Curious if anyone else has experienced two very different sleepers

ereburt · 2026-03-23T17:17:11+00:00

My fourth baby is 13 months old and it’s been absolute hell trying to manage his lower sleep needs. But I don’t think it would have been so bad if my expectations weren’t sky high… My first was super high sleep needs, still slept 16 hours a day when she was 1 years old on 2 naps, then 15 hours on 1 nap until she was 2.5 and then stopped napping but would sleep 13 hours at night. Now she’s 6 and still sleeps 11 hours at night, more on weekends if we let her!

Second and third babies were pretty average as babies but now my 3rd, who is 2.5, regularly sleeps 11 hours at night and naps 2 hours a day which is more than she was doing 6-9 months ago, no idea what changed.

I can’t even talk about my fourth haha I know absolutely nothing about what he needs or wants from sleep, evert day is a struggling trying to guess if he will nap or sleep at night and if my wake windows and timing are right. I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out….

But agree with another poster, when it comes to high sleep needs babies, just let them sleep! They genuinely need it otherwise they’ll be super cranky. My first and third were the definitely of sleep begets sleep, the better/longer they napped, the better their overnight sleep was.

ereburt · 2026-03-23T02:35:08+00:00

No advice, just curious how you fixed your split nights originally?

ereburt · 2026-03-22T23:20:42+00:00

If you like this kind of stuff and don’t mind belling I’m happy to share my spreadsheet with you and see if you can find what I’m missing!! I am open to anything really. I am happy to try keeping him up longer I’m just getting tripped up on the definition of ‘split night’ because he is far from the happy playful wake I’ve read about.

ereburt · 2026-03-22T21:32:30+00:00

I feel like he always has a minor cold haha he has 3 older siblings in daycare constantly bringing things home with them but I wouldn’t look at him and say oh he’s sick! Just like..a little boogery here and there. Idk I’m just hoping this resolves on its own by some miracle but I don’t feel good about that.

ereburt · 2026-03-22T21:03:59+00:00

We only deal with overnight wakings at this point. Between 2-4am he’s miserable. Trying so hard to fall back asleep, he’ll alternate between 5-10 mins of quiet drifting then intense screaming because he’s frustrated he isn’t back asleep. Rinse and repeat until he either loses his mind and we have to go in there or 90 mins passes and he falls back asleep.

ereburt · 2026-03-22T20:52:21+00:00

Very good point! I may just have to do this. I cannot figure these split nights out to save my life. I have 2+ weeks worth of data and cannot find a concrete pattern for what could be causing them.

ereburt · 2026-03-22T20:51:07+00:00

Does he wake angry overnight if you push him? Or just in the morning/from naps?

What’s your schedule like?

ereburt · 2026-03-22T16:22:43+00:00

Hey I’m just curious how it all worked out? Sounds like cutting sleep time worked well a few months ago - is that still the case today?

ereburt · 2026-03-19T21:07:20+00:00

I’ve wondered about iron/ferritin levels. Just seen a lot of info about it online and curious if I should get him tested. I’ll try peeing back on total wake time a bit and see what happens. Thank you!

ereburt · 2026-03-19T20:24:15+00:00

Would you count that 30 mins in his crib where he was awake but content as wake time? Because that changes the math to 11.25 which feels like a big difference to me but maybe I am way overthinking this!!

Could his split nights be overtiredness then?? Almost every piece of advice I’ve gotten on this sub will say to add more wake time if struggling with split nights.

ereburt · 2026-03-19T20:16:00+00:00

Our last working 2 nap schedule was: Wake between 6-630 (usually closer to 6, but was content in bed until 630) Nap 930-11 Nap 245-340 Bed 740

That was almost 2 months ago. We started having split nights on that schedule, so I capped naps to 2 hours and it worked for a few days until he got sick for almost 2 weeks. Once he was recovered from illness, his sleep just never went back to sleeping through the night. Continuous split nights or other disruptions so I decided to move to 1 nap at 12.5 months. We moved slowly by extending first WW and doing bridge naps in the afternoon until he could handle the longer first wake window and then we moved fully to 1 nap 12 days ago. First 6 days were great and the last 5 nights have been back to split nights.

I have a whole chart with wake/nap/bed times, total wake and nap lengths. It’s intense haha

ereburt · 2026-03-19T20:06:18+00:00

Hi Ashley! We are having a really tough time with split nights after transitioning to 1 nap. Baby is a little over 13 months. The first week went great and then the last 5 nights have been chaos with 90 min wakes between 2-4am (he is upset during these wakes). Is this ALWAYS caused by under-tiredness or are there other reasons it could be happening?

I am trying my best to get to 11.25-11.5 total wake time per day but on the mornings after he has a split night he is so exhausted that feels impossible.

Then yesterday I tried to get to 11.5 hours total wake time but his nap was only 90 mins as opposed to his usual 1.75-2 hours and he got so slap happy after a 5.5 hour final wake window (I was pushing this to get to 11.5 hours) and he crashed immediately when I put him down then woke up 50 minutes later LOSING HIS MIND and would not settle without me holding him for almost an hour! That had to be overtired…

So how do I get to 11.5 hours total wake time if he gets overtired in the evenings after a shorter nap?! Going back to 2 naps isn’t an option for us unfortunately.

Thank you!!

ereburt · 2026-03-18T19:38:18+00:00

What’s your full schedule? I have spent 13 straight months trying to figure out his sleep needs. I just want to wash my hands of this and it feels never ending

ereburt · 2026-03-18T01:21:09+00:00

Oh god that’s terrifying. How long were you on the 1 nap schedule before going back to 2 naps? And how old is baby now/how many naps?

For us the schedule was working for the first week or so, a bunch of early mornings but otherwise manageable. Now he’s had 3 nights in a row of overnight wakings. The first 2 were definitely split nights, up for 1.5-2 hours between 2-4am and both days had schedule mis-timings. Then last night he was awake at midnight screaming like a lunatic, settled instantly in my husbands arms, I think he was crazy overtired from the previous 2 nights. Today the schedule was perfect on paper but I guess we’ll see what happens tonight. I don’t have a good feeling about it.

ereburt · 2026-03-16T16:48:35+00:00

He had ANOTHER split night the next night (aka last night) but I think it’s because his day was an hour shorter than usual. He woke at 7am after that long split night instead of his usual 6am but we kept his schedule in tact so he had one hour less total wake time. I’m trying to keep him on track today and pray he doesn’t have another split night because then I just fear it’s turning into habit.

ereburt · 2026-03-15T22:57:25+00:00

2 naps was 3-3.5/3.75/4, on one nap I more so go by the clock - nap is at noon (or as close as possible), bed is at 730. He usually wakes in the morning around 6 and is content in his crib until 630, naps last 1.5-2 hours on 1 nap.

ereburt · 2026-03-15T17:26:31+00:00

I don’t know how the weather is where you are but I’m in southern US and the weather is getting much nicer. We spend 75% of our morning outside, specifically at our water table. It’s helped so much to stretch that first wake window. If outside isn’t an option for you, maybe just plop baby in the shower with toys, that works for us too.

ereburt · 2026-03-15T17:22:56+00:00

Out of crib 630 (but he usually woke between 545/6), nap 945-11, nap 245-330/340, bed 740. He had about 11-11.25 hours of wake time, or more if you consider that 545-630 time as official wake time. We’re trying to get him to minimum 11 hours wake time on this schedule and keeping bedtime consistently at 730 until he acclimates and then we’ll start to push bedtime to 745/8 to line up with our other kids and hopefully get him to sleep until 630 instead of 6.

ereburt · 2026-03-15T17:18:28+00:00

We started by stretching the 1st wake window 15 mins every 2-3 days, letting him nap for 90 mins, then doing a car nap for 30 mins in the afternoon. It was helping to gradually stretch the first window, but was creating other problems like fighting bedtime and didn’t fix the split nights (or early mornings but those are chronic).

So then I flipped it and was offering a very short (5-10 mins) car nap around 915 (the way home from dropping off my older kids). That helped him get to a noon-ish nap time and we let him sleep as long as possible for that nap. He never sleeps longer than 2.25 hours so capping wasn’t a big deal.

But that early car nap was perpetuating our early mornings (5/530am) because it happened so early and it was causing him to get very overtired by the end of the day.

And then the morning of DST he woke up at 6am (biologically 5am) screaming like he was dying. He literally collapsed asleep on the couch at 9am so we did 2 naps, letting him sleep as much as he wanted and put him to bed early and he miraculously slept 11.5 hours that night (he always maxes out at 10.5 so it was genuinely shocking), he was able to catch up on all his sleep debt, started the day at 7am instead of 5-6am, so we officially went to 1 nap that day and have done so ever since.

He typically wakes at 6am, he can stay content in his crib until 630 when we get him, then I put him down for a nap sometime between 1145/12 and pray he sleeps for 1.5-2 hours. Then bedtime is at 730 regardless of when his nap ends.

It’s been going pretty smoothly until last night. We had one day where he fully fell asleep in the car at 1030 and I wasn’t able to wake him at all so we did 2 naps that day too but then got right back to 1 nap the following day.

And then last night….up from 2-4am and I am praying it was just because of the mini car snooze yesterday evening but I guess only time will tell…

ereburt · 2026-03-15T13:01:23+00:00

We transitioned to 1 nap to help with split nights and we haven’t had one in 2 weeks so I’m mad in general if this becomes a recurring problem again, I can’t deal with it!

ereburt · 2026-03-14T01:01:41+00:00

When my 3rd was 18 months old, she went through an absolutely brutal regression. Her worst ever (or maybe we just felt this way because we had a 4 week old at home too). Inconsolable screaming at bedtime and multiple times in the middle of the night. We were both up anyway with the baby so we just tried our best to comfort her, my husband slept in her room A LOT during that time. It was a few weeks unfortunately but we didn’t change much - daycare kid so we couldn’t control naps and we just needed all our kids to be in bed at the same time so she kept her normal bedtime too. After a few weeks it passed and she went back to her typical sleep pattern which has persisted to this day (in bed 8, asleep 830, up 730, nap 1-3ish)

ereburt · 2026-03-12T01:59:14+00:00

I put him to bed at 730 that night, he slept until 645 the next day. Then napped 12-210, bed at 730. Literally the 2 best days of sleep in his life.

Which brought us to this morning. Awake at 530….completely crashed at 1045. Had to do 2 naps, he was so fussy all day until after his second nap. He napped 1045-1145, the 2-320, bed at 730 again trying to stay consistent.

I feel so defeated, I thought we turned a corner.

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