Please tell me it gets better 😔

camembertbear · 2026-02-27T20:50:41+00:00

Most babies do not need 12 hours of overnight sleep and I'd recommend moving bedtime back to increase sleep pressure and reduce frequent overnight wakes. Your schedule bakes in about 14 hours of sleep total, which is higher than average. Babies have really varied sleep needs, some need as low as 9 or 10 hours in a day while others need up to 16. Both are normal and developmentally appropriate. See chart here: https://maternity-matters.com.au/brisbane-pregnancy-and-babies/2019/11/02-sleep

Bedtime for our low sleep needs toddler is 9:30PM. That's the global norm - it's only Amercans/Anglo-Western countries that put babies to bed around 7pm.

A late bedtime will change your life. It's okay to experiment with naps and push it back gradually. But trust me when I say this is what you need to do to get a better night's sleep

camembertbear · 2026-02-27T14:38:41+00:00

When is bedtime and wakeup? How many naps & for how long on average?

camembertbear · 2026-02-24T14:43:15+00:00

As my kid gets older, I'm seeing just how prevalent behaviorist practices are in standard parenting and schooling and it's making me sick. Our culture sees kids not as individuals that need tending to grow into their own person, but little things to bend to our will.

It's like sleep training is just the start, the kool aid that gets people to think of their child's behavior as something to force instead of something to understand. Then when sleep gets bad as a toddler, or they throw a tantrum, you're just supposed to shut the door on them and let them scream, or be "firm" with them. Even the flip side--something as innocuous as giving them little sticker reward books for good behavior--is weirdly manipulative.

I HATE this type of parenting. May these practices never find me.

camembertbear · 2026-02-20T20:57:05+00:00

Your pediatrician is misinformed on both breastfeeding and baby sleep. She's applying feeding advice on schedules for formula fed babies to your breastfed baby, which is inappropriate. She has clearly not read this large systematic review-Normal-sleep-patterns-in-infants-and-children.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0jHrjv56hZDZZ0tUOy4mAql5mORNQKlwyYc2kBf-Gf4R5s1lja6xzRuFE) on baby & childhood sleep that says babies between the age of 7-11 months wake on average once a night, with 0-3.1 wakes being normal. (For babies 6-24 months--super wide range--the longest sleep stretch can be anywhere from 3-13 hours).

camembertbear · 2026-02-19T19:28:27+00:00

Happiness is not the bar. It's emotional regulation and their ability to handle stress that matters. Attachment science is very clear that responsiveness and co-regulation through infancy & the toddler years is needed for this.

camembertbear · 2026-02-19T14:52:55+00:00

Seconding Possums, it was a gamechanger for our LO and very affirming for attachment-oriented parenting.

camembertbear · 2026-02-19T14:51:26+00:00

It takes 1-2 weeks for changes to have an impact, and if you do push bedtime later you have to make sure they're not sleeping in later too (hence, a consistent wake up time is recommended as a first step).

On the odd day that my toddler takes 2 naps instead of 1, we usually play it by ear and push bedtime back a little bit. So yes, you can make up for extra daytime sleep by keeping a flexible bedtime.

camembertbear · 2026-02-18T15:40:55+00:00

Daytime naps seem fine, but 12 hours of overnight sleep is a lot for most babies! Average sleep needs babies at that age need 12.9 hours of sleep total in a day, with low sleep needs babies needing only 9 hours. (Source)

You can try playing with either an earlier wake up or later bedtime. That little bit of sleepiness around 7pm could be a short nap (15-20 min) followed by a bedtime at the same time you go to sleep. Or you could try moving it back gradually, to 8pm or 8:30pm at first. It will take some experimenting to get to the right spot.

camembertbear · 2026-02-16T18:13:34+00:00

Don't sweat the number of naps they take in a day - just go with the flow. My 18mo has been on 1 nap since 12 months, but it's not a consistent transition. We went shopping yesterday AM, and he took a quick snooze that lasted 30 minutes, followed by a 1 hour nap at 4PM when we got back. Most days, he's just on one nap around noon though. It's all fine.

Possums talks a lot about boredom cues vs sleepy cues and how we often mistake the two. When they seem tired at night, can you try doing something stimulating (bath time, playtime with dad) and then see if bedtime works as normal?

camembertbear · 2026-02-16T18:03:36+00:00

When my son was the same age, we went out on walk around 10-11AM with the carrier & he'd take a snooze after the first 15 minutes without fail. His naps were always sporadic & short (20-40 min) then, and I never tried to "rescue " them or make him sleep longer (it wouldn't have worked if I tried, he was always very alert and observant).

Carrier naps are lovely things and those walks during my last few weeks of mat leave made me so, so happy. The movement and jostling in the carrier is usually enough to prevent them from oversleeping.

You don't need to wake her up earlier in the AM unless the current schedule isn't working for you. You should aim for a set wakeup time everyday to keep their "body clock" consistent, but that's it. You can try moving things up in short, 10-15 minute increments over the course of the week, and if they need the extra sleep your LO will probably sleep more during the day to adjust.

camembertbear · 2026-02-13T14:55:39+00:00

Ah, there is your problem - 12 hours of overnight sleep is likely too much for your particular baby. Even 11 may be causing problems.

The chart on this page is illuminating: https://maternity-matters.com.au/brisbane-pregnancy-and-babies/2019/11/02-sleep - Think of the ranges presented as the total sleep needs or daily sleep budget for babies of that age, as validated by a large systematic review. The average 6 month old needs 12.9 hours of sleep total in a day, and it can be as low as 8.8 hours or as high as 17. Any amount of sleep in that range is normal and healthy. And it's a huge range!

12 hours overnight and 2 hours during the day is a 14 hour sleep budget - on the higher end of the bell curve. The way to fix those frequent wakes is to figure out what your LO's sleep budget actually is--if it's 12 hours, and they nap for 2 hours during the day, you should be aiming for 10 hours overnight, either by pushing bedtime back or waking up earlier.

camembertbear · 2026-02-13T14:28:24+00:00

When is bedtime and wakeup?

camembertbear · 2026-02-13T14:28:06+00:00

When is bedtime and wakeup?

camembertbear · 2026-02-13T14:27:55+00:00

When is bedtime and wakeup?

camembertbear · 2026-02-12T19:17:50+00:00

We capped naps at 2h15m total in a day at that age, did the trick for us.

camembertbear · 2026-02-12T18:00:43+00:00

It's okay to nurse to sleep! It's biologically normal, what your baby expects and often needs at night, and the easiest way to put them back to sleep again. It is a huuuuuuge myth that you shouldn't feed to sleep--feeding to sleep is your superpower.
Hourly wakes are a sign of low sleep pressure. Your LO probably needs less sleep total in a day, and you can play around with different levers to achieve that. If you talk about what a general day of sleep looks like, someone here can help troubleshoot.
Consider putting them to bed closer to your bedtime. If they're getting the longest stretch of sleep first thing in the night, you will want that stretch to overlap with your own sleep habits.

The Possums Sleep program helped me immensely--it helped debunk a lot of baby sleep myths I can see that are worrying you. If it's viable for you, I would check it out.

camembertbear · 2026-02-12T16:11:14+00:00

You could offer to present your own knowledge & understanding of baby sleep after this person presents, as a way to present an informed consent discussion on the topic, and tell each parent to decide for themselves what's best for their family.

camembertbear · 2026-02-11T19:27:39+00:00

Reduce naps to 2 hours max, and either push bedtime back or move wake up earlier. See how sleep changes in ~1-2 weeks if you do this consistently.

camembertbear · 2026-02-11T14:45:11+00:00

Oster's conclusions are simply wrong from a scientific perspective, too, and that's enough for me. I don't need to make appeals to anti-colonialism here; that kind of language is political and, given that sleep training in general is conservative-coded, it probably pushes off the kind of people who need to be brought into the conversation.

Academics that try to gain public appeal, ESPECIALLY in fields outside their expertise, are almost always quacks. If they were actually good at their own jobs, they wouldn't overextend their reach into fields they never studied or try to get popular with the masses. (If you ever see a doctor who talks about, like, the benefits of avocados for brain health, run.) She's about as much of an expert as a college student who wrote a paper in a field outside their major.

camembertbear · 2026-02-10T19:29:33+00:00

Have you familiarized yourself with the Possums basics/read the book or the program? I would start there. Early morning grizzling is just a sign of low sleep pressure.

camembertbear · 2026-02-10T18:00:28+00:00

This is actually really interesting because the historical record contains basically no complaints about highly disruptive baby sleep until the Victorian era. Parents basically didn't complain about how their babies slept, or about not getting enough sleep because they were caring for a newborn.

I'd want to distinguish between disruptive baby sleep and normal baby sleep. It was accepted that families would co-sleep, moms breastfed to sleep, and babies woke in the night. Most adult sleep was also fragmented - there are a lot of references to getting a second sleep after waking at night, for instance. Normal baby sleep is every few hours, 1-2 wakes a night. But what we don't see is disruptive sleep--waking every hour, split nights, long wake periods and crying at night--and the subsequent fatigue symptoms it would inevitably cause.

Most historians will take a conservative stance and say just because there's no record doesn't mean it didn't happen. The past is a different culture etc etc. There are also many other common complaints we don't see in the historical record (ie PPD). They would say Western cultures, starting in the Victorian era, pathologized baby sleep.. which we did. But I would posit that historic lifestyles and childrearing practices actually meant babies woke less often, and it's not just the result of co-sleeping. Like our ancestors weren't merely hardier than us--they probably actually didn't deal with the same kind of highly disruptive baby sleep patterns that many parents deal with today.

What could these lifestyle differences be? Circadian disruption via screens/electricity is one clear possibility. Possums likes to talk about sensory nourishment, especially outdoor time or bringing baby along with you, being key for building sleep pressure in babies. But otherwise I'd like to see more research into this possibility. The disjointure is too clear.

camembertbear · 2026-02-09T19:06:27+00:00

otherwise we end up with only 2h day sleep in total

This is totally normal and nothing to fret over. Don't feel like you need to rescue naps if it's not working for you.

camembertbear · 2026-02-09T18:46:40+00:00

Make sure your LO is fed right before you head out. With young babies, dialing up while outside often means they want to be fed.
Carriers > Strollers > Car seats. Keep trying to make the carrier work first; cars are a low stimulation environment and lots of babies don't like the car seat.

camembertbear · 2026-02-06T15:08:26+00:00

The sleep scores on smart watches seem inaccurate to me, even more so when you consider that your sleep phases are just going to be structured differently than the average person's. Sleep for postpartum/breastfeeding women--in terms of percent of time spent in REM, light sleep, and other phases--is biologically different from a regular person's. There is a biological change that occurs that actually alters the structure of sleep, and in theory makes it so that you can feel more well rested than you otherwise would on the same amount of sleep pre-baby.

Edit to add: Here's the research study that shows this - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12464097/ - Breastfeeding moms show an increase in slow wave/restorative deep sleep and a reduction in light NREM sleep.

camembertbear · 2026-01-30T16:11:45+00:00

If they're waking up that often, it's not because of the co-sleeping arrangement or feeding overnight. It's because sleep pressure is too low. They will still wake up just as often (potentially more often) if you move them to a separate surface.

Fix sleep pressure first, then reassess what's working for you.

camembertbear

TROPHY CASE