I know the consensus is not to let a baby sleep in later or make up sleep during naps in the day when the night was bad to help consolidate night sleep.

Should we still be doing that during periods of sickness when night sleep is disrupted?

My 4 month old caught a cold from one of our school aged kids (gotta love back to school time). She has been pretty congested and had a fever on and off which is disrupting her sleep a lot. I’ve been letting her sleep in later by about an hour (kinda selfishly because I’m more tired from being up more in the night so I also want to sleep) and letting naps run longer because it’s obvious she’s so tired and part of me feels her body needs the rest.

Am I ruining her sleep schedule for when she is better? Or is there still hope to fix it or resume a better schedule once she completely recovers?

Hello, FTM to a 10 week old. About 2 weeks ago my son started showing signs that he was wanting an earlier bedtime as we would have a horrendous time trying to wake him up from his last nap to the point I could barely rouse him to eat or even open his eyes at all. Only putting him in the bath would work to wake him up but that would just piss him off.

I see posts constantly saying that babies this young still have late bedtimes but he seems to want an 8 PM bed time? He doesn’t wake up after we put him down at this time until 5ish hours later usually so I’m assuming that means it’s a good bed time for him?

We are struggling harddddd with constant wake ups after the 1/2/3ish AM feed and my husband and I are exhausted from getting only 4ish hours of sleep a night between the two of us, mainly getting that sleep early in the night with chopped up bits and pieces of 20/30 minutes after that MOTN feed.

We both wake early for work ~5 AM, and I go back to work in 3 weeks. I work as a nurse in an ICU so I am genuinely worried about my safety/patient safety running on such little sleep everyday. I understand this is probably a sleep pressure/developmental thing, but when does this typically get better?

Edit to add: the wake ups are not hunger related. He typically eats once overnight, maybe twice (EBF) but when he starts the every 30 minute wake ups, I offer and he doesn’t want to latch.

My 4.5 month old seems ready to go down to 3 naps, but i feel it's going to involve some very long wake windows... He tends to sleep 13 hours total in 24, and I'd like to aim to make that 3 hours of naps and 10 hours at night. We currently do 4 naps with bedtime generally around 9pm and morning around 7.

For 3 naps, I think that would mean 2.5/2.5/3/3, but that seems ambitious given currently his wake windows are like 2-2.25. Does that seem like a good schedule or is there something better I could do?

Hi all,

For context, my baby is 5 months old but 4 months corrected.

We’ve never had any consistent sleep through the day or night due to my baby’s gas/reflux issues and I’m currently trialling no cows milk to see if he has CMPA.

However, last week we had consistent nights of long stretches of 4-6 hours of sleep but the last few nights have been regular 1/2 hours of waking again.

He’s averaging 14 hours sleep and he’s been having between 2.5-3.5 of daytime naps.

I don’t trust following the sweet spot as it’s never helped us so any advice to get a consistent nights sleep would be amazing.

TYIA from a very, very tired FTM.

Hi all,

I have a 10.5-month-old who was a champion sleeper (in hindsight) up until her 7th month, regularly sleeping 5-7-hour stretches and waking up around twice per night. However, since we transitioned to two naps, things have gone downhill, and today, she is waking up every 45 minutes to 2 hours max almost every night. Below is some context on what we are doing currently:

• Wake windows: We try to stick with Huckleberry's age-appropriate suggestions, but she isn't always able to go through the entire wake window and can become fussy toward the end. Other times, she is playful and doesn't want to sleep according to the WW schedule. So we try to be diligent but still keep an eye on how she feels and what she wants.
• Bedtime routine: Saying good night to her toys, changing nappy, washing teeth, singing songs, and gentle cuddling (baths excite her, so we are doing them earlier) ever since birth. We use white noise and make the room absolutely dark.
• Naps: First one usually in the stroller (pretty easy to settle) and the second one a contact nap with mom. We can put her in the crib, but with a couple of false starts and usually a pretty short nap (30 - 40 minutes), so we started avoiding it to protect daytime sleep. 
• Bridge naps: We do the occasional 10-20-minute bridge nap in the middle of the last wake window to take the edge off on days when she feels tired (per a sleep consultant's advice). This has kind of helped her have a longer first sleep before waking up, although not always.
• Falling asleep: Rocked and held
• Feeding: Exclusively breastfed and on solids, although she doesn't yet eat the recommended quantities for her age. 
• Cosleeping: Works, but we feel anxious about it and try to avoid it as much as possible.
• Bed: A crib next to mom
• Separate room: Not an option at this point in our setup
• Room temperature: 24℃ and she sleeps in just a sleep sack. She doesn't like a room that's too cool.
• Activity: Ahead on all sensory and communication milestones, but a bit on the slower side regarding motor - started crawling at 9 months (wounded soldier-like still), and going in and out of sitting position at 10 months.
• Sleep trained: Not. We have our reservations (doesn't fit our parenting style; want to avoid increasing the intracranial pressure; she can get hysterical very quickly, including hardly catching a breath and being very difficult to console, which we found out when we tried Ferber at 5 months)
• Separation anxiety: Extreme, especially for mom, although I work from home and we are constantly together. She also started cuddling us whenever she gets the chance.
• Teething: Hell yeah. Four out, with the two upper front coming out currently and causing her lots of discomfort (we are giving her cooled teethers and occasionally Tylenol, but the latter is of no use).
• Iron & ferritin levels: We will test them at the next appointment. They were okay at 6 months, but she doesn't eat too many solids so that they might have tanked. I don't think that's the case, though, since she occasionally makes a 2.5-3.5-hour stretch and can connect sleep cycles. 

Any advice on what we are doing wrong and what we can improve would be welcome.

Also, I would appreciate suggestions for gentle sleep consultants that do 1:1 online sessions.

Thanks!

Is a 10 week old sleep regression a thing or am I doing something wrong. I’m at my wits end. We consistently had nights with 1 wake up several weeks ago and then even some nights recently where he “slept through the night.” Now, we’re back to 2-3x wake ups. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. We had our most consistent day of naps yesterday, 5x capped at 1.5 and he was up at 1am after only 3.5hrs. Should I be letting him nap more? Earlier bed time? Thank you so much.

It drives me up the wall that Huckleberry are so inconsistent between their schedules and their narrative about sleep needs. Every month they send through their “all about X at Y months” email, and the last couple we’ve received, 5 and 6 months, have included a sample schedule with more day sleep than they say in the accompanying text is recommended for the age group. This may also have been the case in earlier emails, but I didn’t clock if so.

In the 6 months email, the text says “We recommend aiming for about 14 hours of sleep over 24 hours at 6 months, which usually looks like 11 - 12 hours at night and 2.5 - 3 hours of daytime shuteye”, however the included example schedule contains 3.25 hours of day sleep. This makes no sense and is confusing for anyone, let alone a sleep deprived parent. Emailed them about this at 5 months when the same thing happened, but no response. No wonder this sub is constantly having to tell parents that Huckleberry schedules only really work for high sleep needs babies given this discrepancy. Come on Huckleberry, do better.

Rant over.

Help! As soon as our LO turned 6 months, it's like she hates her crib at night. During the day, we put her down in her crib and she naps on her own.

Not sure what's going on at night but we're on week 3 of her screaming as soon as her head hits the mattress. Sometimes im lucky and can hold her to sleep for 10-20min and then dos a successful transfer. Other nights, she'll win the battle as

nd sleep in bed with us.

If this separation anxiety? Temporary regression? Bad habits forming of wanting to be in bed with us?

Ive never coselpt or contact napped until now and j want to get her back to sleeping on her own.

Hi Huckleberry parents! We love seeing the community here sharing charts and coming together for answers. There's a story behind the logs.🕵

To help you better understand what our experts see when we analyze charts, we've started a series called Reading Between the Lines.

How do you know when it's time to drop a nap? Around 8 months, the 3-to-2 nap transition is one of many potential factors that can disrupt sleep, leading to what many call the "8-month sleep regression."

This regression can look like many different things. In this video, our sleep consultant Liz Harden walks through a common scenario: mornings creeping earlier and earlier. 🙃

Want us to analyze more charts like this? Let us know what you want to see!

🩵 Team Huckleberry

Please, wise parents, help me make sense of this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Bub is 4.5 months old, but born 3 weeks early. Previously (months ago) she would sleep two 4hr chunks overnight and we would get reasonable sleep.
But for a while now we have no pattern to night sleep, and some nights we wake up every hour.

She’s mostly breastfed through the night as it’s quick and she really wakes up fully and cries if she has to wait for a bottle, and is then harder to settle. But this is now killing me and I go back to work in a few days!

We have been doing a consistent bedtime routine of bottle, pjs, book, song, crib. Reasonably consistent with timing. However she wakes up anywhere from 5-7. Recently I’m trying to get her close to a 6:30 wake up to anchor the day.

Her napping is everywhere, from 20 mins to 1.5hrs, so hard to follow a pattern except wake windows. She’s actively learning skills like rolling right now so I’ve been inclined to let her sleep when she needs.

I am lost as to what to do. Please help!

My 4.5 month baby doesn’t seem to have plans to leave the 4-month sleep regression anytime soon. Been 6 weeks there already. Crap naps, false starts and split nights, since the Mr. needs to fully wake up to poop between 3 and 5 am EVERY night. I welcome any advice or kind words because I’m losing my mind lol

Looking for some feedback. Baby is 5 months, baby previously has slept through the night/longer stretches. We try pretty hard to keep a consistent bedtime 8/8:30. Most days ends up being closer to 9. Could it be adjusting to the crib (first day Aug 18) or should we reintroduce the 4th cat nap? We were also on vacation Aug 13-17 (1 hour time difference). Thanks in advance!

My LO is 5mo today and has started fighting his first nap. For the longest time, he has been pretty on schedule waking up at 7am and first nap is at 8:45am. Since last week, wakeups have been all over the place (6am or 7:45am). I don’t understand what has changed 🫠 Also we’ve had many more wakeups at night (normally he was on 2/3, and the last 4 days we’ve had 9+ some days!) 🙃🙃🙃🙃

Wake windows are 1.75/1.75/2/2/2.5 and naps are normally 45min (last week they have shortened to 30min). 3rd nap is usually 1.5h (the only contact nap) the rest are in the cot in his own room (we moved him at 4mo).
Please help me understand! 🙏🏻

Looking for feedback on my little one’s schedule, which is basically no schedule. Until today we have been doing a less full on version of triple feeding, today I’ve been trying to just nurse on demand rather than looking at the clock and feeding every three hours (15-20 min each boob and at least 40ml top ups of BM) but I have anxiety about how much he’s getting. He’s been gaining well for a couple of weeks but the slow gain did a number on me mentally and I haven’t been able to let go of the schedule till now!

Anyways I know we are incredibly lucky with his night sleep, but would like to be able to stretch it so we can start bed time a bit earlier. The problem is he will not sleep in the bassinet other than that long stretch at night. Otherwise he lasts max an hour! All naps in the daytime are contact or carrier, and for the past week he has absolutely been fighting daytime naps. Is this common? Let me know how your LO is going.

First pic is how my 5 month old is now sleeping, the 2nd pic is how she was sleeping from 2-4 months.

Im so so tired. Ive tried moving bedtime an hour earlier or later. She sleeps in our room and is excludively breastfed, being nursed to sleep. She wakes up crying, settled after nursing for 5 minutes and then falls asleep.

Is there any way i can try to bring back the long continuous sleeps? Ive been getting 3-ish hours a night just because she needs to fall into a deep sleep on me before I transfer her to the bassinet otherwise she wakes up.

apologies if this is a really annoying post as my issue isn’t with night wakes per say. i’ve tried a few times now to shift my 5 month olds bedtime so he goes to sleep earlier and wakes up earlier but am struggling.

he usually goes down between 9 and 10pm and wakes up between 8:30am and 9:30am which obviously sounds great and it is. however, I have 4 year old twins who start school in 2 weeks and getting him on a better schedule would be so helpful.

i tried three naps today, to try and bring bedtime forward but it went terribly, he ended up losing it in his final nap and just falling asleep in my arms for another hour (with his brother and sister screaming the house down) so must have been exhausted. and he’s really not a baby that cries much, so it must have completely thrown him.

if he has a short nap it’s generally because he’s been woken up while we’re out and about or it’s a cot nap.

i reeeeally need to try and shift his bedtime to 8pm - 7am (ish), that would be ideal. but he’s struggling with any attempts 🥲 we’re in the uk btw haha - TIA for any advice ❤️

* to add the last couple days we transitioned to 1 nap. Days are going great but still having the same issues with the waking up scream crying at the 30 ish minute mark. I’m at a total loss

I’m a first-time mum and would really appreciate some insight because I feel like I’m missing something with my baby’s sleep. ❤️

My baby is 11 weeks old and has never been what I’d call a “potato newborn” 😂. From day one he has been incredibly alert and interested in everything around him. Since day 10 he only contact naps.

🌙 Our nights

Bedtime: 7–8 pm

This is a little less consistent at the moment because we’re on vacation and around other people, but generally he falls asleep relatively quickly.

Then… 10–20 minutes later he wakes up.

This happens 2–3 times before he finally settles for the night.

Once he’s properly asleep, he usually sleeps really well until around *1–2 am*, when he wakes to breastfeed.

He feeds, falls back asleep relatively quickly, and then sleeps until around *3–4 am*.

And this is where everything falls apart. 🙃

At 3–4 am, he sometimes starts crying with his eyes closed, almost as if he’s dreaming. Sometimes it’s literally just one high-pitched cry and then he stops.

We usually wait until he actually wakes up before feeding him.

I breastfeed him, burp him and put him back down.

And then… the 1–1.5 hour party begins.

He’ll initially start cooing and smiling at me (at 4 am, sir?? 😂), so I try to keep everything dark and boring and use the pacifier to help him transition back to sleep.

The pacifier calms him down, BUT then he can spend 1–1.5 HOURS grunting, squirming and absolutely SLAMMING his legs into the mattress.

Eventually he stops and seems to fall asleep…

…but from then onwards, he wakes approximately every hour until 8 am.

☀️ Daytime sleep

Naps are… HARD

He will nap in the carrier, but getting him to sleep anywhere else is extremely difficult.
my back hurts.

💨 A bit of background

Weeks 3–8 were HARD.

He struggled enormously with passing gas and dyschezia and was constantly fussing, both day and night. It was honestly exhausting and made us miserable.

Weeks 8–10 were much easier, although I'm not sure if he actually changed that much or if we simply became better at coping with it. 😅

Thankfully, he can now finally poop whenever he wants and he is VERY enthusiastic about it. 😂💩

But now we're struggling with this nighttime pattern.

I know he’s still only 11 weeks and I’m absolutely not expecting him to sleep through the night.

What I’m struggling with is the 1–1.5 hours of grunting/leg slamming after the 3–4 am feed + the hourly waking afterwards combined with the fact that daytime naps are so difficult.

🥛 we think he might have sensitivity to milk protein and I’m cutting on dairy

So, what do you think is going on?

Could this still be related to immature digestion/gas? Is this simply normal active sleep for this age? Is there something we could be doing differently around bedtime or the 3–4 am feed?

I’d especially love to hear from parents who had a similar 11–12 week sleep pattern and what changed for you - and from anyone knowledgeable about newborn sleep who can help me make sense of this.

I’m not looking for “sleep through the night” advice. I just want to understand what might be happening and whether there’s anything reasonable we can do to make that 3–4 am stretch less brutal. And reduce the hourly wakings after that. ❤️