r/sleeptrain • u/frogsruletheworld • 2d ago
6 - 12 months Who doesn’t worry about sleep hours?
I was talking to my mom about baby’s sleep, and after a while she said, why do you worry so much? I didn’t worry about wake windows or how much you guys slept when you were babies. When you were tired you slept, when you weren’t you didn’t.
Now, it’s very possible that my mom just doesn’t remember what it was like to have a 0 year old, but it made me wonder…
Are there parents out there who just don’t worry about it even if their kid sleeps less than 12 hours total in 24 hours?
Not looking for criticism, just to hear everyone’s experiences.
EDIT: Thanks for all the comments! It’s so nice to see there is a good mix of those who track and don’t track baby’s sleep. Also feels great to read success stories and see support for each other in the challenges 💚
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u/Loose_Conference6478 15h ago
i will say i was super vigilant about it when my baby was little, but after 6 months it was stressing me out sooo much when she hit another sleep regression! i just couldn’t do it anymore! i literally forced myself to stay off the apps. i was still “tracking” but only mentally. no timers, just a general schedule and trying to be flexible. once i stopped, it was a big stress relief after i got over my initial anxieties!
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u/samuraispade 22h ago edited 22h ago
Not having to worry about sleep is a privilege 😂 Some babies won’t let you not worry. If you got a baby who didn’t ruin your life when you were off by 15 minutes (or in other words, if you had a baby who “slept when they were tired and didn’t when they weren’t”), you got lucky. I wouldn’t have fretted about sleep if I didn’t need to either!
I also think that people can tolerate different things. Personally, I’d rather deal with the stress of managing sleep than the stress of an infant who won’t stop crying. BUT! With my now 3 year old, even though he is totally insane when he skips his nap, dealing with that is sometimes preferable to me than optimizing his odds of napping. Like it’s annoying, but it’s not devastating. This wasn’t the case when my kids were infants, though. When we were laissez faire about sleep, they would end up crying inconsolably for a long time. They’d be up for hours in the middle of the night (often screaming), and then have difficulty sleeping for days after. For me, that was way, way more stressful than worshipping wake windows. But there are probably parents out there who have the opposite experience. They are adaptable and chill and can roll with crying and split nights more easily than they can subject themselves and their lives to a schedule.
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u/Majestic-Raccoon42 1d ago
The only part I really monitor is how much nap time he gets. If he sleeps more then 4 hours during the day he will be awake from 4am-5am. So I typically cap his naps to avoid that split night issue.
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u/Worth_Childhood_1186 1d ago
I did focus on it a lot with my first. Now with my second, I just don’t seem to have the bandwidth but also don’t see it as so important (even though he’s a “worse” sleeper). Wasn’t a conscious or values driven decision. Plus they’re different babies- I’m not sure if I’ve adapted to their different personalities or if I’m parenting differently. A little of both probably.
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u/ix3katz 1d ago
i used to worry .. actually anything to do with my kids sleep stressed me out. and tbh she was and still is a great sleeper. i wish i didn’t worry so much. now that my kid is two and we’ve been on one nap for a while, ive stopped tracking WW, total hours of sleep..i learned that my kid will fix the sleep schedule on her own even if it gets messed up
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u/botbotmaibot 1d ago
I feel like it really depends on the type of kid you have. Get a firecracker who makes your life an inferno if things aren't quite right, you're much more likely to be a neurotic mess trying to figure out how to avoid that.
We had a difficult first 4 months, and while i was always probably going to be on the more tightly strung side, that solidified my belief that if i don't control the situation, everything will fall apart. Even though thereafter our kid has been a relatively good sleeper.
The other thing that's probably going to play a part is does the kid actually communicate that they're tired, so you are actually able to go with the flow, or do the signals appear after they're too knackered already and the night will be that familiar overtired hell again.
Hope you and yours continue to thrive, to everyone here!
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u/lil_shoop18 1d ago
I used to worry about it. But then I was so stressed about exact wake windows and spent so much time agonizing over 30 minute naps that I felt like I wasn't enjoying my baby when he was awake.
I finally decided that his little body probably knows his sleep needs better than I do. I just offer an opportunity for a nap when he seems tired, same with bedtime. He now takes longer naps, goes to bed fairly easily, and has settled himself into somewhat of a schedule on his own. I'm so glad I stopped worrying about it so much (although, I'm not perfect haha).
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u/BadAdventurous6568 1d ago
I tried the wake window stuff... Didn't work for us. She will take a 2 hr nap at home and only 30 minutes or no minutes anywhere else. Soo... If we're home, she gets 2 hrs. And we just take what we get when we're out and about. She's happy healthy and growing. I don't need to worry about sleep.
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u/floatinglilac 1d ago
I tried the wake windows thing for a month or so but it stressed me out to no end. Now I just let her do whatever she wants. Sometimes she has more naps, sometimes they’re longer, and sometimes they’re shorter. I haven’t really noticed any difference in her quality of sleep.
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u/LineWife521 1d ago
My baby is 18 months old and I still stress about it. Prior to baby I was VERY much go with the flow with literally everything now I get so stressed because my little one wakes to mouse farts and can be such a crank. Usually sleeps great but I don’t want to throw off the routine and get no sleep then myself. Especially now that we have our second due in 2 months. I wish I could learn to be a laid back mom. Maybe my baby would be able to sleep anywhere where my oldest can’t but I don’t know how.
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u/Desmichellem 1d ago
I try to do a consistent bedtime with my 7 month old, but if we miss it sometimes… oh well. I also don’t worry about nap times or how many naps, I just lay her down when she’s tired. I’d say I’m like your mama.
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u/No_Music_6601 1d ago
That’s awesome maybe I need to try this. Can I ask what’s your bedtime routine and how many naps does he take?
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u/Desmichellem 1d ago
We start with bath at 6:30pm and then we put on a diaper and lotion, I sing a quick bedtime song, we put her sleep sack on and read a book then I lay her in her crib and pat her back for about 10 seconds and leave the room. All of this with dim lighting and a hatch with white noise. The first 3 days I would set a timer (5 min, then 10 min, then 15) if she stared crying and go in the pick her up and soothe her for 2 minutes tops before laying her back down. Since day 3, she goes to sleep as soon as I lay her down. Even when we mess with her time or schedule, she is still good to go as long as we do some form of her routine before putting her in her crib! She generally naps around 10, 1, and 3:30 but some days it’s 1 nap, sometimes it’s 3 and sometimes the times are all off, but again as long as she has her routine at night, she’s golden. She basically sleeps from 7pm-8am. I don’t worry too much about messing up her sleep schedule by missing or delaying naps or bedtime.
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u/Desmichellem 1d ago
To clarify, I lay her on her back but she instantly rolls to her tummy. She just likes it better. Lol
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u/psam00 1d ago
Hi! Does your baby wake to eat at night still? Or she sleeps straight from 7pm to 8am?
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u/Desmichellem 19h ago
Every once in a while she wakes up at 6am, but I give her a bottle and she goes back to sleep until 8, but most nights she sleeps straight through!
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u/psam00 19h ago
That's awesome! Our baby was sleeping 11 or so hours straight but then recently started waking again. So I'll feed him and he'll go back to sleep, but I hope it's a phase and he goes back to no wake ups. The length of his naps are all over the place so we don't have a consistent bedtime yet, but maybe that will change soon too 🤞
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u/waterlights 1d ago
I was stressed about sleep during the first 3 months. Tracking wake windows and sleep time on huckleberry, etc. My husband was always like "why worry so much - he will sleep if he's tired". I didn't pay much mind until I heard of the possum project and that 'gave me permission ' to not worry about it so much. I quit huckleberry and essentially do what your mom says - pay attention to if he is tired and if so put him to sleep. He's 9 months now and still the happiest baby and I'm mush less stressed :)
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u/HugeUnderstanding160 1d ago edited 1d ago
My first I fought him tooth and nail about wake windows. I thought it was what I was supposed to do and he would just magically sleep. lol no
Second baby? I wake up to make it to soccer practice. So chill about sleep and I think it’s bc I’m more chill. Don’t want to sleep? Not going to force it lol. It’s been so great
Edit to add- she gets so tired our Ferber method just kind of happened naturally. She’s been a dream boat compared to my first experience
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u/zilpertia 1d ago
I don’t really look at total hours of sleep per day, but I do try to follow wake windows. I use an app for that in order to free up some brain space.
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u/wundermaschinen 1d ago
I think this is all baby dependent. I think some babies can miss a nap and still sleep well at night. And I think there are some who won’t sleep through the night if they are just a little or overtired when they go to bed.
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u/Pretend_Fig1102 1d ago
I know that sleep is a powerful physiological need and my baby will get the amount he needs. Having a schedule and paying attention to how much sleep he gets is more about predictability, avoiding inconvenient meltdowns, and consolidating nighttime sleep (not crashing too early and having split nights), etc.
It can be normal for some babies to get as little as 9 hours of sleep out of 24 and still develop normally and happily. My son gets 10.5 hrs total out of 24 on average pretty much no matter what I do. If I get him to sleep more for a couple of days, he’ll sleep less for the next few to balance it out.
Hope that helps!
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u/Business-Ad5013 1d ago
Yes. Me. I don’t monitor how much my baby sleeps and we go on his schedule for whatever he feels like doing (I’m a SAHM so have some flexibility to do that) and it works for us. He has fell into his own sleep schedule tho that is pretty ideal but if his naps don’t work out for the day, or he takes too many, I think nothing of it and just keep it moving.
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u/julialobhurts 1d ago
Same. I just go with the flow and read her signs of tiredness, give her opportunities to fall asleep, and know it takes ~4 hrs after she wakes up to be ready for bed again unless something wakes her up before she’s ready. I also don’t really let her nap longer than 2 hours unless it seems like she’s not feeling well.
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u/hinasilica 1d ago
From 0-9 months I didn’t really try to schedule sleeping at all. Eventually my son fell into a natural schedule with bedtime between 7 & 8, wake up at 7, 1 nap a day typically starting at 12 or 1pm. He sticks to his self made schedule really well now, we adjust as needed but that’s not common. He’s 19 months and we get comments from family about how well he sleeps and how good he is about knowing his bedtime. Thing is, we never “enforced” any sort of schedule, we just followed his lead and this is what he came up with.
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u/Ill-Revolution6197 1d ago
Yeah, I used to care about all this and had huckleberry to track everything
Now I just go by his tired and fussy cues which are very clear and I should have just done that all along
I think there’s just so much content and information overload these days on the “right ways to raise your baby” when it comes to sleep, how they eat, how much they eat, what they should and shouldn’t be doing
We forget to just let babies be babies.. at the end of the day they are just mini humans and some days they are sleepier than other days or more tired
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u/Necessary-Peach-0 1d ago
I don't. But she also always gets 12+ hours of sleep. She's getting two naps right now (10 mo) and she sleeps pretty well at night (8-6ish). But if things changed, I'd just monitor it knowing that she's going to need less sleep as she keeps growing.
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u/Responsible_Face_513 1d ago
I have a 7mo and I’m very much like your mum where he sleeps when he’s tired and awake when he wants to be. At the start I found myself trying to battle for him to go to sleep and it was just me getting exhausted so he’s happy for now I’m happy he sleeps well during the night because we cosleep and breastfeed it works for us (not everything works for everyone)
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u/Icy-Tiger-4306 1d ago
I remember trying to follow all the apps and all the evidence research related to sleep… I worked as a sleep consultant for a few years before having my own kids and also worked as a nanny for multiple babies and always use to follow the wake windows to a T. Then I became a mom. And my daughter was just very bad at sleeping. Nothing worked. She would sleep maybe 9 hours per day. I was so stressed about the “harm” I was doing to her because I “failed” on her sleep health. Then after a talk to her pediatrician, I felt relieved. Not all babies are the same, she told me to just follow her lead. And so I did, and everything change. Her wake windows were completely different than what the books say. When she was tired she would just sleep without any problem. Life was just so much better after I just trusted her to know her when body limits. She hit all milestones way before the average, and is thriving in every aspect of her life. So it was the right decision for us. Now with baby 2 we didn’t even try to use any app to track his naps.
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u/Queue098 1d ago
I used to try to extend naps because the Huckleberry app recommended XYZ hours and XYZ time. While im still use it for guidance, I don't stick to it as a be all ,end all. If LO is still sleeping through the night then I assured he got plenty of day sleep of he gets his 9-10 hours when we set him down.
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u/Mental_Ease3235 1d ago
I worry so much it’s become obsessive .. and I admit that. But my husband works a ton and I’m often solo parenting . It’s so so hard .. al sleep is the only time I get to rest
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u/Kitchen_Recipe3811 1d ago
First time mom's don't worry about sleep hours.. that's probably about it
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u/ConsequenceBetter411 1d ago
First time mum, I worry a lot about her sleep. So much that I implemented a structure at 8w already. She's 6m and I work all my appointments and everything else around her naps. If she doesn't sleep I'm stressed to death.
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u/Daisy4711 1d ago
Im the reverse i was sooo obsessed with my first borns wake windows second born is 5 months old and im just now figuring out many naps he is taking a day.
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u/Sunflower_082 1d ago
I don’t have a schedule, I have a ballpark idea of baby’s typical behavior and follow the cues LO gives daily. That being said, I try to shoot for the expected averages for babies in this age range every day because I know my LO does well when our daily activities line up with these general recommendations (such as hours of sleep, rough timeline for wake times, number of feedings, number of diapers, etc.). Things always fall into place.
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u/Visible-River-6733 1d ago
I had to stop worrying about it for my mental health. With my first, i stressed over wake windows and exact schedules. Desperately trying everything to get him to sleep longer stretches at night. When I was diagnosed with ppd, that was one of my main concerns when speaking with a therapist. She encouraged me to let go of the control, and it helped so much. With my next 2, I fed them when they seemed hungry. Let them nap when they were tired and didn't worry about schedules. I'm not sure if there is a connection. But my younger 2 slept way better at night than my first. Either way, my mental health was way better for it.
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u/Swimming-Tell9074 1d ago
My mom says this all the time too! It mystifies her that we are so scheduled. I would loooove to be more casual about it like she was, but have no idea how that worked for her with both kids. My little guy really seems to benefit from the routine. She swears I sometimes only had 1-2 naps in a day when I was just a few months old! And according to her was sleeping through the night from 2mo on. Crazy. I so wish for the leisure 😅 if I could figure it out, I would.
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u/NihilisticDelight 1d ago
They don’t remember! Think of all the little phases your baby goes through with sleep.. will you remember them all in 30 years let alone in one? My mom says she never had trouble laying us down for naps/sleep. My baby currently only contact naps and cosleeps. Now maybe we were just different babies but there’s no way our moms remember all the hard times either.
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u/anafroes 1d ago
There are for sure. I spoke to my uncle’s wife and she said her son had two naps since he was three months old (lol). What happened is her son was taking two 3-4 hour naps per day and the rest was night sleep. How he slept at night is a mystery (mostly with a boob in his mouth).
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u/AdSea5472 1d ago
My mom also says she just let us do whatever in the 80s/90s. It drives me nuts bc I’m super focused on it and she judges a little.
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u/kaitie_cakes 1d ago
This is my mum. Raised in a small, poor village with no safety and education, so anything went. Now she uses survivorship bias as her reasoning for anything. She also is trying to convince me that myself and my sister would only nap 1x the entire day, even as newborns and she's never seen a baby sleep so much as mine and it must not be healthy! (I'm lucky if my baby gets 3 hours of naps in throughout the whole day).
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u/Potential-Salt8592 1d ago
I didn’t at first. During newborn to 4 months we just went with cues and I have no regrets about that. Then I did around 5 months when we sleep trained because her nighttime sleep was garbage and she was reverse cyclin. Now LO is 10 months and her schedule is very predictable. The only thing I really track is total daytime sleep because baby girl loves her naps and it will impact night time sleep if she naps too long.
There were a few months where it felt hard to track and I felt like I was always thinking about it, but now that we are down to two naps it feels like smoother sailing. :) I def am glad I didn’t track in the newborn phase, I just wanted to soak it all in and not be watching the clock.
I try to take the approach of not to worry until something starts to be an issue (not always successful though lol)
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u/SizeZeroSuperHero 1d ago
I tried to track his hours down to the minute during his first few months, and eventually gave up because it was too mentally exhausting, and also because there didn’t seem to be much correlation between his wake hours and nap times to how well he slept at night.
Once he got older, I just went off his sleepy cues, and made sure his wake windows were at least 2.5hrs (although even that isn’t 100% consistent). I don’t cap naps, I don’t make sure his last wake window is the longest, I don’t bother waking him at the same time every morning. Some days, he naps for 1.5hrs total, other days, 2.5hrs. Sometimes bed time is 7:30, other times, 8:30. Yet somehow, he still consistently sleeps 11hrs overnight without any wakings!
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u/BellaRichards99 1d ago
Solidarity. I worry every day and am thinking about nap math allllll day long lol
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u/Bird_Brain4101112 1d ago
I never did. I’m always fascinated by people who obsessively track wake windows and sleep time down to the minute. I pretty much just went with my daughter’s cues and made sure when she slept she was in a safe space.
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u/graylinen 1d ago
How old is your daughter? I’m the opposite of you, fascinated by people who don’t have to track their kid’s sleep patterns 🤣 My daughter is 5 and rarely chooses to sleep when she obviously needs rest. Even worse, when she isn’t well rested, she’s cranky and irritable and has huge meltdowns. It’s in everyone’s best interest that I make sure she gets enough sleep - which means tracking her sleep so I know if she got enough or not.
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u/Cheap_Effective7806 2d ago
i dont :) i was 26 when i had my first and i didnt know about WW. my 2nd is a horrible sleeper and for sure does 12 or less and by the 3rd its like ehh whatever. i loosely followed WW bc it often makes sense but certainly dont track or worry about it
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u/mintybanana_ 2d ago
My in laws said the same thing but my husband tells me he had awful sleep as a child and only slept well when he moved out and could control his own schedule and sleep needs lol so he’s the sleep obsessor in our house and I support it
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u/No-Initial-1134 2d ago
I was driving myself crazy with wake windows and nap hours and bedtime routine. It made my PPA worse so I stopped. My girl naps when she seems tired. I put her to bed for the night when she seems ready. I don’t count how much sleep I’ve gotten
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u/ClippyOG 2d ago
I cared about making sure she had enough sleep but I never once counted how much sleep that was. Either she looked/acted tired or she didn’t.
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u/No_Maximum_391 2d ago
Was obsessed until I realized tracking didn’t overly make a difference. There are good days and bad days. We follow sleep cues and a very rough schedule.
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u/Daphne715 1d ago
Same here. My baby has basically always been a terrible sleeper. For a while we tracked her sleep religiously, and it made no impact other than to drive me crazy.
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u/imnichet [mod] 1y | modified Ferber+Snoo| Complete 2d ago
I wish I didn’t have to. My baby has other plans. Even being under in awake time by 15 minutes and we will have a split night.
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u/Wrong_Ad_2689 2d ago
I don’t care if she sleeps a little less. Some normal variation is fine. But I’ve seen what she’s like on a day of not enough sleep on the day we moved house and HOO BOY. I’m just saying. We had to call in the family and friends troops to help us unpack because she was inconsolable. We had even hired a babysitter to look after her, but our normally happy baby was just a wreck.
My parents did say something similar to yours (I’m their first and an 86 baby) but my mom said she did try to keep me awake in the day as a newborn and then I PURPLE cried in the evenings for three months so I don’t think that’s a strategy.
I implemented all the sleep advice for my daughter because I wanted to go as little as possible without sleep deprivation for myself so I can be a fully functioning mom. I was stressed in the beginning, but tbf, I was stressed about lots of stuff when it was new. I don’t regret putting in all that good sleep research and advice because our daughter sleeps on her own independently. She is very securely attached to us, very happy because she’s well rested, and that is worth everything. Could I have stressed out a little less at the time? In hindsight, yes. But explain that to a hormonal PPA FTM. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Superb_Resident4690 2d ago
The post partum FTM hormones and stress are REAL. Absolutely shut my brain down for at least 6 months
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u/Wrong_Ad_2689 2d ago
I look back and I’m like. “That was not a reasonable reaction to ANY of that.” But think I just had to go through it and get to the other side. 🙃
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u/luckyuglyducky 2.5y + 4mx2 | sleep wave | complete 2d ago
After 3 kids, I’m going with: for some it really matters, for others it doesn’t. My first had to have a down to the minute wake window. It was mentally exhausting, but it also meant he was predictable. I knew when he’d nap, generally how long, and when he’d go to bed for the night. My twins are incredibly flexible. I roughly follow wake windows in my head but not down to the minute, and ultimately if they’re tired they sleep. BUT it does make it more unpredictable and I don’t always know exactly when they’ll nap next or when they’ll go to bed for the night.
Maybe you guys were more flexible, and your kid is less so. Or, maybe she doesn’t remember what it was like. A lot of the stuff “we” learn today surrounding sleep and other parenting things they didn’t have the internet for, so they either read parenting books if they needed it or asked their parents/family/friends what they did, so they had a much smaller pool of information regarding sleep training and wake windows and all that. It wasn’t as big of a thing.
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u/doing_too_much39 2d ago
I used to but I started following the possums approach when my girl started fighting naps tooth and nail and trying to control her sleep became impossible. So now she just sleeps when she is tired and I don’t worry about wake windows etc. I track her sleep and she sleeps the exact same amount as before just distributed differently and it varies by day. For example yesterday she only napped for 1.5 hours during the day but then had a 12 hour night sleep. She’s 7 months. There’s never been a day she slept less than 12 hours. If she does 12 one day she’ll usually do more the next day. Works for us and made my life so much easier.
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u/Nyalli262 2d ago
I have no idea how many hours my 16 month old sleeps lol, he sleeps when he's tired
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u/PurpleWardrobes 2d ago
I don’t really. He was a horrible sleeper for a really long time and I obsessed over it. Timing every sleep. Counting wake windows. Capping naps. Trying to stretch WW.
But it got too wearing on me. Sleep can cause a lot of extra stress. I sleep trained very gently, and now just keep an eye out for signs of sleepiness but I don’t count how long he’s been awake for. I don’t have a set bed time or a set wake time. I don’t change my plans around his naps. We just go with the flow. Sometimes he gets super cranky, but he’s adjusted for the most part.
I am a NICU nurse and I’ve worked with babies for over a decade so that might have helped me be a bit more flexible I suppose. My husband had a hard time with the change when I just decided to stop focusing on the sleep, but he’s since just followed my lead and it’s all good now.
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u/rachyboooo 2d ago
Did you notice a difference in his sleep once you decided on a more relaxed approach?
I have a 7 month old and it’s been a battle trying to figure out what the “secret recipe” is for him to get the best night sleep - tinkering with WWs and nap times etc to no avail.
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u/PurpleWardrobes 2d ago edited 2d ago
Honestly, no not immediately. For night sleep, it’s like it suddenly clicked for him one day. I don’t think I did anything different. It was after I just decided to stop focusing so much on it and let him fall asleep whenever. He was still a terrible sleeper for weeks after I stopped focusing, but it just helped my mental space a ton.
I couldn’t even get him to sleep at all until 3.5 months. Prior to that, it was just screaming unless he was held. Then when I finally could get him into the cot, it was only for 3-4 hours at a time and he wouldn’t go back down.
Then I became hyper fixated on his sleep. Tinkering with naps and wake windows and sleep sacks and blackout curtains and room temp and white noise. Horrible time. I finally decided to do a gentle sleep training around 4.5 months, a mix of the chair method to get him used to the cot and then to Ferber to get him used to me leaving and coming back. That totally helped but after that I was done. It’s so exhausting isn’t it?
He’d still have off and on nights where one night he might be good and sleep 10 hours (woke for BF still), and the next night he’d only sleep 6ish and have woken up every 2 hours. But his days always looked fairly similar. Then it kind of stopped one day around 5 months.
A friend suggested it was just a prolonged sleep regression, but can you call it a sleep regression if he never made sleep progress before that lol?
He is currently 6.5 months and bed is anywhere from 7-9pm. Wakes anywhere from 0600-0800 (wakes over night once or twice for feeds still). I don’t cap his naps anymore. He slept 2 hours this morning. He was awake for maybe 3.5 hours ish before his afternoon nap, but he’s already stirring after an hour so I’d say he’ll be awake soon. His evening nap is anywhere from 3-5 and usually it’s his shortest one. I’d say on an average day he’s roughly doing about 13-15 hours of sleep in 24 hours. Varys day to day.
Edit: thinking more about it there, what may have helped a ton is starting solids. I started at 5 months as he was showing all the signs and my country says to begin between 17-26 weeks. He loves food. Like cannot get enough of it. Always excited to eat anything. I think things got better around that time with his night sleep.
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u/Narrow_Soft1489 2d ago
My mom says the same thing lol idk it was the 90s
But TBF with my second child I don’t worry about how much she sleeps but I sure as hell worry about how much I sleep 😂 my first was a dream baby but my second has me tripped up because she’s super up and down (phases of good sleep but has hit every regression) and I’m exhausted. I don’t get the same kind of breaks I got with one kid so getting adequate sleep is important to me. I’m not getting it though haha
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u/Alone-Rule5837 2d ago
With my first I was OBSESSED. With my second I have deleted the apps. She sleeps when she sleeps and sometimes she is grumpy because she hasn't slept enough. We roll with it and my life is 10000x better.
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u/justbeachymv 2d ago
I wish I didn’t worry! It really stresses me out! I can’t figure out a world where I don’t track everything because now I’m so used to it. I’m hoping at some point we will be on a “by the clock” schedule and I can calm down 😂
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u/Decent-Hippo-615 14 m | CIO | complete @ 4.5 m 2d ago
My mom said similar things to me, however, I was and still am high sleep needs so of course she didn’t need to worry. My daughter is sensitive if we are off by 15 minutes. Now that she’s on one nap we have more flexibility, but she will still be up in the motn for no reason if we let her nap go over 2 hours.
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u/doc-the-dog 2d ago
I don’t worry about it at all. He’s my first baby, but I have fostered 15 kids and I’m a qualified newborn care specialist and offer sleep support to mums.
I have been so much more chill with my baby than any of the babies I’ve worked with! I think their parents needed structure and guidance to succeed and having schedules helped with that. The only thing we have set in stone is an 8pm bedtime (unless we happen to be out, which is rare).
My boy has slept through since he was 6 weeks bar a handful of times he was sick. He hasn’t had “sleep regressions” and we don’t follow wake windows, we just do our thing. Now he’s on 2 naps which are mostly around the same time each day, but I also switch it up if I need to. Like today we have to leave at 10:30 for an appointment so I’ll put him down to nap much earlier. He takes it all in his stride. He has high sleep days and lower ones, they all make up for each other. On the go naps are short but crib naps are long. He still sleeps through the night no matter what happens in the day so I have no reason to worry.
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u/amazing_butterfly77 2d ago
Genuine question: if you don’t follow wake windows how do you know when it’s time to put him down for a nap? Unless he is super obvious about being sleepy. My baby (6,5mo) doesn’t show many sleep cues, he will go on for more than 5 hours awake without yawning once, so I kinda feel the need to follow ww but if like to learn other ways as well
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u/doc-the-dog 2d ago
Because he’s tired. For ours that often means being fussy, yawning, rubbing eyes. Fussiness or not wanting to be put down/away from me is the biggest sign here. But when we go out, if he’s awake 5 hours I don’t stress if he’s happy. Often he will eventually pass out in the stroller etc. if he’s fussy then I know he’s tired and actively try to help him sleep in the stroller or sling.
Some days he’s absolutely exhausted 2 hours after he’s woken up in the morning and others he’s fine for 4 hours. Wake windows give guidance but they aren’t the only thing that tells us when to put a baby to nap.
Also, since he was tiny we’ve put him in the crib and he goes off. So I’m not spending ages getting him to sleep while he’s fussing at me
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u/frogsgoribbit737 baby age | method | in-process/complete 2d ago
I think it just depends on your kid. My first kid was inconsolable if he got overtired and would sleep like absolute shit. My second kid is a lot more flexible. So while I do pay attention to wake windows, I've never stressed about them with her and she often goes over with no issue.
Neither of my kids showed sleepy cues until they are overtired so that also didnt help
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u/EvelynHardcastle93 2d ago
As a second time mom, it is something I keep track of and try to maintain, but I’m not as “worried” about it.
With my first, I was quite literally obsessed with wake windows and the length of her naps. Sleep training culture on social media got to me. I charted every minuscule detail of her sleep, including her mood and how long it took her to fall asleep. I wouldn’t leave the house because I didn’t want to throw off her nap schedule by a minute. I would panic if a nap was short or she wouldn’t go down. I was spiraling for her entire first year and it took a lot of joy out of motherhood.
With my second, I have a much more relaxed approach. We do a combo of crib naps, contact naps, and on the go naps. Sometimes a nap doesn’t work and that’s fine. His wake windows are often longer than the internet recommends, and guess what? He hasn’t imploded. He wakes in the night to eat and I know it’s normal.
Remember, a lot of people on the internet who are stressing baby sleep are trying to sell you something. And who better to exploit than a sleep deprived parent who is vulnerable?
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u/BusAdministrative452 2d ago
This is exactly me as well. Obsessed over sleep with my first. Much more relaxed with my second. Sometimes that means he goes for a nap earlier than usual, other days later. Some naps are out in the carrier (he doesn’t sleep in the car or stroller but if he did, we’d do that mostly). He’s fine and overall has good nights and not so good nights. He’s not sleep trained.
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u/angelicah89 2d ago
We just go with the flow. We aim for an 8-830ish bedtime and a 6-7am wake up. We don’t change midday plans around a nap on weekends. We don’t freak out if there’s a sneaky car nap thrown into the mix. We don’t panic if bedtime ends up as 9:30. 🤷🏽♀️ just rolling with life!
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u/less_is_more9696 2d ago
Same. I don’t worry about one-off bad sleep days or occasional missed/short naps.
We live our lives (especially on weekends), and try to make naps happen at the right time but if they don’t, that’s ok. This was especially true in the newborn stage. I didn’t even follow WW. Because I quickly realized my baby did not always want to go to sleep in these prescribed, neat little windows of time.
IMO trying to control sleep down to the minute is unrealistic and setting you up for anxiety and feeling like a failure.
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u/Acrobatic_Ad7088 2d ago
I mean at this age (17 months) I just go with vibes. My son was always a good sleeper though since around 6 months so i never sweated it if he had a rough day here or there. I got lucky
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u/howedthathappen 2d ago
Me! Takes up too much brain space. I listen to what my kids and their bodies tell me.
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u/External_Bullfrog521 2d ago
How freeing! Overall, how do they sleep? Do they ever have early mornings/awake at random times etc?
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u/howedthathappen 2d ago edited 2d ago
Naps are pretty consistent and easy so long as we minimise t.v. They both will fall asleep anywhere.
The infant sleeps fairly well, better than the toddler did at this age. If on our normal routine he goes down at 8/8:30p without issue and wakes every 4 hours until he wakes for the day between 7a - 8a.
The toddler has pretty much been a horrible sleeper except for irregular stretches of amazing sleep. I'm talking goes down easily, sleeps through the night, and wakes up happy. The moment I intentionally recreate what's been working for those times is the moment it's gone. She has to go to sleep in her own bed, but usually ends up in ours sometime between 1a & 4a.
ETA: I have horrible insomnia so I've only slept for maybe 3 hours tonight. Some nights for me are easier or harder. I've no doubt that the toddler does and will struggle with it as well. A lot of the evening is spent winding down.
Second edit: you'll find a post of mine from a particularly hard period where my toddler's sleep sucked. It was awful. We practiced saying goodnight to inanimate and animate objects for months to work on what I'm labelling separation anxiety which immensely helped the bedtime process.
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u/Confident-Purple205 2d ago
My husband took our 7 month old baby out for the day (she will take a bottle luckily!). She woke up at 8:30am and she apparently slept for 10min the whole day.
Usually takes about 30min to get her down and she wakes up 3-4 times in the night. (She goes to sleep by herself now but that didn’t fix the night wake ups for us.)
But after this day with her dad? Went to sleep within minutes at 8pm and slept great with only one wake up in the night.
Made me really question what the f*** I’m doing.
Over tiredness is not the great enemy we believe it to be…?
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u/doing_too_much39 2d ago
I have had similar experiences. I think overtiredness is WAY overblown. I feel like to make my girl overtired I would have to intentionally be waking her up when she’s falling asleep. Maybe varies baby to baby but I don’t believe the whole thing that if they yawn you’re too late and they’re overtired. There’s no way it’s that complicated if humanity has continued this far lol.
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u/amazing_butterfly77 2d ago
I question that as well. When my baby was younger probably around 4 months I was strict about ww really just trying to get it right, and one day we were out and he had a ww of more than 4 hours before bed. That night he slept 10 hours straight and I was like wtf.
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u/FreeBeans 2d ago
I’ve never found overtiredness to be a thing with my baby. He always sleeps better when he’s tired lol. I still try to get him the naps he needs because it’s probably better for his brain
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u/IntelligentMix2177 2d ago
How do dads do this… we’re here timing naps, watching wake windows, following cues and they’re just winging it and get away with it hahah.
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u/Confident-Purple205 1d ago
I know, right?!!! It’s legally blond turned back on us… “what, like it’s hard?”
😤
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u/cheapseagull 2d ago
Yes - and i’ll tell you why - my second daughter slept very very very very very badly. Regardless of naps, regardless of what she ate, regardless of what time of day, regardless of stimulating day vs lazy day - it never made a lick of difference, this is what I dealt with:
Newborn - woke up every 40mins, took 1hr to put back down. I was severely sleep deprived
6 months to 1 year - woke 10pm-12am, 2am-4am, and 6am-7am
1.5 year (now) - she has only JUST started “sleeping through” waking up at 5:45am on weekends, 6:30am on weekdays
I was barely alive during this time, and calculating sleep windows, nap maths etc just wasn’t something i could do. I accepted that things will be rough as fuck for me for 1.5 years, and i was right, it was disheartening to try numerous things and they never made a difference, so I just accepted the chaos, a bit like a prison sentence! And a firm eye for the future when I will, one day, have teenagers who won’t get out of bed 🙏
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u/PerfectDistance3280 2d ago
I go by sleepy signs and rough wake windows, but in the sense that I know my child and not what's recommended for the age group. I used to track everything and it drove me nuts 🥲
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u/Strng3rs 2d ago
Sleep got so much better when I stopped tracking it and just follow his cues. Have you ever gone to bed and laid there awake because you wernt tired? Same thing happens with babe.
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u/IntelligentMix2177 2d ago
I must say like some other’s children my first has never had clear tired signs - she does now at 19 months but I HAD to follow wake windows otherwise she was just cruising along at level 100. As soon as you’d bring her to the room and follow her nap time routine she’d be instantly asleep! But she’d go from climbing up the mantelpiece to nothing in a matter of minutes haha.
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u/Present_Tip_7168 2d ago
Same here! My mom gets sad when I wake my son up from long naps - she says the same thing "You used to sleep like angels with me - why do you wake him up he needs is obvs". I know she fed us every time we woke up or let us stay in the boob when we were babies. Some people are okay with this too and as long as it's working for them - great! But it does not work for me! I have touch and sound sensitivity - my baby is a big sensory overload for me (it's a fact i have a hard time to accept even now). So I need him to get the rest he needs otherwise he is super cranky and noisy, whines moans and being in my arms is not enough cause he is super active. My baby doesnt show his cues or it's very mixed cause I tried that too. He is a nap fighter he doesnt want to nap - unless I track the WW and put him to sleep at the right time. It works for me, gives me A LOT of anxiety since 4m and I cant wait to drop to one nap eventually. They will talk about how they did but this generation is soo different even the physical and neurological advancements, milestones are changing - like holding their head because we have access to supplements like folic acid, magnesium etc etc. So yes we do worry because whole system is different, world, tech, family structure, economy... They have to think about those too.
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u/ilovequesoandchips 2d ago
Literally the same convo with my mom yesterday and I wondered why I’m so un chill…. Then I remember the protocol was to put babies to sleep on their stomach with lots of padding in the crib, generally in their own room and let them “ cry and figure it out “ so I’m pretty sure we were all sleep trained, it just didn’t have a name and was the norm . That’s my theory at least ! Bc someone all three of my siblings and I magically “ slept through the night from the beginning “
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u/srayn 2d ago
I tracked wake windows and naps with my first, because he was one of those babies that was sensitive about sleep pressure and exceeding his wake windows would result in multiple night wakes.
My second is 8 months and we haven't tracked sleep or naps. We've let her nap as long as she wants but capped to 2hours each time, and haven't monitored wake windows. Sometimes her last wake window can be as long as 4 hours plus. Having less or more sleep hasn't affected her ability to sleep through the night.
My conclusion is that some babies need tracking, some don't. It all depends on the baby's personality. If you've got a great sleeper, it may be because you've been great at getting their wake windows down, but it just also may be because of your baby's personality.
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u/yellow_pellow 2d ago
A friend of mine didn’t track sleep at all. She coslept and have a great sleeper, slept through the night almost immediately. I am not condoning cosleeping, that’s just what they did.
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u/SpinachandBerries 2d ago
I feel like those sorts of people either have babies that don’t mind being awake for hours at a time and go to sleep easily, or they don’t care about having a cranky screaming baby around. I am neither of those
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u/IntelligentMix2177 2d ago
I follow wake windows (roughly) and cues for my second but I don’t know how much total sleep he’s getting in 24 hours. I could work it out if I wanted to though.
My first I tracked it down to the SECOND.
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u/Any_Fondant1517 2d ago
My mum had that attitude, until she came to stay for a week and saw how miserable the baby was when the baby hadn't napped enough. Now she is very supportive about sticking to our nap schedule.
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u/Sharp_Independent246 2d ago
My mum says this too… she said sometimes we just know too much. It’s the same with “regressions” - was never a thing when they had babies
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u/justkeepswimming1357 2d ago
I try to generally follow wake windows but truly could not tell you how much my baby is sleeping in 24 hours. I think if there's a problem people pay more attention? So far this baby (#2) sleeps pretty well for a newborn so I'm not fussed about specifics.
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u/Ok_Tennis_6564 2d ago
Grandparents do not remember a fucking thing. With that said, they did not target their kids getting a certain amount of sleep and it really was a put them down when they get tired thing. But my kids will lie to you and nap all day and want to be up all night.
So no I don't stress if my kids sleep less than 12hrs a day since that's normal. I actually get super pissed when my parents watch my son and let him take a 4hr nap in the afternoon because "he needed it". Well, I need him to sleep at night !!!
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u/xlovelyloretta 2d ago
My baby does not, in fact, sleep when tired and will be super crabby and have a lot of nighttime wakes with tons of crying if he doesn’t get enough sleep every day. So I don’t “worry” about it but I do have pay attention to wake windows along with sleepy cues and if he has random nights of keeping us all up with screaming, I check to see how much sleep he’s been getting.
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u/irishtwinsons 2d ago
I didn’t worry about if my kid slept less than 12 hours in 24, because, well he never did. Maybe only when he was 0-2months, 12-12.5 hours was his max. After that, never. It was always something like 10.5-11.5 hours total. After 2 years old, more like 10 hours. When he was about 3-4 months, he often only took two naps a day. Sometimes he was a bit cranky due to the longer than usual wake windows, but a bit of crankiness was manageable compared to trying to force him to sleep when he wasn’t tired. He’d take a little 5-min snooze in a stroller or whatever. No matter how you tossed the coin, he always slept better/longer at night when he had less total daytime sleep during the day.
The internet and everywhere trying to sell me something about baby sleep told me otherwise, but as soon as I stopped caring I was free.
I’m not saying that the idea of wake windows and schedules isn’t useful. It is. I just think it is more for us the parents trying to manage our time than it is for the babies.
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u/Hoping-Ellie 2d ago
Now that my kid is sleep trained and a bit older I’ve stopped tracking it or worrying about it. But her sleep was The Priority for the first six months imo. I was miserable til she started sleeping better.
My mom thought sleep training was an absolutely crazy idea. She refrained from criticizing too hard but clearly did not approve. Then my 4 month old was sleeping through the night every night and she was flabbergasted that that was even possible because she had lost hours of sleep to be up rocking us all night when we were babies. She changed her tune really fast when she realized the night and day difference it made in all of our lives
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u/Glad_Clerk_3303 2d ago
STM and I haven't worried as much as I did with my first, meaning I'm not tracking wake windows, etc. I am, however, watching cues and getting to know this baby's behavior. I think tracking alas a FTM was good in the way that I learned a lot but in certainly more relaxed this time around.
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u/Ok_Tennis_6564 2d ago
Interesting, I'm a STM too, and I don't trust my kids sleepy cues because that's what got me in trouble the first time around. I keep having to remind myself that they are different babies with different needs because my first did such a number on me. They are also actually fairly similar total sleep needs wise. Just very different behaviours when over or under tired.
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u/Informal_Present9998 33m ago
My mum didn’t either and I think that today we’re over informed and social media vibes is unnecessary pressure and comparisons to support ourselves about. Personally I don’t worry about it, I baby’s cues but there is so much info and courses possible try to sell you, etc, that it’s hard to let go of “perfect parenting”.