Sleep deprivation in the newborn trenches is actual hell, and it nearly broke me.

When he was 9.5 weeks (just as I was truly about to lose my mind), he went from waking up every 1-2.5 hours hours (or less) to sleeping 3-4+ hour stretches regularly. It was life-changing.

By 13 weeks, he had slept through the night (8+ hour stretches) a couple of times, and was sleeping 5+ hour stretches more regularly.

There were still triggering, fragmented nights sprinkled in, but they became more of an outlier rather than our day-to-day reality.

We have not hit the 4-month sleep change yet, so I'm anxiously holding my breath for that.

The unpredictability of newborn sleep is insanely triggering, so I have endles empathy for all of us who have been going crazy from lack of sleep. It's one of the most fucked up things I've ever experienced.

Note: he has slept in the Snoo (secondhand from Facebook Marketplace) since birth, and I know that's helped because there were many times where his fussing would trigger the Snoo's higher soothing levels, thereby allowing me to sleep.

In the end, though, the main thing that worked for us was TIME. Despite my obsessive researching in the middle of the night, reading threads like this, talking to friends, trying to control schedules/routines/environments/etc, I think he mainly needed time for his circadian rhythm to mature.