At the beginning of the new year, I spend a lot of time reflecting on the past year. I’m always amazed at how much has changed, even more now that we have O. I look back at pictures from last year and can’t believe how she has changed, especially between 12-18 months. 

And, of course, I can’t help but think about how much her sleep has changed. This time last year, when O was eight-months-old,  we were entering the most sleep-deprived stage we’d ever been in (yes, even more sleep deprived than the newborn days – you can read all about that here.) I honestly can’t believe how far we’ve come. 

While we went through many challenges in the 7-11 months stage, things improved significantly between 12-18 months. O still has yet to sleep through the night, but for the most part, her wakings are brief and only a few times a night. This is very normal. Many toddlers still wake at night. Despite these wakings, we’re, for the most part, relatively well-rested these days. 

Don’t get me wrong, this stage has its challenges. And exhausting moments, as I’ll discuss in detail below. But they were easier to manage during this phase. By the time O was one, I had drastically shifted my perspective on sleep. I’d read enough to know everything we were experiencing was normal and had been through enough sleep challenges to know any tough phases would eventually end. I think having realistic expectations and a better mindset about sleep led me to feel more rested during this phase. 

During the 12-18 months phase, we didn’t have many nap time challenges, but we had three instances where her nighttime sleep was impacted; O fractured her ankle around her first birthday, I returned to work when she was fourteen months old, and she went through a sleep progression around seventeen months. 

I hope that by sharing our experience during the 12-18 months stage, I can help normalize toddlers still waking up at night. And toddlers still needing their parents’ support. And most of all, I hope our story reminds those in the thick of a rough sleep patch that everything passes in time. 

Fractured Ankle

O fractured her ankle just two weeks shy of her first birthday. Seeing her in pain is hands down one of the hardest things I’ve experienced. And such a helpless feeling. I just wanted to make it all go away for her, and I couldn’t.

One of the ways I could make things easier on her was to completely surrender and let her sleep when she needed to and hold her as much as I could. We went back to exclusive contact napping. I bought this carrier (click here) since she had outgrown the one we had so that she could nap on me as much as she needed. This carrier was a lifesaver since I wasn’t confined to the couch or bed for every nap. I didn’t cap any of her naps. I felt that her body needed the extra rest to heal, so I let her get it whenever she could. 

I got very in tune with O’s sleepy cues during this time. More in tune than I ever was. I didn’t follow any wake windows, and our days didn’t have much rhythm. Even our routines were pretty much nonexistent. 

I completely surrendered and followed her lead. And you know what? It was freeing! 

I didn’t realize how much I stressed about sleep until this experience. And while I would still spare O from this pain if I could, the silver lining is that I was able to shed my sleep-related anxiety once and for all. 

Our nights were very broken during this phase as we gave O pain medication around the clock. But the broken sleep didn’t bother me. I don’t know whether it was the realistic expectations, adrenaline or the immense empathy I felt for O, but I never got upset about being up through the night. I actually didn’t even get that run down. Looking back, I am shocked by how well I functioned on such little sleep. 

The good news about minor fractures in babies is they heal exceptionally fast. O was completely healed within four weeks, and sleep went mostly back to normal after two weeks. And it went back to normal all on its own—no intervention from us whatsoever.

Please let this be your permission slip to let go of any worry that you will cause bad habits during seasons when babies need us a bit extra. These seasons happen. From teething, to illness, to injuries or anything that causes our little one’s discomfort, the most important thing you can do for them is be there. Hold them. And surrender.

I promise you things will eventually return to normal. Maybe even all on their own like they did for us. But even if the new patterns stick, the worst thing that will happen is that you will need to shift the pattern.

And there are SO many ways you can do this without sleep training. 

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Nothing lasts forever. There are no bad habits, only patterns. And when patterns no longer work for you, they can be changed. 

Returning to Work

When O was 14 months old, I returned to my research job part-time. I realize how privileged I have had 14 months home with her. I was lucky to have two “extra” months at home: after my 12 months of maternity leave, I had an 8-week contract that allowed me to work from home a few evenings a week. 

After so many beautiful months home together, we both took this change hard. Separation is very tough on babies, toddlers and parents too. There were lots of tears from both of us. Tears are expected, especially in the face of separation. I always left O with a loving, supportive caregiver, but walking out the door while she cried broke my heart. And I would cry the whole way to work, even once I got the update that she was doing better. 

I did what I could to make the transition easier for her. We had lots of extra connection and opportunities for play when I got home, and I made sure my arms were a safe place for O to let out her tears. I often received feedback that O had a great day, and I quickly learned that meant she would have a lot of big feelings that evening and often into the night. 

It is so typical for children to hold it together when they are separated from their parents, only to let out all their feelings when they’re reunited. We are their safe place, and once they are safely back in our arms, all the emotions they hold in all day usually come out. 

O also sought out extra connection at night during this time. She had more frequent wakes, and often nursing was the only thing that provided her comfort. This was tough, but mainly because I felt my whole world turned upside down. Going back to work was stressful and a much bigger adjustment than I ever imagined it would be. Even when O was sleeping, I, for the most part, wasn’t. I was too stressed so that I would lie awake for hours. I was exhausted, but I knew O waking more was only a tiny part of the reason. It was because my sleep needed working. 

I made sure to take extra good care of myself. I prioritized getting outside more than usual (you can read all about the benefits of getting outside in last week’s blog here). I talked about this transition with my therapist. And I started going to sleep as soon as O was asleep. Falling asleep at the end of the day wasn’t the hard part for me. It was staying asleep. So one way to log more hours was to go to bed when O did, even if it was early (and still light outside). 

The good news is that the disrupted nights were short-lived. About a month after O’s babysitter started, our sleep levelled out. She went back to sleep like usual, and I eventually managed my stress levels and got my sleep back on track. 

If your little one is starting childcare soon, or you’ll be separated for any reason, know that it is so normal for many tears and disrupted sleep. It will eventually pass, but it is tough when you’re in the thick of it. 

18-month sleep PROgression

The final sleep challenge we experienced between 12-18 months was the 18-month sleep PROgression, which is how I like to frame sleep regressions. Although sleep can be affected, it sometimes feels like sleep is “regressing” these progressions happen because of a surge in development. 

Not all babies go through sleep progressions, and some go through a few but not all. O completely skipped out on the 12-month sleep progression, but the 18-month one hit her hard.

Between 17-18 months, O was working on so many skills. She was learning to run, hop, and climb. She was saying new words every day. She went through a growth spurt; suddenly, nothing was fitting her. She seemed to become a toddler overnight. 

With so many changes going on at once, her sleep was disrupted. For a few weeks, she frequently woke, and we had the occasional split night. In so many ways, I coped better with this regression than others. Mostly because I had realistic expectations and knew that with her changing so fast, some sleep disruption is bound to happen. I overall stressed way less about this regression. However, it was O’s first regression since returning to work. Not being able to rest during her naps (or occasionally nap when she napped) was hard. 

This was another phase where I would go to sleep as soon as I could to log as many uninterrupted hours as I could. She would generally sleep 3-4 hours before her frequent wakes began, so getting as much sleep as I could in that window helped tremendously. 

Like all regression, O’s sleep was only “off” for a few weeks. She went right back to sleeping like normal, with 1-2 wakes a night. 

Final takeaway from this stage

My biggest takeaway from the 12-18 month stage is that sleep is not linear, but it does become more consistent as time goes on. There will be bumps throughout toddlerhood, but they are simply that, bumps. Tough weeks (or months) will come and go. 

When I was pregnant with O, I did very little research on normal infant sleep. I was ready for sleepless nights during the newborn stage, and the four-month sleep progression was something many of my friends had prepared me for, but as far as I knew, it was only going to get better from there. For some babies, it does, but for most, sleep will have its ups and downs over the first year (or two). And this certainly was the case for O (we still have challenges from time to time at 18-months old.) No one prepared me for some of the common sleep challenges we experienced when O was around seven to eleven months. I had never heard of false starts and split nights before. 

A big part of my mission is to spread the word that infant and toddler sleep is NOT linear in hopes that by having realistic expectations, parents can stress less about their child’s sleep. This passion comes from my own experience. As you know, I did not want to sleep train O and learned early on to trust my intuition (if you missed it, you can read all about that here). Still, around the age of seven to eleven months, O went through many developmental changes, and it became clear during this stage that following my intuition was not enough. False starts and split nights were something I couldn’t just follow my instinct to get through, on top of teething, illnesses (yes, plural), and, to cap it all off, a fractured ankle (more on this coming soon).

These months were hard, and while I knew without a doubt that a responsive approach to sleep was what felt best for our family, when O experienced false starts and split nights I had so many doubts as a mom. And with everyone asking me if O was sleeping through the night (and she wasn’t – but guess what, none of us do), I was convinced I was doing something wrong. Was it normal to have this many challenges at this age (answer: completely normal), and what options did I have if I didn’t want to sleep train (answer: lots of options – it is a myth that we need to let our babies cry it out, or wait it out) were just a few of the questions that went through my mind DAILY. 

With each challenge, and as you’ll read in my next two posts, they were seriously one right after another, I put on my researcher hat and got to the bottom of the issue, and made changes in a way that felt good for our family. Once again, I was fascinated by what I was finding. There were so many options aside from cry it out, and I was shocked that everything O was doing was completely normal. It was during this stage that I knew I wanted to spread the word on normal infant sleep and when I ultimately decided to become a Baby-Lef Sleep and Well-being Specialist. 

So let’s walk through my experience with each issue together. I started this blog to write about this entire stage in one post but quickly realized there was just too much to cover. In this post, I will share our experience with false starts and split nights. Stay tuned for an upcoming part two on other sleep challenges during the 7-11 months of O’s sleep journey. 

False starts

False starts are when your baby wakes shortly after being put to bed, usually within an hour, and the baby needs to be supported back to sleep. These started happening for O when she was almost seven months old. Of all the “issues” we had with O’s sleep, this is one that we did the least about and caused us the least stress. The part that was most challenging for me was that I would go to bed when O went to bed since we were bedsharing (you can read about the start of our journey to bedsharing here), just fall asleep, then be woken up to resettle O. You know that groggy feeling you get when you’re exhausted, and we’re just woken up shortly after falling asleep (I’m sure all you mamas know what I’m talking about), it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Then, I often have trouble falling asleep after getting O back to sleep, which only took 10-15 minutes. So this was not fun, to say the least… 

Once the false starts began, they happened like clockwork. Every night, after O had been asleep for 40 minutes on the dot (I kid you not, it was that predictable), she would wake. After a week or so of this, I decided not to fall asleep until after that initial wake. I stopped rocking O to sleep in her nursery before transferring her to our bed and started nursing her to sleep on the couch. Then, once she was asleep, my husband and I watched TV until she woke after 40 minutes, then I’d nurse and sing her back to sleep, transfer her to our bed, then settle in for our longest stretch of the night, which by this age was around 3-5 hours, depending on the night. 

We enjoyed this routine and treated it like a mini date each night. We’d text each other throughout the day about what show we wanted to watch that night. We kept this as part of our routine until false starts stopped happening when O was eleven months old. 

Overall, I didn’t do much research about false starts simply because it didn’t seem like a big problem since she resettled easily, and I quickly came up with a solution that I enjoyed. I also didn’t try to figure out what was causing them to happen. Baby not being tired enough at bedtime, needing more connection or being hungry and requiring a longer feeding are just a few possible things that may be going on if your little one I having false starts. Looking back, I wonder if false starts was O’s “warning sign” that she needed less daytime sleep because shortly after false starts began, we experienced split nights… which are hands down the hardest thing I’ve experienced sleep-wise with O. 

Split nights

A split night is when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night and is awake for an hour or more, sometimes for an entire wake window (this was O), often full of energy, ready to play and act as if it’s morning. They also happen consistently, so while it is normal for babies to have one-off nights like this, or even a short spell of a few around periods of development, split nights happening multiple times per week for weeks on end is not normal. Often, they are caused by an imbalance in daytime and nighttime sleep (i.e. baby is napping too much during the day or is going to bed too early). 

A common misconception is that babies need to sleep for 2-hour naps and 12 hours at night to get their sleep needs to be met. I definitely fell victim to this baby sleep myth. I was striving for the “recommended” 2-hour naps, and she just didn’t need this much sleep. I soon realized that 12-13 hours of sleep was O’s “sweet spot” at this age and was well within the normal range of recommended hours of sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, babies between the age of 4-11 months need, on average, between 12-15 hours of sleep in 24 hours, but anywhere from 10-18 hours may be normal for this age. You can check out the full article here. 

It took a little over a month to eliminate O’s split nights. The first few weeks that these happened, I would let O and I catch up on sleep by sleeping in and taking long naps, but as I began researching the issue, I realized this was reinforcing the split nights. Our only way out was to consolidate O’s night sleep and cap her naps. Since O was already staying up until 9 or 9:30 pm, and I didn’t want to push her bedtime any later, I started capping O’s naps. We started capping her total daytime sleep at around 3.5 hours, then went to 3 hours a week later when that wasn’t enough to end the split nights. Then, a week later, when that still wasn’t enough, we implemented a consistent wake-up time of 7:30 am, which did the trick. 

We’d strive for one 2-hour nap a day, then keep the others at 30-60 mins, depending on how many naps she was taking at that time (I will post all about nap transitions soon). This allowed her to sleep for 10 hours at night, with just a few night wakings to nurse. All her sleep needs were being met, and anything more than that caused her to wake up and want to play in the middle of the night. 

I realize as I write this out that it sounds straightforward. But I want to reiterate that it wasn’t easy to go through. If you’re currently going through this, I feel for you. These nights are super tough. And while it is easy to say, “just tweak their sleep totals,” I know all too well how daunting it is to play around with that all on your own.

The math of it all can send anyone crazy (I’m an economist, and even I find “nap math” makes my head spin), especially when you’re exhausted. And waiting to see if it makes a difference is so hard. It often doesn’t take one minor change to eliminate, so you’re making changes with no real end date in sight, which can be anxiety-inducing. Not to mention it’s hard on the little ones. You are essentially rewiring their circadian rhythm, which makes them extra tired and sometimes grumpy. I definitely caved a few times and let O nap a bit longer than usual to “catch up,” and this always backfired and led to a split night. There are just so many factors at play, which is why it took about a month of making changes to eliminate them altogether. 

This is where having a sleep specialist to help navigate these changes can be so helpful and is something I wish I had done. It would have been so valuable to have someone in my corner to walk me through and help me get to the root of this sleep challenge. This is why I can’t wait to start supporting families one-on-one with their child’s sleep challenges. There is so much at play it can be overwhelming to figure out on your own. 

If you are going through sleep challenges, whether false starts, split nights, or something else, I’d love to help you navigate them. Click here to send me an email; I’d love to chat. You have so many options aside from cry it out or wait it out, and I know together, we can find a solution that feels right for you and your baby. 

The other day O and I went for a beautiful fall walk down a dirt road along the water not too far from our home. I was instantly taken back to this time last year when I was on maternity leave, and we walked this road at least once a week. I spent a good part of this walk thinking back on all the sleep learning (and unlearning) I have done over the past year regarding normal infant sleep. By this time last year, I had ditched the mainstream sleep training course everyone had been raving about (check out my first blog post in O’s sleep journey series here) and had embraced bedsharing (you can read more about our journey to bedsharing here). However, there were still a lot of baby sleep myths I was falling victim to. Anxiety around O’s sleep, mainly her naps, was still making its way into our lives. 

So let me pick up where I left off and continue sharing O’s sleep journey with you. In this post, I’ll share what our nap and bedtime routines (or lack of) looked like when O was 4-6 months, the mistakes I made, and things I learned about normal infant sleep along the way. Again, I want to remind you this is our journey, and yours likely looks very different. Each baby and family is unique, and so is their sleep. There is no right or wrong here (as long as the baby is sleeping safely). Trusting your intuition and following your baby’s cues is all that matters. 

Naptime

By the time O was around four months old, we had settled into our nursing-to-sleep rhythm reasonably guilt-free. As I discussed in my first post, I learned that there was absolutely nothing wrong with O nursing to sleep, and it was biologically normal. It was so freeing to do what felt right finally. I was trusting my intuition, and in so many ways, this served me well.

When I think back to this time last year, I am flooded with so many beautiful memories. One thing we often did last fall was head outside upon waking and take in the beautiful October sunrise. I’d throw on my robe, put a hat on O and grab a cozy blanket, then head out to our front deck for 10-15 mins to watch the magic. This is my favourite way to start the day, and little did I know getting O out into the natural light first thing was helping establish her circadian rhythm, which helps tremendously with baby’s nighttime sleep (I will share more about the science behind this in the coming weeks as I work through my certification.) 

O’s first nap was usually on my chest on the couch. Sipping coffee and getting some quality “me time” and rest was so rejuvenating (see why I love contact naps here.) I’d give anything to relive these slow, peaceful mornings with O sleeping soundly on my chest. I think back to these mornings, with the gorgeous fall sunlight peeking through our windows all the time. 

Stroller naps were also part of our daily routine during the 4-6 month stage. And these also did wonders for my mental health! Getting outside (almost) daily was so much easier once the cooler temperatures had arrived, and I didn’t need to worry about O overheating. I spent hours each week pushing a stroller with O sleeping soundly, taking in all the fall foliage. This is another favourite memory from this time last year. 

Late afternoon and evenings were always the most challenging nap time for O. She has always needed a later bedtime (anything before 9 pm is treated as a nap), so we got these naps in however we could. Often O would sleep in the carrier or wrap, or we’d go for another walk or plan to snuggle on the couch. Nic and I adopted a “whatever gets the nap in” mindset for the final naps of the day, and these looked very different from day to day. 

During this stage, even though this routine felt right and I trusted my intuition, I had worries in the back of my mind. These concerns were rooted in having no idea what was normal infant sleep and needing to unlearn a lot of the (mis)information I had picked up in the sleep course I took before O was born. 

One of the main things I worried about was our lack of schedule. O’s naps didn’t have much predictability (which is entirely normal, I just didn’t know it); some days, O would have three naps on the longer side, and sometimes she would have 4-5 (sometimes even 6) cat naps to get her through the day. I stressed about the cat naps and thought I was doing something wrong when she would wake after 20-40 mins. I had seen sample schedules online with these 1-2 hour naps and claims that babies need long naps for their development. So when these didn’t happen consistently for O, I worried she wasn’t getting the rest she needed to thrive. I thought she would fall into a predictable schedule around 5-6 months, but she didn’t (spoiler, this didn’t happen until closer to 9 months when she was on two naps a day consistently). 

Lack of schedule and cat naps are biologically normal at this age (and beyond – so fear not if you have a baby older than six months who is thriving on cat naps). 

Knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back in time and embrace this stage a little more. Even though I was worried I was doing it all wrong, I did enjoy that we weren’t tied to a schedule, that we were getting daily walks in and that our days were still filled with snuggles. Without knowing this was a baby sleep “thing,” we had fallen into a predictable rhythm with our days, meaning we, for the most part, had a similar sequence of activities day to day, and this is much preferred over a strict schedule in the baby-led sleep world. I so wish I had known this a year ago, not necessarily because I would have done anything differently, but because it would have relieved so much stress around O’s development.

I also remember the later-day naps causing some stress, mostly because I thought she needed to have a particular wake window for her age. I later learned that wake windows aren’t based on science and are simply averages; some babies need more prolonged, and some need shorter wake windows. Once I learned this (sadly, closer to the ten-month mark), I could tune into O’s cues and rely less on the clock. I realized that O needed a slightly longer wake window than the average for her age. She also required slightly less sleep in 24 hours than many sleep “experts” were recommending, which led to many sleep challenges during the 7-10 month period (post on this age coming soon). There is a wide range of normal for how many hours of sleep babies need, and O happens to be on the lower end of that range.

Bedtime

We also went through a brief period around the six-month mark where we attempted to get O to sleep in her crib for the first stretch of the night. I would nurse her to sleep in the rocking chair in her room, then would try to transfer her to her crib in our room instead of laying her in bed with me. It is laughable when I think back to this short-lived phase. We put in SO much effort to get this first stretch in the crib, and it backfired more times than not. 

She was so sensitive to any noise and the transfer into the crib. From the stealthy walk down the hall, hoping a floorboard wouldn’t creak and that the dog wouldn’t move, to slowly removing the hot water bottle lying in the crib before laying O down in hopes a bit of warmth would allow her to settle in soundly, to finally the carefully curated technique of lowering her into the crib, the whole process caused so much stress. After a few weeks, we gave up because it just wasn’t worth it. More times than not, we would have to go through this routine 2-3 times before she would stay asleep, and then she ALWAYS woke after 20-40 minutes. Plus, I found by the time her 9-9:30 pm bedtime rolled around, I just wanted to go to bed with her. 

Once I learned that it was normal for babies to wake up when they were alone and that it is pretty common for babies to be sensitive to the transfer into the crib, especially at this age, we moved O’s crib back to her nursery and gave up the crib at bedtime once and for all. For so many reasons, it just made sense for me to go to bed with her in our bed. And when it came down to why we were trying the crib it had nothing to do with our own wants and needs, it was purely pressure from others to somewhat “get our life back.” It is perfectly fine to want to encourage more independent sleep or to enjoy some adult time (or alone time) in the evenings. And there are so many gentle ways to do this. But it is essential to have realistic expectations on how the process may go (which is what I am here to help you with) and be really clear on your WHY. As long as the reason is something you genuinely want and not from external pressures like it was for us, making shifts in patterns and gentle changes benefits the whole family. But for us, that just wasn’t the case at this point in time. So we once again trusted we knew what was best for our family and paused. 

What I wish I knew

Looking back, I wish I had learned SO MANY things sooner. I wish I knew that cat naps were normal and that I did not need to follow a schedule. Our predictable rhythm (that I enjoyed SO much) was exactly what we needed and more developmentally appropriate for O. I wish I had ditched the clock sooner, followed O’s sleepy cues, and trusted that she knew how much sleep she needed. I also wish I had spent some time thinking about WHY I wanted the first stretch of sleep to take place in the crib and that I had found information on biological infant sleep for the 4-6 month age much sooner. 

If this is the stage your baby is in now (or if you will soon be there), I hope my experience helps you enjoy this stage stress and guilt-free! It is such a fun age, and most of the advice for this age is simply wrong and not based on normal infant sleep. If your 4-6 month-old baby resists a schedule, takes cat naps, wakes upon transferring to the crib and thrives being in close contact with you, rest assured they’re doing exactly what they are supposed to do. 

There is only ONE piece of baby sleep advice I think EVERY new parent needs to know. It’s not a program that promises your baby will sleep through the night by a certain age; it’s not a magical product on the market; it’s not even an old-wives tale…

It’s to TRUST YOUR INTUITION.

It’s the advice I did not hear when I was expecting my daughter but what I needed the most. Learning to trust my intuition changed the course of motherhood for me for the better. It ultimately led me to start this blog, and is why I decided to become a Baby-Led Sleep and Well-being Specialist. 

How did I come to this realization on my own? The best way to answer that question is to share our story. So let me take you back to the beginning of O’s sleep journey. To the hazy newborn days where somehow, in the fog of it all, I learned to trust my intuition and developed a passion for helping other mothers trust theirs. 

Our sleep journey began while I was pregnant. After the (well-intentioned) advice from a few family and friends, my husband and I took a popular newborn sleep course. Looking back on this decision, I still can’t believe how little research I put into what we were buying. I knew I didn’t want to sleep train O, yet here I was, watching videos that would ultimately lead me down a path that, if I hadn’t trusted my gut, would have led me to sleep training. 

Our baby girl, O, was born in May 2021, and from the moment they laid her on my chest, I knew my life had changed forever. I was struck by an overwhelming urge to protect her and felt an instant love like I had never experienced. To say I developed strong maternal instincts almost immediately is an understatement. Those first few days of motherhood came naturally to me. Of course, I had moments where I had self-doubt, and sure, I made mistakes (I’ll save the details for another post), but I truly felt I knew what was best for O. Luckily, mothers during the newborn phase are encouraged to follow their instincts and snuggle their babies. The saying “you can’t spoil a newborn” is something I heard over and over. To soak it all up because we’ll blink, and it will be over.

So I did just that. 

During our first few weeks, O hardly left my chest. We spent our days snuggling skin to skin, baby wearing, and cluster feeding. I had embraced feeding on demand and was even praised by nurses at our Mother Baby Clinic for being so in tune with O’s needs. I was thriving in my new role, and so was O.

When the four-week mark hit, it was time to start implementing all we had learned in our newborn course. It didn’t matter that feeding on demand was working well, that O was sleeping 6-hour stretches on her own in a bassinet at night and was a very happy baby, the course led me to believe if I didn’t act now, I was destined for a sleepless few years. We tried a few of the techniques the course recommended. We tried shifting O’s bedtime earlier, adding in the EASY schedule, using a pacifier, and attempting the infamous “drowsy but awake” a few times. O hated it. And just as important, so did I. 

Throughout pregnancy (and during our TTC days), I had this beautiful vision of rocking and nursing my baby to sleep. And now that she was here, that is what felt right! I loved rocking her to sleep. Even at 3 am. I distinctly remember rocking her way longer than I needed to a few nights because it was just so peaceful. Staring at her, sleeping soundly in my arms, was a dream come true. So I decided to pause implementing the newborn course. Each passing week I trusted my gut and kept doing what felt natural. 

Until we hit the 12-week mark… it dawned on me that we had not implemented a single practice from the newborn course, and the dreaded four-month sleep regression was coming. So we decided to try a few techniques once again. Everything about this program felt unnatural to me. It was hard on both of us. I vividly remember crying because this life of contact naps and rocking my girl to sleep was ending (spoiler – it wasn’t, but that’s what I thought at the time). I missed our slow mornings where O would nap on my chest in the living room because the course recommended the first nap every day be in the crib. We tried drowsy but awake, and every time O would cry. So I would pick her up and nurse and rock her to sleep, feeling defeated and worried I was creating a bad habit.

After a week or so, O started crying hard whenever she realized it was nap time. She began to hate the rocking chair in her nursery. She’d start crying whenever I closed the curtains. She knew, at three months old, the routine of being put down for a crib nap. I want to reiterate that I never let her cry it out; I always responded and supported her emotions. But even with very responsive parenting, she had still developed a negative association with her crib. I don’t know whether it was my energy she picked up on or whether she genuinely just hated being alone in her crib, but she cried every time we tried a crib nap. 

She also somehow sensed the difference between a crib nap and a contact nap. The course said “it was OK” to contact nap later in the day to make up for short crib naps (another spoiler – cat naps are biologically normal for newborns, especially when they aren’t in contact with their caregiver), so we continued with babywearing and snuggle naps after the morning crib nap was a bust. 

After a few weeks of this and making no progress, I was wholly consumed with O’s sleep. Nothing in this course was working. I was convinced I was doing something wrong. I started using a sleep tracking app which further exasperated my anxiety. I was obsessed with finding the perfect wake window. I was even toying with hiring a consultant from the company we bought the course. I had lost my confidence as a mom and was desperate to regain it. 

Then one day, I stumbled upon a blog post that changed the course of our sleep journey with O forever. The post was titled “why the EASY routine is anything but easy” and resonated with me deeply. In that moment, I threw in the towel. I couldn’t do this anymore. No more drowsy but awake, no more trying to find the right pacifier, no more morning crib naps, no more EASY routine. None. Of. It. 

From that moment on, I trusted my instincts. I did what felt right, no matter what the “experts,” other moms or my family doctor said. We nursed to sleep; we brought back contact naps in the morning; we eventually ended up bedsharing (more on this in my next post). We did whatever felt right at the time. 

Although I was doing what felt right, I had a lot of unlearning to do. For months I was afraid that I was creating bad habits and would someday regret following my instincts. While I knew I should follow O’s lead, the researcher I am by nature wanted evidence-based non-sleep training methods to help guide me along the way. This led me to start looking for new experts, for information on biological infant sleep, and for blogs, influencers and other moms who had similar values and experiences as I did. 

And I found just that: research that aligned with my parenting values and validation that responding to my baby was biologically normal. I learned that our desire to be close did not mean that we were broken; in fact, it was exactly how we were hardwired to be. I finally had the confidence that nursing my three-month-old to sleep was not only ok, but it was also how nature intended it. 

The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. It sparked a new passion in me, which led me here, writing this blog post (with a sleeping 16-month-old on my lap), eager to share everything I have learned and will continue to learn as I become certified. 

This was only the beginning of O’s sleep journey, and trust me when I say although I had learned to trust my intuition, there were many bumps along the way. Every time we would get her sleep figured out, something would change. And I am going to share it all with you over the next few weeks. 

So grab your coffee if you’ve been up all night with a sleepless baby, or settle into your rocking chair as you soothe your little one at 3 am, and get ready to read what normal infant sleep is really like. Our sleep journey is just that, ours. Some pieces of our story may not resonate with you. And that’s OK-in fact; it’s not supposed to. Sleep is not a one-size-fits-all, and I NEVER want to make anyone feel like they need to do things a certain way. That’s why in addition to sharing our story, I will also be writing as I work through my sleep certification, sharing the latest research and eventually offering 1:1 consults. My goal is to help families get more sleep without sleep training, and how this is achieved will look different for everyone.

But the one thing I want everyone to take away from my experience is to trust their intuition. You know your baby best, and I hope I can empower you to lean into your innate ability to read your little one’s cues and tend to their unique needs in a way that feels right to you.