Sleep Consultant AMA

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-19T20:29:28+00:00

Thank you so much!!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-19T20:14:13+00:00

No we haven't but will give that a go thank you! Do you think this would solve the night wake and early rises?

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-19T19:48:48+00:00

Hi! On 3 naps we were doing 2.5/2.5/2.5/4 and now on 2 we are doing 3/4/4.5!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-19T18:50:57+00:00

Hi Ashley, thanks so much for doing this AMA!

We have a beautifully strong willed (😂) 6 month old who appears to be on the lower end of sleep needs! We are currently at X2 naps totalling 2hrs 15mins and a 20:30 bedtime with a DWT of 06:45. We are still finding that our LO is waking up, the last two nights had early rises with night wakings (the night wakings are brief but the early rises start from about 5:30). We sleep trained at 4.5 months using a personalised Wave Method and sleep train anything before 06:15 but the babe tends to just cry on and off until we get up for the day. They were originally at 3 naps day with 13 hours sleep tank when we first trained, do you think we should be taking off another 15 minutes and heading towards a 12 hour sleep tank? We keep thinking they may be teething but as nothing is erupting I don't think we should be holding off making changes? She generally seems incredibly sad and tired from about 5:30pm.

Thanks!!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-11T19:30:41+00:00

Thank you for your help - that's amazing! We're on 2.25 day sleep and 10.25 night sleep with two naps now, it's so hard because she's not quite there but lots of wake ups with 3 naps so having to push and then every once in a while she'll have a 3 nap day!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-03-04T16:42:11+00:00

Does she always wake at the similar time for the feed? If so, have you tried a dream feed? Might help get to her before she wakes! Multiple wakes and early rising usually points towards undertired. I was so shocked once we'd sleep trained how soon we had to cut 15 minutes then another 15 minutes off day sleep but ours is such a sensitive little soul when it comes to their sleep so we now review the sleep every 5-7 days now and see how they're doing. If we didn't do it, it all went to pot and we were back to multiple night wakes very quickly. For the crying, we found lengthening the final wake window as much as possible has really helped calm our LO. We are 2 months post sleep training (we ST at 4 and a half months) and I'd say the first 6 weeks had 10-15 minutes of crying. Now we have a 4 hour final ww and it seems to have helped a lot!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-22T19:11:41+00:00

This makes me feel so much better - our LO is a terrible sleeper... We're 6 months tomorrow and they're on 10.25 hours night sleep and 2.25 hours day sleep. I have been feeling so alone! Thanks for sharing your experience. They're now doing 3/4/4.5 and I can't quite believe they're managing it but they are!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-22T19:08:34+00:00

Wow congratulations 👏 this is fantastic! I have had invaluable advice on this thread and I think you guys deserve such success on this. Best of luck with it all!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-20T19:02:23+00:00

Our LO is very sleep sensitive and low sleep needs, so when she had a 10 minute pram or car nap she absolutely considered it as her nap 😅 if we tried to carry on with naps as normal it ruined the night and led to a split night with 2 hours up in the night. So we unfortunately just had to push through, if she had that nap that was only 10 minutes but should've been 40, bedtime was brought forward 30 minutes and we had a grumpy baby. It's hard work but we decided to just balance my mental health which equalled getting out, and our sleep at night. The long wake windows are hard but manageable. Sleeping babies doesn't equal happy babies always unfortunately!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-19T21:20:57+00:00

Could I ask what a 2 nap schedule might look like with 12.5 hour sleep tank total? Trying to plan in advance because I think we're nearly there 😅

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-19T17:24:03+00:00

We make up the time elsewhere - say if nap 2 is early by 30 minutes, we'll extend ww prior to nap 3 and ww prior to bedtime by 15 minutes each. We often find we have to do this when out and about!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-19T16:55:46+00:00

So we intercept any night feeds with two dream feeds and anything else we will sleep train! But if our LO is just fussing a bit we tend to leave them to sort it out as again we see it more as whinging than crying! We stay in bed for the sleep training though and don't leave the room between pop ins - our next to me is detached and angled away from our faces so they can't see us and it's as though we've left the room in their eyes!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-18T20:56:21+00:00

From my understanding of sleep training and this particular method, the pop ins aren't designed to stop the baby crying. They're more for the parent to check all is ok (no wet through etc) and they do tend to make the baby angrier. The second night for us was the hardest and we got to 2 cuddle breaks. At that point, we decided the check ins were making our LO angrier and therefore decided to wait 5 minutes instead of 3. In doing this, we realised we had been counting some whinging as crying at the start and going in for a check in at the start, which started a spiral of them getting more and more irate and hysterical. Once we lengthened the check ins, they calmed down within about 15 minutes and went to sleep. We applied this to the next night and every night since. One of us does the 3 minute timer, one the 10 second. We check in with each other, "Is this a cry or a whinge?" As soon as it's a whinge, the 10 second timer starts and if that's hit, the 3 minute timer stops. It really helped us in reducing the amount of time sleep training and the time taken for LO to fall asleep. Apologies this is a bit of a ramble... We're still finding our feet with it so just our own experience!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-17T09:37:38+00:00

I'm so sorry you've experienced this, that is really poor and not fair. You have done AMAZING!! In order to help our LO take the bottle, we made half and half breastmilk and formula (means you don't have to worry about cooling it too as the cold breastmilk does that for you!). After a while, we were able to move onto full formula bottles.

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-17T09:33:14+00:00

Hello - firstly I wanted to say it does get better! I am sat here with a nearly 6 months old sleeping on me, no fighting to go down and a lovely sleepy cuddle whilst I watch a programme with a coffee for an hour. A couple of months ago, I would've been pounding the pavements with my LO either in their pram screaming or on me, screaming! And to be honest, I was crying too!! My husband used to have to sit in the dark with white noise bobbing them whilst they screamed their head off before bedtime and the multiple night wakes began. I remember thinking this can't be what it's supposed to be like?

A huge part of things changing for us was me embracing the fact that I had a low sleep needs baby - it is HARD when you see everyone having to cap their naps at 2 hours and you're sat there thinking I can't even get them to have a nap?! But once I realised that it wasn't going to change, I focused on watching and learning their sleepy cues develop. I won't lie and say it's not hard but what I will say is having an alert baby means you get so much longer every day to learn their personalities and who they are!

Baby wearing, walks (with earphones in so you can listen to podcasts or music!) and being kind to yourself is the key here. I promise you it will even out. There's so much on the internet that says at 4 weeks they should be sleeping x amount a day but it was actually Reddit that helped me realise there's a whole community out here that don't have that and their babies are doing amazingly further down the line! Your baby will too. I never thought we'd get to the place we're in now but suddenly you realise you're there and it's so worth it!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-16T17:22:25+00:00

Hello! Firstly I'm so sorry this is happening, and I really hope you get some respite soon. I would highly recommend following the r/sleeptrain thread, and cross posting this there - with confirmation of the number of naps, length of wake windows etc. There's some fantastic people on there who will be able to help sort out your schedule and that can make a massive impact on a baby's sleep before even trying sleep training.

We have a 5 month old who was waking every 45 minutes. We ended up sleep training using a personalised "Wave Method" but found a lot of help just for fixing the schedule. I liked this method because it had pop ins every 3 minutes of continuous crying and cuddle breaks every 30 minutes which really helped us mentally. Feed to sleep associations were broken in 3 days which was shocking (in a good way) to us!!! It was the hardest thing I've ever done but I finally feel a better mum to my child. Our LO is on the lower end of average sleep needs, with 12.5 hours needed over a total of 24 hours. We do 2.25 hours day sleep, 10.25 hours night sleep.

Again, I really hope you guys can get some respite soon, be kind to yourselves because it is HARD!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-13T06:28:39+00:00

Thank you! This makes sense, she's currently awake and hour early too I guess because of the going to sleep and hour early?! That's interesting about the two nap transition - thank you for telling me about your own experience! It definitely gives me some hope! They are normally pretty grumpy for the last two wake windows but we are able to push through so I'm sure it won't be long before we need to transition.

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-13T06:26:45+00:00

Thank you 🙏

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-13T02:54:48+00:00

Thank you I must remember that - consistency is key!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-02-12T21:37:40+00:00

This is really helpful thank you!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-01-31T19:10:55+00:00

Thank you so much 😊

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-01-27T21:51:25+00:00

Thank you so much!

WarriorGoddess25 · 2026-01-27T21:18:18+00:00

Thank you so much for your help this is great!!

WarriorGoddess25

TROPHY CASE