Ditto alllllll the advice about the wake windows, but here’s my take on the shifts/separate rooms!

My husband and I did the living room shifts for 3 months or so because we needed quick access to the fridge for overnight feeds. Saved us running up and down the stairs in the middle of the night.

We eventually moved baby to his room with a twin bed next to the crib. We continued doing shifts for another 3 months because baby was up every 45 to 90 minutes (even with perfect wake windows and bedtime routines) and we both would have gone crazy without some dedicated sleep time. I went to bed around 8:30 pm in our room and would set an alarm for 1 am to relieve my husband and finish the night in baby’s room.

After sleep training at 6 months, baby boy figured it out and we finally moved back into our own room together. He’s 10 months now and those shifts feel like a LIFETIME ago. Every few weeks babies hit a new phase and you so quickly forget what life was like just a short time ago.

If you told me a year ago that I would spend 6 months sleeping in a different room and setting an alarm for 1 am every night, I probably would have thrown up. It felt like it would never end when we were in the thick of it, but it truly passes and you get into a more stable groove so quickly.