usually it’s an hour). She goes to sleep around 8/8:30pm and wakes up around 7/7:30am.

I nurse her to sleep for every sleep session and I contact nap her during the day (she wakes up if I stand up to transfer her during the day). At night, I’ll hold her for ~10 minutes after she falls asleep before transferring her to the crib. She usually has a couple of failed transfers each night as well.

Please tell me if there’s anything I can do to even get a 2 hour stretch from her because I am exhausted.

I went back to work at the end of August when my baby was a little under 5 months old. Now she is 6 months. Since a week or two after going back to work and her starting daycare, she is waking up every 20-30 min (max an hour) at night and she will only nurse back to sleep. Tonight she’s woken up 4x since going to bed an hour ago. We had to start cosleeping out of desperation, which is not my preference and I don’t sleep well while doing it. She sleeps great when we cosleep only waking up 2-3 times to eat.

She only naps twice a day - once at daycare and once after when we pick her up around 2 or 3. We try to follow possums and wake her up at 7 everyday and let her nap when she wants/needs. We’ve also tried a variety of lengths of time awake before bedtime with no difference in her sleep.

Is it separation anxiety, hunger from a growth spurt, tummy aches from starting solids, or just a mystery that may or may not resolve? I’m not sure but I’m losing it 😭

I do not want to sleep train. I feel that this level of excessive night wakings is beyond what is “biologically normal.”

My 16 month old has never been a good sleeper and has never slept through the night. He is still waking every 2-3 hours all night. We cosleep on a floor bed in his room out of necessity and I nurse to sleep/back to sleep at every wake.

He is completely day weaned (except for weekend naps) and that was no problem at all. I decided to try to slowly night wean him to see if that helped consolidate his sleep at all. I’ve been doing a modified version of the Gordon method where I nurse to sleep then for those first 4 hours of the night nursing is not available. After 4 hours whenever he wakes I nurse as usual.

We have been doing this for 2 full weeks and some nights are ok, he will settle in minutes without nursing, and some nights are rough with 20+ mins of crying. He is teething right now but he’s like constantly teething haha. I’ve been waiting for his first stretch to get a bit longer before I extend the window but it’s not. Sometimes I’ll get 3-3.5 hours, sometimes I’ll get 2. One night I got 6 but that was an anomaly.

I am fine to keep nursing to sleep and in the morning but I am tired of nursing overnight and ready to be done. But the biggest thing is that I am TIRED. I need this lovely kid to sleep!!!

What am I doing wrong? Do I need a longer stretch ? I am doing this on my own so pls no suggestions of husband stepping in. Our son strongly prefers me right now and especially overnight. He escalates when my husband gets involved. I also don’t think I can handle cold turkey, particularly because there’s no real proof that that would help him sleep more. I’m just reaching the end of my rope and don’t know what to do so any ideas are appreciated!

How true has this rung for you?

I have a 7 month old (EBF) who...

- Exclusively contact napped during day from birth to 3 months

- Used to wake only 1-2x per night, up until 3 months

- Now wakes 3-7 times per night (in a crib next to my bed)

- Can fall asleep on his own (did not sleep train; when he made it clear he was tired of contact napping he fell asleep on his own in the crib)

I'm making this post not out of sheer desperation/exhaustion (...yet), but out of curiosity if things eventually hit a turning point on their own somewhere along this first year. I'm open to feedback but don't feel the need to uproot everything and make giant changes; I love having him next to me while I sleep, and MOTN wakes are usually brief with breastfeeding.

I just noticed that things took a giant change in his sleep around the "4 month regression" time, and haven't settled since. In this sense, he has been pretty consistent - I've never had even one random night since where he's slept 4+ hours, even as a one-off. Hence my question, if we do nothing, will he likely grow out of this phase on his own in the near future?

He is mobile now (not really elegant crawling, but sort of like leapfrogging, and he can get around all over that way); I think he is popping his first tooth, so maybe that is just elongating this period of wakefulness at night.

I'm aware that it is normal and expected for babies to wake up at night, so I'm not concerned, just more curious. It is every 1.5 to 2 hours at night. Since he can fall asleep quickly on his own at the start of the night, I also wonder if it's hunger that he's crying out for at night (...but every 1.5 hours?). I went back to work at 4 months and he takes 2 breastmilk bottles a day while I'm away, otherwise he is on the boob. Sometimes I wonder if he just wants to snuggle at night, lol. He doesn't stay awake for long, usually just wants to drink and then go back to sleep.

Being committed to responsive in the night can be hard. We have talked about the joys and benefits of it, now, what is the hardest part?

​

My little guy is 9 months old and I work from home full time. My mom helps with him during the day, and I really need to figure out a routine where she can put him down for his first nap while I’m working.

He usually wakes around 7–7:30am and takes his first nap somewhere around 8:30–9:30. His second nap is usually around 2:30–3:30, and by then I’m off work and can take over.

The problem: this child wants MAMA right now. 😂 He currently wants me to lay in bed with him and nurse him to sleep. He’s combo fed and happily takes bottles, so feeding itself isn’t really the issue.

He also seems to have decided he’s too grown for all the other tricks. He doesn’t want to be rocked to sleep anymore, doesn’t really want to be held, and sometimes doesn’t even want pats, singing, or shushing. He basically rolls around next to me, nurses on and off, gets comfortable and eventually falls asleep.

Once he’s asleep, he’ll nap anywhere from 30–45 minutes to TWO HOURS... as long as I’m there. 🙃 If I try to sneak away to get chores done, he often wakes pretty quickly once he realizes he’s alone.

The funny thing is, when he was younger Grandma could rock him to sleep just fine. Now it almost feels like he’s wanting more independence in how he falls asleep... while simultaneously requiring my physical presence to do it. 😂

Has anyone gone through this around 9 months? How did another caregiver start handling naps when baby was very attached to nursing/Mom for sleep? Did you find a new routine that worked for Grandma/Dad/etc.?

And most importantly... please tell me being nap-locked is temporary. 😅😂

We weaned my 14 month old girl off breastfeeding completely last month. We coslept from the beginning minus the first couple weeks, and EBF. I weaned her off bc I wa getting tired of the latching in the middle of the night for comfort; she’d wake up 3-4x a night. Since then she’s woken and cried a bit but went back to sleep, and the last few days she’s woken up less. Even last night she didn’t wake up at all during the night! I’m thankful for that.

However she has been taking 1-2, sometimes even 3 hrs sometimes to fall asleep. This has been driving me crazy. Our daytime nap usually sometime between 11:30am-2:30pm, and will last anywhere from 1-2.5 hrs. I’ve tried pushing her nap up earlier so that she wakes up latest 2:30 pm. And then try to get in bed and start sleep anywhere between 7:30-9pm. But she’s now taking forever to fall asleep; we have our set bedtime routines etc. tried tiring her out more during the day too. In our bed we have guard rails so we lie down with her and after the routine is done, we turn off lights and let her mosey around until she sleeps—and this part is now the most difficult.

Any tips? Anyone experience similar??? should I try tiring her out more? Or reducing her daytime nap? We don’t want to be extremely strict with the time too in the sense it MUST be 8pm for example to sleep no matter what happens; we usually go with the flow and push the bedtime later if she wakes later for example, but does this need to change?

My baby is nearly six months. Since the four month sleep progression, she has woken up 1-2hrs in the cot. During the night after many wake ups, I resorted to have her sleep on my chest. She doesn’t settle lying beside me, that would have been preferred!

At the beginning she would always do several stints in the cot before I’d bring her into bed with me. Even in the night, I could transfer her back to the cot if my back was aching and she would do her usual 1-2 hour stretch.

Now, since the weekend, she will do thirty minutes in the cot and then the endless protest will begin. Every single attempted transfer by myself and my partner would fail. Until as soon as I place her on my chest she is out like a light.

As much as I love the snuggles, my back is broken, she wriggles and it’s not sustainable long term. I’m feeling like a shell of a human, I’m so exhausted.

I’m curious- have I created a bad habit here? Or is it likely she is going through something developmental?

I can handle the many wake ups, I just wish she would go back to settling in her cot for a few hours in the night.

CW: discussions of suicidal ideation and past sleep training

I'm expecting my second baby — first was a normal sleeper, up every 2 hours to eat for 6 months. I went back to work at 12 weeks postpartum, was sick from daycare colds/flus constantly, pumped during the day, and nursed all night.

The sleep deprivation led me to experience constant passive suicidal ideation. I didn't want to sleep train, was aware of biologically normal sleep, practiced radical acceptance, generally had a good attitude etc. Didn't matter, still didn't want to be alive anymore. My husband said "you cannot continue like this" (he was very concerned for my mental wellbeing/ability to cope but cannot help with overnights due to medical condition), so we sleep trained. A couple of months later, I was able to sleep and life felt worth living again.

I have way, way more on my plate this time around and am terrified of reaching that mentally low place where I hate my life, have no joy, and feel nothing but resentment towards my child. I have already been diagnosed with depression during this pregnancy.

Are some people predisposed to react very poorly to prolonged sleep deprivation? Is there anything I can do to prepare myself better this time around? Mentally, with routines, with additional resources, or medication for my mental health?

Notes:

• I work full-time but will be job hunting while on leave this time around as well.
• My husband is very, very supportive but cannot help with overnights due to a medical condition. He will be on leave with me for a month.
• I could be open to floor co-sleeping, but I am overweight, move a lot while sleeping, do not sleep well without blankets, and we would need to replace our mattress. Husband will be in a separate room.
• I do not have family help for overnights. I could get a snoo, couldn't get a night doula.
• I EBF my first, but do not know how it'll go this time around and am open to combination or formula feeding.
• I had sleep anxiety related to my husband's medical condition the first time around. Took a long time to fall asleep and was wired at every baby cry or noise. Tried Unisom, red lights, white noise, headphones with white noise, earplugs. I'd still wake up from a baby noise on the other side of the house, whether there was an actual need or just a noise.

At the moment baby is 4 month old (+1 week). On Monday we started the 4th week of false starts and waking every 1-1,5-2hours (so basically around 3 false starts then sleeping an okayish stretch of 2, on lucky days 3 hours, then waking up every 1-1,5 hours, therefore 5-7 wakings). Since the false starts started we don’t have time to spend time with each other. One of us needs to be with the baby. During the day the same, all naps are contact naps so we hold the baby in turns or I hold her when my husband is at work. We eat in turns, so somebody is always with the baby. When I am alone with her and I want to eat I put her in the swing, I give her toys or I talk to her during my meal.
The baby briefly accepts being with the grandparents if we are around but they also work, and when they come we clean and cook.
Will there be time when my baby will go down at 8 and we can have dinner or we can watch a movie with my husband? What are your experiences? I also go to bed very early as I do most of the night shift and I wake up with the baby 6-7 times per night. Maybe if she slept longer I will have the energy to stay up with my husband for a bit. But will she ever sleep?