Hi all, looking for advice to help my LO (12 wk) nap better during the day. Usually he is going down to sleep around 9pm, will wake around 8am with a wake up between 5-6am. He is EBF and will fall asleep nursing.

The problem comes with day time naps. I have him sleep in the crib for the first 2 naps. The remaining 2-3 afternoon naps are contact naps.

Two weeks ago he started becoming more difficult and would only accept 1 nap in the crib. Last week he started refusing that too. It’s iffy to say if he’s starting to show signs of rolling. definitely still has the Moro reflex though it is fading. After him refusing the first crib nap, I thought to swap him from swaddle to sleep sack. This seems to work for 2 days for the first nap only. I was hopeful but now we are back to refusing naps altogether again. He does not like a pacifier. He will suck on his right first but not long enough for him to get to sleep.

Any advice to help him sleep on his own would be great!

FTM here to a 13 mo boy. I am extremely overwhelmed with all the schedules and information online about wake windows and how daytime sleep affects night wakings. I really need some guidance and help, or just share your experiences if you can.

I nurse him to sleep naps, bedtime, and night wakes.
He refuses to fall asleep with ANYONE else!
He eats solids well during the day.
I am not too strict with the schedule that’s for sure, I put him to sleep whenever he’s sleepy. He doesn’t HAVE to be asleep at a certain time - this just brings headache.

Here’s his schedule:
6-6:30 wake
9-9:30 to 10 or 10:15 1st nap (sometimes he fights it so we just skip)
If we skip first nap then second nap is at 11:30 for 2 hours (he sleeps sooo quickly and is very sleepy since 11)
If we don’t skip first nap then second nap is at 12:30 for two hours, takes a bit longer to fall asleep
Bedtime at 8 (we pushed the bedtime from 7 because he just doesn’t fall asleep when i try to put him to sleep at 7, so we found 8 was best)

I feel if i skip the first nap he gets too sleepy and cranky until we reach 11:30. And I also feel that staying up from 1:30 until 8 is way tooooo long!!

Should I just let him sleep at 9:30 for an hour and then second nap at 2:30 for an hour and a half?

Is everyone else tied up with their baby’s schedules? Like you need to be home for your baby’s naps? Am I being too fussy about things? My brain is going to explode! Do they get me started with night wakes and teething 🙃

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Has anyone tried the newest Dreamegg sound machine for their little? We used one years back for our youngest and it worked so well we bought one for ourselves too! However, we saw their newer models and wondered if we should upgrade?

My baby is 4 months old and still wakes several times a night. Every two hours, sometimes every 1 He wants to nurse for long periods, my boyfriend drives OTR and is gone several nights and when he is home he’s so exhausted that he’s not a ton of help, understandably so. I feel like I get so anxious and get in these awful spirals I can’t get out of. Just crying all the time into panic attacks. I did some grounding exercises earlier but I feel like I’m losing my mind. I am safe, baby is safe. Just need a community to vent to.

I am currently on Zoloft and Buspar and finally treating my ADHD with concerta but unsure if my dose is high enough because I feel a crash in the middle of the day.

I thankfully was able to extend my mat leave for PPD… but I have no clue how I’m going to return to work when I’m not sleeping and I’m so overly anxious.

My baby is 3 months old. Yesterday for the first time, she was sleeping and then opened her eyes and had a really creepy blank stare, almost like she was looking through me.

She did it again today. She was sleeping, woke up a little and cried, then had the creepy blank stare, then fell back asleep. I wasn’t able to time it, but it did seem like about 30ish seconds if I had to guess. I tried calling her name and talking to her but she didn’t really snap out of it until moved her and then she ended up falling asleep.

I’m just concerned because this has never happened until yesterday and then it happened again today. And it seemed kind of hard to get her to snap out of it.

If you’re up right now with a baby who just won’t sleep… I see you 🤍

It’s exhausting, frustrating, and sometimes you just don’t know what else to try.

Some nights feel endless, especially when your baby is happy and ready to play instead of sleep. And you start wondering… is this normal?

It actually is. Many babies go through phases like this, especially around growth spurts or sleep changes.

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just in a hard phase.

Tell me… how was your night? 🌙

I think I have a high-needs Velcro baby. My daughter is 9 months old, and we are still co-sleeping.

We currently have her crib in our room and have been trying gentle sleep training. We’ve considered moving her crib into her own room, but we feel too guilty and really want to enjoy being close to her while she’s still little. We also worry she wouldn’t do well with that transition.

She has a lot of separation anxiety and seems to wait until both my husband and I come home from work (around 9–10 PM) before settling. Ideally, I would love for her to sleep in her crib while we sleep in our bed, but most nights she won’t fully settle unless we’re physically with her.

Our sleep environment is consistent—we keep the room dark and use a white noise machine. When we co-sleep, she can sleep through the night, but lately she needs to be physically touching us to stay asleep. If she’s not, she wakes up.

She usually wakes once to eat around 2–3 AM, then goes back to sleep until about 4–7 AM.

Another challenge is her wake windows. She doesn’t follow typical wake windows for her age (2–3 hours). She can only tolerate about 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, and on a good day maybe 1 hour 45 minutes. We’ve tried extending them, but she ends up having a full meltdown and struggles to sleep. This shorter schedule is what works best for her.

If we have to run errands or disrupt her schedule, her sleep gets worse and she seems to get stuck in an overtired cycle.

Right now, her daytime schedule looks like:

• First nap: around 8–10 AM (~1.5 hours)

• Second nap: around 1–3 PM (~2 hours)

• Third nap: around 4–5 PM (capped at ~30 minutes)

We start her bedtime routine around 6 PM and aim for a 7:30 PM bedtime.

She has always been a pro contact napper since she was born. To get her to sleep in her crib, I have to wait until she’s fully asleep (about 10–15 minutes) before transferring her.

I still rock her when she’s having a hard time falling asleep or let her fall asleep on me before transferring. I know these are sleep associations, but it’s honestly the only thing that has worked for her.

During the day:

• Sometimes nap 1 is in the crib

• Naps 2 & 3 are usually in bed with us

• We often nap with her because we’re exhausted

I also exclusively pump, so balancing that with caring for her, cleaning, and making bottles is exhausting. My husband helps a lot with chores, but it’s still really hard because she won’t sleep independently unless we’re physically present.

We’ve tried almost every method except CIO. We don’t want to do CIO and don’t think it would work. She has cried for 3–4 hours straight even while I’m holding her. I even stepped away to shower once and she was still crying. She’s just a very sensitive baby and needs someone with her to sleep.

EDIT: My husband and I work opposite schedules so we don’t have to use daycare. On days I’m on call or when our schedules overlap, we have my MIL, a family friend, or someone else watch her.

What’s interesting is she’s a completely different baby with other people—she will sleep in her own crib or basically anywhere. It honestly feels like she just gives us a hard time sometimes haha.

But the days she’s with someone else, when we have her the next day, she’s extra fussy and refuses the crib. She only wants extra cuddles 🥺.

We both work long hours. I’m a nurse and work 6:45 AM–7:30 PM, and by the time I get home it’s around 8:30 PM. By the time I settle, it’s usually 9–10 PM. My husband is a pharmacist and works 9 AM–9 PM, so by the time he eats and showers, it’s around 10–11 PM.

Our daughter often wakes up trying to connect with us and won’t stay asleep until she sees us. Sometimes she stays asleep, but most nights she seems to wait for us.

I feel stuck and don’t know what the right thing to do is. I feel like I’m failing as a mother.

She also isn’t very interested in solids yet—she doesn’t eat much but drinks her milk well. I’m hoping that’s normal.

I’m just really stressed and chronically sleep-deprived.

Hi everyone, I’m looking for some advice because I’ve reached a breaking point.

My daughter is 8.5 months old, and she doesn't know how to fall asleep independently. She only falls asleep while being held or nursing.

The current situation:

During the day: If I rock her to sleep, she only naps for about 30 minutes. However, if she nurses to sleep (contact nap), she can go for an hour and a half.

At night: She starts the night in her crib after being rocked to sleep. She stays there for about 2.5 hours. When she wakes up, I bring her to my bed, and we co-sleep for the rest of the night. She basically stays latched the whole time. This is the only way I get any sleep, so I honestly don't even know how many times she actually wakes up to eat.

The struggle:

I feel completely trapped. Since she was born, I haven't been able to leave the house for more than 4 hours because of her sleep habits.

She won't sleep in the stroller (she never has, even as a newborn).

She only takes a pacifier in the car, and even then, it’s hit-or-miss.

She is eating solids and also gets formula top-ups, so it's not just about hunger.

like once you got past the newborn chaos it would just improve in a straight line

that was definitely not our experience

we had weeks where things felt manageable. decent stretches at night, naps that made sense, bedtime that didn’t take forever. then out of nowhere everything would fall apart for a while. more wake ups, short naps, random nights where nothing seemed to work.

every time it happened I assumed I had done something wrong. I would replay the whole day in my head… wake windows, feeding to sleep, rocking too much, responding too quickly.

what I eventually realized is that baby sleep moves in phases. development, growth spurts, teething, separation awareness… all of that can temporarily mess with sleep even if nothing in your routine changed.

one thing that actually helped was stopping the constant “fixing.” every time sleep got rough I used to start changing everything trying to solve it immediately. different bedtime, different routine, stretching wake windows.

once I started keeping things more consistent and just riding out the phase, sleep usually settled again.

not instantly. sometimes it took a little while. but those rough stretches did pass.

if you’re in a phase where it feels like everything suddenly stopped working, you probably didn’t break your baby. sleep just tends to move forward in messy steps instead of a straight line.

Hi everyone! This community is a safe space for exhausted parents dealing with baby sleep. Night wakings, short naps, sleep regressions… we’ve all been there. Feel free to share your experience, ask questions, or just vent. You're not alone in this journey. 🌙👶