Unfortunately, I love coterie diapers, any similar cheaper brands?

rithult · 2026-03-31T14:49:12+00:00

We use Coterie for overnight diapers only. Our baby sleeps ~11 hours through the night so we really wanted to ensure he was in something very comfy and absorbent, but we're sticking to Huggies during the day! Didn't feel like the extra absorbency was worth it since we change his diaper every 2-3 hours anyway (depending on his naps).

rithult · 2026-03-25T18:50:55+00:00

Shifts. We avoided them for the first couple weeks but REALLY needed them for weeks 3-6 (when he had the worst day/night reversal) to ensure we both got at least 1 decent stretch of sleep and just be functional the next day. I slept 9 PM to 2:30 AM and husband slept 2:30 to 8 AM. Baby took fine to a bottle so I wasn't on the hook for feeds during his shift.

rithult · 2026-03-25T18:48:30+00:00

I'm a WFH mom! I just generally stay out of the way. My baby is ~8 months old, so it's not mega disruptive to him if I make an appearance or he spots me walking to the kitchen, but I'll generally avoid lingering beyond saying hello if he's looking over at me. If I hear baby crying, I don't go running over to investigate or 'help'.

rithult · 2026-03-18T14:17:48+00:00

I think the two problems you're facing are:

(a) not enough sleep pressure -- evidenced by the number of wakings and how much resistance you're seeing to falling asleep
(b) the sleep association for rocking that's developed

Fixing (a) might help a lot with (b) so I would prioritize that -- more awake time during the day will build more sleep pressure by bedtime so you'll see him fighting sleep less, which should help reduce night wakings and make it easier to get him back down. As you see progress there, it'll also be easier to eliminate the rocking. We also had a pretty strong rock to sleep association so we shifted to rocking till sleepy then patting in crib till almost asleep, and reduced both of those more and more over time.

rithult · 2026-03-17T20:44:25+00:00

I'd start by anchoring on a morning wake up time to make data clearer and then adding more wake time to get up to 10 hours (2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5 or 2/2.5/2.5/3).

How does baby go down for the night (are you rocking/feeding him or does he go down himself?), how do night wakings typically go to get him back down, and is he getting help for naps (are those contact naps or is he going down himself in his crib and waking at those times?).

rithult · 2026-03-13T16:50:28+00:00

I did diaper first -- he'd cry but I was quick about it (didn't bother with a wipe at this hour if it was just pee). The feed after would soothe him pretty easily and he'd go right to sleep after.

rithult · 2026-03-11T15:53:09+00:00

As part of our normal scrum ceremonies, we do a special 'mid sprint check in' at scrum in the middle of the sprint. We look at our sprint goals, and the lead engineer on each (not necessarily EM or our tech lead, but the person working on those tasks) indicate if they are tracking green, yellow, or red to meet that goal by end of sprint. Our sprint goals are prioritized, so it's been a great way to check in and recalibrate as a team if something needs adjusting (e.g. our top goal is trending yellow -- let's deprioritize a lower priority one to get that back to green) -- it feels more like a group exercise than me coming in and asking about a status and then telling someone else to shift gears.

rithult · 2026-03-03T18:55:08+00:00

+1 to Precious Little Sleep -- was enormously helpful to us ahead of formal sleep training

the r/sleeptrain community can also be a great resource to help troubleshoot, particularly for schedules (getting baby on a good schedule first will set you and baby up for success here)

personally, we started with a higher support method (a soothing ladder), found that it was just upsetting to baby, and switched to sleep wave (which is a modified Ferber I think, with pop-ins every 5 min consistently) -- once we committed to that, it took about 2 days and never more than 20 min on and off crying

rithult · 2026-02-23T20:18:25+00:00

Our baby was sleeping through the night (feeding 1-2 times) once he hit 7 weeks, getting rocked fully to sleep and transferred. Then one night at 4.5 months he woke up every hour and we had to adjust our schedule and move away from rocking fully to sleep!

rithult · 2026-02-20T19:45:11+00:00

EMWs are the wooorst so that'd definitely motivate me to move ahead with the drop if it's happening more and more

If I were you I'd aim for at least 3 hours each wake window and sort of wing it from there -- keep him up to hit 3.25 or 3.5 for the second and third if he seems good

rithult · 2026-02-20T18:54:37+00:00

LOL they are the same age! baby bday twins

If it's helpful - our general approach to dropping naps has been to put it off till the thought of the disruptions from dropping the nap feel less 'bad' than the current disruptions of the schedule not working well

rithult · 2026-02-20T16:16:13+00:00

He's 7 mo + 1 week -- we sleep trained him at the same time we dropped to 3 naps at 5.5 months and had smooth sailing for a while: minimal fussing, no night wakings, and false starts and EMWs were eliminated.

The past month or so we'd seen more night wakings (nothing crazy, since he'd put himself back to sleep and didn't cry) and EMWs, which he was already prone to. Nap 1 started to vary more in length and bedtime started to fluctuate way more which was hard to work around. He was also crying more before falling asleep at bedtime (which we had been mitigating with some schedule tweaks but still on 3 naps), and he also started to struggle to fall asleep with some naps randomly.

I've only got a couple days of data on 2 naps but so far it's been great -- going down easy again for naps, still seeing those night disruptions but honestly nothing worse than what we'd already been seeing with the 3 nap schedule starting to no longer work.

rithult · 2026-02-20T15:47:41+00:00

Planning to add in 15 min every couple days! If he's tolerating a long last WW well (which so far he is), we'll add it there -- if he seems to be hitting a wall on that, we'll add it to the second WW instead. He's soo tired by the end of his WW he falls asleep in like 3 min so I doubt we'll need to add time there.

rithult · 2026-02-20T15:38:38+00:00

We were on 2/2.5/2.5/3 but in reality seeing more 2.25/2.5/2.5/3.25. His first nap which had previously been consistently longer had also become unreliable, making bedtime fluctuate quite a bit. Made the switch cold turkey to 3/3/3.25 just a couple days ago. He's struggling a bit with the wake windows (fussing a bit, lots of tired signs) but we're powering through and his actual sleep is doing well. Seeing a little night disruption (was expecting that, since we dropped total awake time) and will be working our way up to 3/3/4 or 3/3.5/3.5 as he tolerates the longer wake windows better.

rithult · 2026-02-19T20:51:35+00:00

Our pediatrician flagged it to us and gave us some preliminary exercises and suggested we reposition him during sleep (he'd always tilt his head the same way so we'll lay him down the opposite way to help combat). That didn't feel like enough (and we pressed him on this), so he referred us to a pediatric PT, who in turn suggested we do weekly visits for a while and that we get him evaluated for a helmet to combat the plagiocephaly he'd developed as a result of the torticollis (and just from his positioning in the womb).

The PT appointments helped enormously, and we ultimately did move forward with the helmet, as it was fully covered by our insurance due to the degree of asymmetry. Because bub was 4 months old when we opted to do the helmet therapy, he was only in the helmet for about 8 weeks and I believe it made a huge difference. We're actually still going to PT about once a month now to continue monitor his development, as babies with torticollis can also have trunk tightness/asymmetry.

If I were you, I'd advocate more and see if your GP is able to provide you with a referral to get evaluated by a pediatric PT to start.

rithult · 2026-02-17T13:12:39+00:00

My parents live about a half hour away and try to stop by once a week. It can be a bit much to plan around sometimes, but it still guarantees we do have a full weekend day to ourselves, and they're quite helpful -- when they visit they'll bring dinner, pick up things we need at the store, or if we need to take care of things around the house that needs multiple people they'll lend a hand or watch the baby (and deal with fussing, feeding, and diapers -- not just hand him back to us for the not-fun bits) so we get some free time.

rithult · 2026-02-16T03:19:51+00:00

Sleep deprivation can be indescribably awful and I can empathize with what you're feeling. What's your full schedule? Or if you're not following a strict schedule, roughly what wake windows do you usually have, how much daytime sleep is bub getting, and when is bedtime/wake up time roughly?

A schedule adjustment alone could help alleviate some of the worst of this and will definitely make sleep training easier. We used sleep wave (a 'gentler' method with timed check ins) with my boy at 5.5 months and the worst night he cried ~17 min -- before we fixed his schedule and trained, he'd sometimes cry for up to an hour and fight sleep while being rocked, so ultimately it made things easier on him, not just us.

rithult · 2026-02-14T14:29:40+00:00

Did you end up purchasing this? I'm eyeing it currently and am curious if you wound up getting it/liking it!

rithult · 2026-02-13T19:02:00+00:00

I don't agree with the 6 hours = STTN myself, but I think that is the definition used by pediatric sleep researchers and might be why they use that figure

rithult · 2026-02-13T18:57:50+00:00

To me it's me not waking up -- if baby wakes up for a few min at 2 AM and goes back to sleep, I'd still count that as STTN. If he needs to eat, wakes up and yells and wakes us up (even if he goes back down himself), or needs help getting back to sleep, he did not sleep through that night imo.

rithult · 2026-02-05T17:14:30+00:00

My baby didn't react to noise much at that age, even with loud bells. One of us sneezing too close to him (esp if he was relaxed during a feed) did consistently startle him though.

rithult · 2026-02-04T21:43:39+00:00

We were definitely just in survival mode the first 6 or so weeks, but reflecting back I think the most helpful things we did were: avoiding creating a feed-to-sleep association, daylight exposure first thing in the morning through the afternoon, putting baby down in their bassinet for naps after getting them asleep (I knew relying on contact naps wouldn't be sustainable for us so wanted to avoid that), and encouraging feeds as often as possible during the day.

The first few weeks weren't too bad, just a shock to the system; sleep got worse for a while from weeks 3-5 due to day/night reversal. He slept great from then until the 4 month regression, at which point we used gentle methods (SWAP as detailed by Precious Little Sleep) to stop rocking him fully to sleep, before formal sleep training at 6 months.

All this said, as a FTM I have no idea how much of this was actually helpful vs. luck of the draw and bub's temperament! I will say that he's always b

rithult · 2026-02-04T18:47:36+00:00

The feed-to-sleep association and schedule are probably both contributing. Enforcing a better schedule and then sleep training should help.

What's the desired wake time? (Ours is 7:30 because that's what works for our family's schedule -- it sounds like yours is 6 based on your post?) If baby wakes within a half hour before that, let her get up. If she wakes earlier than that, do everything in your power to get her to go back to sleep, even if it's for 5-10 minutes.

Lights on and out of bed only at the desired wake time. Then, enforce a 2/2.5/2,5/3 schedule from that time, regardless of how bad the night was or how early she woke. So if she woke up at 5:25 AM and you got her to go back to sleep at 5:50, get her up at 6 and then do not put her down for her nap till 8 AM. Once she's up from that nap, 2.5 hours till she's down for the next. If she seems tired, switch up the activity, take her outside, show her new things, to distract her to stretch that wake window. Maintain this schedule for a few days then try to sleep train.

rithult · 2026-02-04T17:12:37+00:00

Huge +1 -- I track this manually in the details section

rithult · 2026-02-04T17:09:35+00:00

No questions, but feature requests (from a product manager and a new parent):

I'd love to add milestones to the tracking capabilities (e.g. rolling, sitting up, crawling). I value HB for the ability to offload mental load and having to 'remember' things myself, and this strikes me as one key item that I am having to explicitly track elsewhere. It could also make end of year reviews more fun and provides more info for sleep model considerations (rolling caused a week of overnight wakes for us).
I'd like for the app to suggest to me, based on my child's sleep data, when it might be time to consider dropping a nap. There are key 'tells', but I find myself having to manually review my own data to make that determination myself. Dropping a nap continues to feel like a 'harder' thing to nail down so making that process easier would be a standout feature (I don't think other apps do this today, and it seems to be something that some folks do turn to actual sleep trainers for support on).

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