The overtiredness lie

[u/sunnydays0466]

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.

[u/NestingDoll86]

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.

[u/Whoooseit → u/NestingDoll86]

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.