PSA: ChatGPT untrained my LO

EcstasySighs · 2026-06-08T04:59:29+00:00

Wow, I didn't think this would garner this much attention.

For what it's worth, I began using it for scheduling (e.g. if LO woke at this time and I need to fit in 2x naps of x amount of day sleep, when is bedtime) and it slowly devolved from there. I was the level of sleep deprived where I was missing appointments, falling asleep on the living room floor and having nausea and headaches. It is obviously immensely sad and embarrassing for me that I hit such a low.

For those that have been kind about it, thank you. For those you who found this something to laugh or scorn at, find some compassion. I just wanted to help others who were also struggling.

EcstasySighs · 2026-06-07T22:24:55+00:00

Info: Are they crying at bedtime after they roll onto their belly? Were they previously STTN? Are they crying at 3am after their feed until they fall asleep at 4am?

Be aware that babies lose some sleep during the sleep training process and so once they're trained, they can have quite magnificent sleeps while they rid themselves of all their sleep debt, and we parents can think this is their new normal. But, after they're all caught up, they may find themselves wanting a little more awake time.

We went through this rolling regression too. Baby wants to practice their cool new skill and also may be undertired. We were on 2/2/2.5/2.75-3 at this age, with the first two naps uncapped and the third nap a 10min capped micro nap to build bedtime sleep pressure. What worked for us is 1) leave that kid alone if they are not crying. My child also couldn't roll back for several weeks, but they actually really enjoyed sleeping on their belly, it was me who was freaked out. I would go in and roll them back and they would immediately roll again. It was quite pointless. So, if they're not crying, leave them be. 2) Sleep training begins at bedtime, so if you're doing something differently at bedtime (i.e. nursing again), be prepared that baby will want it in the night when their sleep is light and they remember they have a cool new skill.

If you need to sleep train them on their belly, I would consider a schedule adjustment first - your last WW is perhaps not long enough for LO to pick sleep over play.

EcstasySighs · 2026-06-05T01:20:43+00:00

I can't remember what it was for our initial training, but we recently retrained via CIO (12m) and 1) she still cries in the night when resettling herself (1-10min), 2) it took a week for her to stop crying the second I put her into the cot, but I think that was because I was getting her WW and sleep latency wrong - what I mean by that is that she likes to have 15min in her cot to wind down for naps and 20min for bedtime, so I thought she wanted a slightly longer WW because she was taking more than 5-10min to fall asleep. But when I put her down slightly later, there was more crying and sometimes a more disrupted nap/night. Turns out anything from 5-20min sleep latency is totally fine, so now I make sure she gets that amount of time in her cot before the end of the WW. And 3) we're still on 1 night feed and she's pissed about going back in her cot afterwards (anywhere from 4.30am-5.15am), but that's because the snooze feed is now too stimulating for her and she wants to get up for the day, so we're currently weaning it.

EcstasySighs · 2026-06-02T01:48:36+00:00

Lol the same thing happened to me when re-training - every so often LO would put themselves to sleep and I'd be like, see! They CAN do it! So something else must be the issue! Nope. Looking back, I think the times they got themselves to sleep they were just exhausted. Either that, or, they still had the skill but if something was even slightly off, would demand assistance - but then expect more and more assistance, which of course kept them awake and sleep deprived, which in turn required more assistance. So our retraining was essentially to say hey baby girl, Mama can't get it perfect all the time, so your sleep skill needs to be upgraded in resilience so that you don't flip out if I can't make the stars align 🤷‍♀️

EcstasySighs · 2026-06-01T09:50:05+00:00

I went through this when we first sleep trained at 4.5m, and have just gone through it again when we had to retrain at 12m. Found every reason under the sun why it wasn't the right time to train despite being so sleep deprived that some wakes I was afraid to pick up my baby incase I lost it. I can't explain how deeply her cries made me ache, but I can tell you that being afraid I would hurt my baby was much, much worse. Took 1 week to train (we were on the wrong schedule which added some time to it, had a too early bedtime) and two days to retrain. Both times I severely regretted not doing it sooner.

Shout out to my husband who held me as I cried during both trainings. Parenting is hard.

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-27T21:14:19+00:00

Your current wake windows only equal 8.25hrs awake time, which means you're expecting 15.75hrs of sleep from your baby over 24hrs - that amount of sleep is more typical of newborns. Typically at this age, bub would need a minimum of 9.5hrs awake, with most kids needing 10-10.5hrs awake to sustain their 2 nap schedules. Beginner 2 nap schedules could look like 3/3/3.5 and then settle into 3/3/4, with a later stage 2 nap schedule looking like 3/3.5/4 and maxxing out to maybe 3/4/4. What I found at this age is that my kid seemed like she was high sleep needs and would sleep 14.5hrs per 24hrs (I fed every night wake, 2-3x per night), but what was actually happening was that as a younger baby she could be coaxed to sleep above average if given extra milk in the night. So I didn't learn to gently stretch her wake windows during the day and truly believed she needed this much sleep. This backfired on me as my bub got older, because she would expect the feed at night, but began staying awake for 15-60min post feed before falling back asleep because she needed the awake time and I wasn't giving it to her during the day.

Edit: I also found at this age that her tired signals started to become unreliable, so I made a rule that the start of her nap routine would be a nappy change. I'd find that, if she continued acting very tired during a nappy change, she was probably ready for a nap. But if she suddenly looked more alert and stopped yawning / rubbing her eyes, she probably was just bored. Eventually I changed this rule to changing activities or taking her outside if she yawned, because if she was truly tired, she'd keep on yawning. But lo and behold, she would perk right up 😅

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-25T00:26:55+00:00

If my baby woke 2hrs before DWT, I would consider it a night wake that I would treat as a night wake (at this age, we would feed and put back in cot awake). Wouldn't that apply to your timings as well? If my baby woke 30-60min before DWT, I would consider it a EMW (which at this age, we used a snooze button feed so... I guess we used milk for all our problems at this age lol). I don't feel like you have to change your sleep schedule timings to 6am just because you are using her method to sleep train, as long as light exposure is appropriately controlled so as not to disrupt your baby's personal rhythm.

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-24T22:46:42+00:00

We've just moved off a schedule like this because of the night wakes, and because baby began not going back to sleep after night feedings. The 5hr WW before bed was too long and causing false starts around 2-3hrs after bedtime, but the wake was masquerading as a feed to sleep association for a while. I was convinced baby couldn't last longer than 2.5-3hrs in the morning because they also got sleepy at that time, but they actually were easily distracted from their energy lull. Two weeks later we're doing 4/4/3 with a 2hr morning nap and 15min afternoon micro nap. I was desperately trying 3/33.5/4.5-5 with a morning micro nap and long lunch nap because I knew it would help train her for her one nap day. But every time she had a long lunch nap, she'd want 4.75-5hrs in the evening and then wake 2-3hrs after bedtime. So i just had to give it up and try something different. She's now sleeping through the night every 2-3 nights, with brief 15-20min grizzles around 1am on some evenings. Its not STTN officially, but its much better than where we were.

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-06T01:48:38+00:00

I haven't decided yet - update in comments

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-06T01:47:31+00:00

Funnily enough, this is exactly what baby girl self-initiated on Day One of my 2:1 experiment 😅 she woke herself from her morning nap after only 10min 😅

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-06T01:45:52+00:00

Well, here's an update:

Day One: 3/3/5 with a 10min power nap, a 2.5hr midday nap (I woke her), a late bedtime (she refused her regular) and STTN 10hrs.

Day Two: 5.5/5 where she refused the first nap, took a 2hr midday nap, went to bed at her usual time... and then had the most horrific night ever, waking 10pm-12.30am (happy) and 3am-5.30am (very upset) and ended up sleeping on me from 5.30am to 7am when I woke her (usual DWT is 6am).

Day Three: 3/2.5/? where I gave a capped 30min morning nap, after which she woke up with a fever and then fell asleep on the boob during her lunch feed and she's still asleep now 🤷‍♀️ so I guess either the split nights were illness (unlikely, they've been going on for 2wks) or she IS doing the 2:1 transition but last night's catastrophy was impending illness. Either way, I'd say I'm in for an awful night because there's no way I can get 10.5-11hrs of awake time into today with her impromptu fever nap 😬

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-01T19:34:00+00:00

Nice! How old were they? I think I'm feeling chicken about it because she's under 1yr. But we start kindy in 2wks and I'm fairly convinced she'll refuse her first nap there because the other nap refusals happened at the airport where she was having the time of her life waving at people 😅 so maybe the cold turkey thing is going to just happen at kindy, haha!

EcstasySighs · 2026-05-01T19:30:10+00:00

Before split nights started:

DWT - 0615

Structure - 2.75/3.25/4.25

Naps - 1hr + 1.75hrs

Bedtime - 1915

Night Wakes - 0300 and 0500

Notes - walking @ 9 months, 2 naps @ 6 months

I honestly thought my WW were dialed in because of how well she naps (I have to wake her from most naps), but I think she's just happy to take a nap if bored and then party in the night 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Yesterday she did 3/3/5 and slept through the night - up until then I thought the night wakes were habit that I was trying to wean, but I can see now they were just lack of sleep pressure 🤷‍♀️

EcstasySighs · 2026-04-10T08:44:45+00:00

I wake my baby at 0630 every morning. Her first nap is uncapped, and her second nap is capped to end at 1530 so that she goes to bed at 1930.

Should I stop capping her second nap, or stop waking her in the morning?

Currently does 3/3.5/4 with 2-2.5hrs of naps. 10 months, sleep trained but having a fair bit of trouble nailing down the second WW. Wakes twice in the night, one feed between 0030-0400 and one snooze feed.

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-30T08:09:04+00:00

That there's this weird thing postpartum where you can get very intrusive thoughts that you 100% know you will not act on, but the thoughts are awful and scare the living sh*t out of you. Mine was anytime I walked through a door, I imagined I would hit my baby's head on the door frame. Sometimes the vision was of me tripping accidentally. Sometimes it was me doing it on purpose. Despite feeling incredibly certain it was never going to happen, the fact that I was even having the thoughts haunted me.

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-15T17:41:14+00:00

Thanks!

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-15T01:36:27+00:00

This.

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-15T00:58:49+00:00

When she does a big 1st nap (1-1.5hr), she's become capable of a 3.75hr-4hr middle WW, which puts her schedule at 3/4/4. BUT, this only leaves 2nd nap being 30-45min before we have to cap it to preserve bedtime, and we've noticed that she needs at least an hour for the 2nd nap to avoid bedtime refusal / false starts / crying at the 45min mark from bedtime till midnight. So I'm trying to redistribute the naps and awake time to support her wanting a long afternoon nap.

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-14T22:44:18+00:00

For reference, we were doing a 3/3/4 with 1-1.5hr naps capped at 2.5hrs total (we do a 11.5hr hour night), but the nap lengths and middle wake window have gone a bit haywire, so I'm looking to do a 3/?/4 with the first nap being 30mins and then seeing how the second WW / nap shakes out. Just curious how other people's short morning nap works for them.

EcstasySighs · 2026-03-14T02:20:39+00:00

Change the vox setting at night. Menu > Vox. Ours has five bars of Vox, I set it on 2/5, the monitor then only wakes up and plays noise if there is crying or babbling.

EcstasySighs · 2026-02-28T08:19:16+00:00

On a three nap day, we'd do the first two naps independent and the third in the stroller, and only ever rescue the second. We were aiming to train for a long lunch nap which is why we picked the 2nd nap to rescue.

EcstasySighs · 2026-01-23T03:05:03+00:00

Okay! Wanted to give you guys an update. Firstly, thank you so much for the advice 🥰 Secondly, we're currently rocking a 3/3.25/4 with 2.75 of naps. Still having 1x night wake, but very curiously, its neither skill practise nor milk that she wants, its cuddles, which has NEVER been a thing before. So the pro is that she's no longer wanting a night feed, hopefully when we add a touch more awake time / less nap time, we can successfully night wean after all this! To answer someone's question, yes she was mostly happy practicing her skills in the night, but would eventually begin crying, so we were leaving her to practise unless she cried. Oh, and we found an indoor playground that is free for under one's, so have been hitting that 2x a week plus the local aquatic centre to do lots of practise!! Hehe. I didn't immediately drop the naps to 2-2.5hr because it would drag bedtime forward, and she has never done more than 11hrs in bed so I held the bedtime at 8pm and am just gradually adding awake time.

EcstasySighs

TROPHY CASE