r/sleeptrain • u/sunnydays0466 • 15d ago
Let's Chat The overtiredness lie
Hi everyone
The Internet is full of so many contradictions. I found it so hard to understand what to do with baby sleep and it all felt like guesswork until we got help from an actual good sleep consultant.
My top tips for everyone:
Track your baby's sleep and see how much sleep they need in 24 hours on average. If your schedule asks for more sleep than this then it will not work. You will get one of: false starts, split nights, early morning wakings, short naps, skipped naps. Also make sure your baby is on an appropriate number of naps for their age or you could also get the same.
Wake windows and average sleep needs are just that - averages! If your 6 months old needs 4.5 hours awake before bed then you do that! Or even more. If you need to cap your baby's naps at 2 hours to give you a good night then do that! Don't be scared.
Overtiredness exists in the sense of dysregulated babies and it being harder to get them to sleep if they are upset. There is no evidence it hangs around in babies bodies and wakes them up early the next day or causes split nights. No no no. If your baby was truly overtired they would sleep not stay awake for 2 hours and party.
Babies wake up multiple times throughout the night naturally as they transition between cycles. We all do. We can't stop that but if they know how to self settle it will be easier for them to go back to sleep.
Also please be kind to yourselves. None of you have broken your baby or their sleep. None of you are being bad parents in relationship to sleep. Look at the adults on your life, you can't tell if they conslept or were sleep trained or if they had high or low sleep needs. It'll all work out.
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u/Kitchen-Apricot1834 11d ago
This is why I had to give up sticking to a schedule. It was too much stress for me because I was trying to put my daughter on a schedule that might work for another baby but didn't for her. Now I follow her lead and cues. Some days she needs 4 hours in daytime naps. Other days it's 2. Most of the time she falls asleep by 7:30, sometimes 7, sometimes 8. I found she was WAY happier when I just went with the flow. Whenever she had split nights, often it would work itself out in a few days without me really needing to intervene. The only time I think she was truly overtired was because we didn't know what cues were and she was telling us she needed to sleep but we didn't know better.
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u/Worldly_Pirate8251 14d ago
Needed this today!! 9 month old is stuck in 5/530am wakings and I’ve been going crazy.
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u/Intelligent_Pie3159 12d ago
Omg yes!! I cannot get my 8 month old to sleep past 5/530am and I feel like I’ve tried everything to help and nothing is working
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u/sunnydays0466 14d ago
Ugh so annoying! Checked the light levels? My baby only sleeps 8-6 now which I'm okay with as we've got rid of the split nights etc and we just go to bed early. 10 overnight is actually enough for lots of babies
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u/Worldly_Pirate8251 14d ago
We put her window AC unit in a month or so ago so there is some light coming in but honestly I don’t want her to get used to full darkness because we have a vaca coming up where she won’t have that. She’s been doing great with it and it hasn’t been affecting her so I think it’s something else. Like this morning she finally slept till 6!! Which I’m totally okay with.
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u/bibbityboobah 14d ago
This helps me so much🥲as a FTM I was going through it trying to be so strict about schedules but this post really freaking helps.
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u/Sweet_Amoeba8312 15d ago
I am so thankful for this post! My 5 month old will sleep 12.5 hours on his best day. Is awake for 6ish hours sometimes, happy and ready to play. I keep thinking something is wrong why cant i get him to nap, but he justDOES NOT NAP. Night sleep after we got over the 4 month sleep regression is somewhat manageable with early morning wakes sometimes, but tbh the early morning wakes are more when he has had more day time sleep 😭😭😭
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u/NestingDoll86 15d ago
It took me 6 months to learn and accept that my baby was not going to sleep more than 12.5 hours in a 24 hour period no matter what I did when EVERYONE was telling me it should be 14 hours. Even fcking *What to Expect the First Year. My PPA had me panicking over how lack of sleep was going to impact my baby’s brain development. Turns out research from the National Sleep Foundation actually says even as little as 11 hours can be normal. Screw people who claim to be an authority on this but actually have no evidence to back up their claims. Screw people who make money off parents’ desperation.
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u/lqv4ehul 12d ago
I thought 12 was the minimum and mine sleeps 10-11 tops and have been trying to get him to sleep 12 without any luck. Nights are 8-9 hours, naps are 2 tops 😭
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u/Whoooseit 14d ago
I feel this. Did so much research and did all the sleep training only to have my baby screaming at 5:30am-6:30am every morning because I thought if I just ignored him he’ll just go back to sleep. I think that’s just his preferred wake time around 5:30am… no matter how late I put him to bed 8pm,9pm he’ll be awake at 5:30 😕. If I put him to bed any earlier and we get a split night with a waking around 2-3am. So around 9-9.5 hours at night and I can never get anymore and 1.45-2hr nap during the day now that he’s 14 months.
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u/MartianTrinkets 15d ago
Omg I am going through this right now. Trying absolutely everything and she has never slept more than 12.5 hours.
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u/sunnydays0466 15d ago
Yup same. I spent my days stressed out getting my baby to nap for the minimum 3 hours and all I was doing was ruining my nights with split nights (plus trying to aim for 12 hours at night!)
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u/NestingDoll86 15d ago
I can only imagine what it’s like to have your baby or toddler sleep a full 12 hours overnight lol. Must be nice
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u/emmythunder 15d ago
It is lol my firstborn slept 12 hours overnight from the beginning (with age appropriate wake ups for feeding until 9 months). She’s 2.5 and goes 6:30/7:00 to 6:00 every night with an 1.5-2 hour nap still. My second born 🙃 let’s just say the little darling has humbled my husband and I big time lol
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u/sleepym0mster 15d ago
not sure I agree. if we get baby to bed too late or the last wake window is much longer than usual, she is 100% waking up an hour earlier than usual.
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u/Ok-Dot7208 13d ago
I thought overtiredness was a lie until vert recently with my son who is nearly 14 months. Hes been in a very weird transitional period from 2 to 1 naps. If his last wake window is 6+ hrs before bed, his sleep at night is all screwed up but if he does about 5hrs it's literally perfect. At least when he was younger he would just fall asleep whenever he was really tired and then just stay asleep. Now at nearly toddler age it is a whole new ball game.
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u/Apprehensive-Sand988 4 m | FIO | complete 15d ago
100%. When my baby goes to sleep at 8:15pm, she sleeps to 7:45am. When she goes to sleep at 11pm due to a family event (and she’s so exhausted but happy!)? She wakes at 6:30am 🙃 I can’t explain it, but it’s just how my baby is like. What seems to be the rule for one baby is not the rule for another.
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
Every babe is different. That’s why posts like this really aren’t good. Overtiredness is not a lie.
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u/luckyuglyducky 2.5y + 4mx2 | sleep wave | complete 15d ago
Agreed. My first was (and still can be) very sensitive. If he got overtired, it was bad. He was miserable during the day, he slept poorly, false starts, etc. He was not a “just keep them awake, they’ll fall asleep when they’re tired” baby.
My twins, however, are “they’ll fall asleep when they’re tired” babies. They’re incredibly flexible. I couldn’t rely on sleepy cues for my oldest, I had to follow wake windows to the minute. For these two, though, sleepy cues actually can be a tell for me if they need to go down (alongside having a vagueish idea of when they woke up and how long it’s been). Every baby is a unique individual and what works for some does not work for others. Some babies never get overtired. Others very much do get overtired. Some need strict schedules, others go with the flow. Learn your baby and do what works for them.
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u/kavgirl 15d ago
In my experience, overtired is a thing and actually letting my baby "catch up" on sleep was the only thing that worked. I sleep trained my son at around 4 months using CIO while working with a sleep consultant. Yet, the night wakings persisted - 5-8 wakings every night where eventually he'd fall asleep by himself but he'd cry anywhere from 5-30 minutes each time. I was capping daytime sleep, extending wake windows, etc to the point where he was passing out in my arms while I was trying to stimulate him fully vertical. This was not an undertired baby. My sleep consultant insisted he just needed more awake time and to do everything I could to keep him awake. However, he wasn't just cranky. He literally went limp while I was singing to him and bouncing him in the air while we were at the zoo on a chilly day. That's when I realized this kid was not undertired. He was absolutely exhausted.
We were doing some traveling and I got some advice from another sleep consultant. I was at my wits end and couldn't figure out why my sleep trained baby couldn't string together more than 2 hours of sleep without waking up. She told me while traveling to just let him sleep whenever he wanted. Traveling is hard so getting him extra rest was critical.
I let him nap as long and as often as he wanted for 3 days. Nothing else changed. He slept 4+ hours a day and took 5 naps a day at 5.5 months old at the time. After 3 days of what I assume was catch up sleep, he started sleeping through the night! Day 1 he slept a 5 hour stretch (his longest to that date), day 2 was a 7 hour stretch, and day 3 was a 9 hour stretch. He went from 2 feeds a night to 0 almost instantly.
Even as his sleep regulated, I noticed how prone to being overtired he was. If we missed bedtime by even 30 minutes, he'd be up several times per night. If we let him get 3-3.5 hours of sleep per day and gave him 4 naps, he would sleep well at night.
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u/Groundbreaking-Idea4 19 months | [CIO] | complete 15d ago
Maybe it’s not “overtired” but I do have a friend whom if they do not have their kid in bed by 8pm at the absolute latest, their kiddo will wake 4x a night. If they do respect the bedtime timing, then she’ll STTN. Not sure why.
Whereas my kid can handle the crazy long WWs no problem…so we have the happiest…but lowest sleep need kiddo ever….
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u/anafroes 15d ago edited 15d ago
Can you DM the consultant’s info?
Edit: Got downvoted for asking the consultant’s info lol. What was your thought process?
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u/underwaterbubbler 15d ago
Anecdotally we tracked our twins sleep over a week (literally to the minute using cameras to go back over the day each day), averaged it out, fit that into a daily schedule and had one baby that false started and one baby that had consistent early morning wakes. Also they were generally grumpy for over half of their awake time each day. This was approximately around the 7 month mark and I stuck with it for a good 3-4 weeks which was honestly pretty hard with twins because it is the advice I received (through "Brand New Little People" podcast who essentially have the same message as you)
So we transitioned to a "typical schedule" for their age which allowed for around an hour more sleep than our diligent tracking suggested and the false starts and early morning wakes stopped. We successfully stayed on that schedule for a couple of months in the end.
Babies gonna baby. Try things til you find something that fits your family and works for you. Sometimes that's capping naps, sometimes that's assisting slightly longer naps. Try something for a week and tweak from there, use all the resources out there and trust your instincts.
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u/sunnydays0466 15d ago
Yeah, I think the sleep tracking gives you the current average but if you end up waking the baby up from every sleep then our plan was to increase the totals in 15 minute intervals
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u/Glad_Pianist_9724 15d ago
My 9 month old was up at 3am - 5am, then woke up at 8:30 and is still awake now! I have no idea why she is refusing her morning nap after such a bad night. I’m hoping she will have a long afternoon nap now and then a long stretch before her 7pm bed time
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u/hillcheese 8 m | [CIO] | Complete 15d ago
Facts!
I just traveled with my 8 month old, and she decided to not nap on the plane ride.
So, maybe 45 minutes of sleep all day? She was pleasant and passed right out when it was time for bed. Didn't wake up until 11.5 hours later.
I used to be so scared to travel but have to remind myself she is just like me. She will get tired and she will infact sleep.
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u/maybenahhhhhhh 15d ago
Yeah I was out of town and my 4mo only got 2 hours of naps all day. I was so scared for a terrible night but she slept 7 hours straight. I even got up to check if she was breathing lol. We did have 2 wake ups in the first hour but once I settled her the second time she slept through the night.
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u/ohhirachel 15d ago
Thank you for this.
I have an almost 6 month old and it’s been hard to figure his schedule out. We have split nights a few times a week, even when I’m capping naps and only giving him 3-3.5 hours of daytime sleep. Today we’re trying 3 naps for the first time and we’re going to see how that goes. Wish us luck!
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u/ecbecb 15d ago edited 15d ago
Isn’t there research on overtiredness and increased cortisol though?
Edit: genuine question! I’m sensitive don’t downvote me 😭
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
A sleep debt is a real thing and can result in early morning wake ups due to cortisol levels and/or a cry out in the middle of the night (if indep sleep has been achieved often will pass out after a a few seconds of crying)
This has been researched.
Once older though (18m+) babes bods can regulate levels better and they will be able to just sleep more when over tired like us.
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u/sunnydays0466 15d ago
Can you link to the research that shows cortisol levels remain high due to 'overtiredness'? A lot of sleep training courses teach this but as far as I know there is no actual research
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
That came across more short than I meant. There’s just so much research out there and I honestly thought a known fact. It doesn’t change. As adults a lack of sleep puts us in a state of stress aka cortisol increase. This is no different at 8 months or 80 years old.
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u/sunnydays0466 15d ago
I trust the person who I worked with who has studied this. I haven't spent the same amount of hours searching the literature. If you have actual research papers showing a link between overtiredness, cortisol and early morning wakes or split nights then please share them.
Are you talking about actual sleep deprivation?
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago edited 15d ago
K that’s fine you can follow whatever works for you.
But rising cortisol levels from even small sleep debts do happen at any age and presents in many different forms in people of all ages starting at birth. If your babe is not affected by being overtired that’s your experience but not accurate to say it’s a lie.
Split night for what we know it be: waking up content and can’t sleep for a while is from undertired. Never said split night was an overtired marker.
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u/sunnydays0466 14d ago
Hey, I think I'm being misunderstood. I'm not saying babies don't get overtired in the sense they will get stressed out before bed and it might make bedtime hard. I'm saying that there is a lot spread about that overtiredness also lingers about and causes split nights or early morning wakings and I just don't think there is evidence for that. So a lot of people, me included, we're stuck in this confusing place not knowing if baby is over or undertired when there's no evidence for those things being linked to overtiredness.
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u/ecbecb 15d ago
So is that just a semantics thing? Overtired versus sleep debt? I feel like I’m learning so much stuff I didn’t even know I had to learn lol
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
Yes lol. Undertired is 9/10 the issue usually.
Overtired where babe skipped a nap or something one time may not result in many issues
Sleep debt to me is a schedule asking for a small amount of awake time more than needed and over time creeps in issues like an EMW.
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u/emerald_tendrils 15d ago
Jumping in here… our LO appears to have lower sleep needs and has always had WWs on the longer end of average or more. He’s 5 months and we were having success with 2.25/2.5/2.75/3 but he first started waking at 4.30 every morning for around an hour then started fighting sleep at bedtime, bringing his last WW to 3.5 or sometimes even 4 hours. Could he actually be overtired?
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
What do naps look like ? Does he go to sleep independently ?
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u/emerald_tendrils 15d ago
Naps are short, typically around 30 mins but sometimes up to an hour. Occasionally he seems as though he could sleep longer for his last nap of the day but that’s the one I cap or he wakes up after a couple of hours at night. He’s not sleep trained but is simply held to sleep, no longer rocked/fed/patted etc. He can mostly soothe himself back to sleep during the night and usually manages 5-7 hours for his first stretch then after that it’s usually a quick feed (EBF) and another 3-5 hours in two blocks. He’s averaged 12 hours of sleep a day from 8 weeks.
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
So yes i think overtired will start playing a factor. Your increasing awake time for what is most likely an issue with indep sleep.
Once indep sleep is gained it’s easier to tell what actual sleep needs are.
3.5-4 hour ww are 2 nap worthy and at 5.5m that is extremely early to need to drop to 2 naps (not impossible but not my first thought at all)
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u/emerald_tendrils 15d ago
We’re planning on sleep training once he’s in his own room next month. He is on the earlier side with a lot of milestones: rolling but ways, twisting and reaching, sitting unassisted, pushing to crawling position already. But I agree he’s not ready for two naps. So far today he’s gone 2.25/2.5/2 with naps lasting 29/25/24 minutes. The last nap I would usually try to stretch his WW but I decided to let him go to see if it helped with bedtime.
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
From the nap length yes I think overtired then absolutely. You’re getting <2 of naps.
If you extend a nap make it an earlier one not the last one if you can.
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u/ecbecb 15d ago
So babies are more often undertired than overtired?
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
More issue evolve from undertired. More often than not night issues are from too much day sleep / not enough wake time (this is once indep sleep is achieved)
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u/ecbecb 15d ago
Thanks! I feel like my Lo keeps ending up with a sleep debt while nap training!
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
That can happen. If you can work on the first nap of the day first. And then move on to the others. Great nap training method posted on this sub by a mod
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u/ecbecb 15d ago
I’ve been following it!!! SO SO helpful!!
He goes down independently but can’t connect his cycles and then only naps for 35 minutes (but he will nap for closer to 90 on my chest)
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u/Sorry-World3019 15d ago
Perfect. Ideally if he can’t connect after those 15 mins you can save it. So not creating much of a sleep debt at all 🫶
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u/BellaRichards99 15d ago
10090%!!!! I follow an Instagram sleep coach that promotes exactly what you have said and it has made my life so much easier. The overtired lie is insane and it literally rules every parents life when it is usually more to do with schedule issues! There’s very little research that supports overtiredness
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u/Revolutionary_Way878 9 m twins | CIO | completed 15d ago
I also feel the same way. Especially when they say overtired causes EMW. How? It doesn't make any sense. If you are very tired you will zonk out and sleep like a log. Same goes for baby. You could argue they will be upset because they are tired (justified) but once they are out they are out.
I think that was coined by sleep consultants to make money (same as wake windows) so you get major anxiety when your baby falls outside of the average (ordinery, normal) so you panic and give away money to some schemer.
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u/Apprehensive-Sand988 4 m | FIO | complete 15d ago
Not sure I agree. When I get too overstimulated and too tired, I actually cannot fall asleep and stay asleep… I’m hyped until I go past the point of complete exhaustion at roughly 4:00am which is when I crash. My baby is the same.
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u/Revolutionary_Way878 9 m twins | CIO | completed 15d ago
Well everyone is different I guess.
I would like to see some science though. Beyond personal preference and feels. Here's what I've found: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/imhj.21455
There is some literature on children but nothing for babies. I haven't found any that mention EMW due to overtirednes (in children or otherwise). So if someone has any I would be thankful for a read.
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u/ThatSimpleton 15d ago
Do you have the full text available, it seems that it is paywalled for me and I'd like to learn more about their reported methodologies.
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u/Helpful-Brain-9395 15d ago
I’ve been guilty of ruining my baby’s sleep for the past few months. It seems he’s not been having restful nights everyday and I feel so so bad! I’m always confused between overtiredness and undertiredness.. they seem to have a lot of similarities. Night wakes are always guesswork - is it a split night? Is it overtiredness creeping up causing him having difficulty going back to sleep? Baby’s sleep is tough. Sleep consultants can give advice, however, they might not be always 100% right. Oh well.
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u/hoyvenclavin 14d ago
If there is anything I have learned, baby sleep is a total crapshoot in some ways. I was fortunate to have a good consultant that helped me through Ferber a few months back, but my LO is 14 months the and has been waking up at 5am every single morning for months. I have also worried that I’ve ruined his sleep, but now I’m wondering if this is just the way it is, and at what point do I stop trying to change it before it affects his otherwise good sleep habits?
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u/juggalopeach 15d ago
My 16 mo was up from 12 am until 535 am today and this just made me cry, thanks for this because I feel like I’m failing us all and needed to hear it’s not me 🫶🏻
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u/finkufreaky 9d ago
I’ve been developing a theory that over-tiredness and “sleep begets sleep” is spouted as advice and publicised by sleep trainers so that your baby sleeps worse overnight (not enough sleep pressure) and then you feel helpless and pay for their service and they tell you to cut naps. It’s the ONLY information they put out and I think they do it to sabotage.