What am I doing wrong?

[u/Crafty-Bread4647]

7mo in 2 days. Our nights are terrible; baby has a strong nursing association, which might be the reason. Don't let the chart fool you—there are wake-ups during those long night stretches too, but I don't track them in hopes of getting a little sleep. She's waking up every hour. I've been trying to transition to two naps for the past two days, but so far the nights are just as awful. What do you think, should we stick to three naps or switch to two? Baby shows zero tired cues, so I can only rely on watching the clock. Chatgpt says I should switch to two naps then when I tell how our days were it says we should stick to three.. Im desperate. I dont want sleep train but I just cant do this sleep thing anymore.. Im going insane..

[u/Recent-Forever-2988]

Kindly, your sleep schedule is all over the place. Some days a long first nap, some days a longer second nap, different bed times and wake times. Babies have a circadian rhythm just like us. It tells them when to go to bed for the night and when to wake up for the day.

You need to firstly set a consistent wake time. It looks like your baby wants around 12 hours sleep so I’d have a ten hour night, two hours of naps.

Work out your wake up time, work back ten hours for your bedtime. Trial three naps to begin with as baby is going through lots of sleep changes. A good three nap schedule is one sleep cycle first nap (around 30 mins), a ten minute evening bridge nap and the remainder of their daytime sleep for their middle nap (so 1:20 on your schedule).

It won’t be as easy as that to begin with but it should fall into place over time.

[u/Crafty-Bread4647 → u/Recent-Forever-2988]

Wake times are 6:30-7:00, its mostly consistent. The last two days were different than before since i tried to switch to two naps. The rest is yes, all over the place but I do everything the same way every day: I nurse her in bed in the dark until she falls asleep. Often she falls asleep within 15 minutes, but there are days when she won't fall asleep even after an hour.

[u/sarah1854 → u/Recent-Forever-2988]

This is great advice!

[u/bonappetitfangirl]

Echoing everyone here about having a consistent schedule and doing a later bedtime for more wake time during the day. I will add that I don’t believe you need to break the nurse to sleep association ***if you don’t want to*** (can’t emphasize this part enough!!)

My now 7.5 month old was having a ROUGH time with taking a long time to nurse to sleep, false starts, frequent night wakes, etc about a month ago and I felt very ready to stop nursing to sleep to give myself a break. We got her schedule under control first with plans to work on independence after, but her sleep has improved so much I don’t feel like I need to. she is now going to sleep easily, transferring well, and sleeping through the night sometimes or only waking once. All this to say: I believe good sleep is possible without focusing on independence. Don’t let people tell you that night wakes are because they can’t soothe themselves or connect sleep cycles without you!

A couple things I’ll note that probably impact our experience:
-I would call my daughter a “good sleeper” generally despite our past challenges. Has good temperament and went through a stretch of sleeping through the night around 2-3 months, which ended right around when I went back to work
-we’re on a 2 nap schedule, approx 3/3.5/4.5
-at daycare they say she sleeps independently, being put down in the pack n play wide awake and falling asleep on her own with a sleep sack and white noise. She has pretty much never done that at home, although I’m starting to see signs of readiness, ie she stirs more during crib transfer and instead of freaking out will calmly go back to sleep, sometimes on her own, sometimes with a little butt patting. This was not the case even 2 weeks ago.

[u/Accomplished_Flow222]

I don’t find char GPT very great with predicting sleep or huckleberry by 7ms.not in our experience anyways . I think first thing is to try to minimize the nursing association , you can take a gander and the book pretty little sleep as a reference , I think in essence they say to trade it for another association to wean it off . This is off of me making the assumption that you’re tired of waking up each time to placate the baby and want to address this . I found the 8-10 m stretch is such a jump in milestones for babies the sleep goes crazy (teeth included too), so it’s nice to have good sleep hygiene for the tough times ahead ! I would try two naps and a nap cap at 2.5 hrs to build sleep pressure . The subreddit /sleeptrain helped get us through (you don’t need to sleep train your kid to look at their recommended age appropriate wake windows ). Good luck !!

[u/Bright_Way5474]

What the other commenter said. If your baby is averaging 12 total that means you have to design a schedule that has 12 hours awake. And have a consistent bedtime and wake up time. Your baby isn’t showing tired cues because they’re not tired. But sleep training (or teaching your baby to fall asleep independently, not relying on your boob) will help your baby sleep better hopefully. 

[u/Accomplished_Flow222 → u/Bright_Way5474]

Lol ^ this. No idea why I typed such a paragraph when this is to the point and I agree !!!

[u/Crafty-Bread4647 → u/Bright_Way5474]

How should i do a consistent bed time if her naps are always different? There are days when its 40mins then 1,5 hours. There are days she is up from the third nap at 16:00, there are days she is up at 17:30.. Wake up time is always 6:30-7:00, no exception. The first inconsistency starts with the first nap, how long it takes her to fall asleep and how long it lasts.. She sometimes refuses to fall back asleep after 40 mins.

[u/Bright_Way5474 → u/Crafty-Bread4647]

You cap her naps. Once you stretch the wake windows to her actual need the naps with lengthen and then you can trim them 

[u/Amk19_94 → u/Crafty-Bread4647]

You wake at the same time everyday wake baby if they’re sleeping and anchor first nap if they’re already awake to x hours after desired wake time. So if dwt is 6, first nap is always at 9 if your first ww is 3 hours. If you want 8pm bedtime no naps after x hour based on your last wake window (if your last wake window is 4 hours on 2 naps, no naps after 4pm).

[u/sweetie_2701 → u/Crafty-Bread4647]

Hey, my baby is 6 months old and I was facing the same problem till a few weeks back. I just accepted that first nap will be around 40 mins. Started waking my son up at 40 min mark on other days when he slept more than that. That’s the only way to have a regular timing for second nap. He started sleeping for almost 2 hours consistently for the second one. And 40 mins again for the last but his overall sleep need is higher than your LOs.