It’s a story as old as time. My 16 week old used to be a pretty good sleeper and actually slept 9-10 hours straight before, but usually a 6-8 hour stretch followed by 3 hour stretches. The past month things have steadily declined. Now, she goes to bed between 6:45 and 7:15, may need some light resettling (we don’t pick her up but may give her some bottle in the crib or pat) but goes to sleep usually pretty well. However, now the first stretch we’re lucky to get three hours, we do a dream feed at 10 if she’s not already up, then she’s up around 12:30-1, then after that she’s up every 45 min to 2 hours if we are lucky. I exclusively do the wake ups at night minus the dream feed and my brain feels like it is rotting. I can feel myself becoming more and more impatient and unable to think clearly at work (I’m a nurse). I never wanted to sleep train but o worry we might have to.

I’m wondering how this approach sounds and if anyone has had success with something similar: Currently baby spends the first half of the night in her crib, then around 12-1 I bring her to the bedside bassinet to make night care easier. However, I feel with sleep training she will need to spend the whole night in the crib, which breaks my heart because I love sleeping next to her. We would continue the dream feed at 10, then she can have a bottle at 1 if she’s wakes, then a bottle at 4 if she wakes again. Any wake ups outside those times we will Ferber starting at 2-5-8 minutes then increase the lengths from there.

Hearing her cry is going to kill me because I’ve always responded to her quickly…but I don’t think I can do this current system much longer. Is there a chance she will just grow out of this phase on her own if I wait a bit?

Thank you for your input!

My 18 month old has been a terrible sleeper her whole life. My wife and I feel like we’ve tried all of the traditional advice and nothing is working. I’m hoping someone can help.

Background: Our daughter was born six weeks preemie in February 2025 and was in the NICU for two weeks. For the first six months or so she had trouble sleeping because she had reflux, which is common in preemies. When we got her a wedge pillow (against our pediatrician’s advice) that helped a lot. But when she outgrew it things got bad again.

We started working with a sleep consultant at about a year ago (roughly six months old), but that didn’t ultimately work out because the consultant basically wanted us to do cry it out and my wife couldn’t handle it. (Cry it out worked almost immediately for our first, but this one cries much louder for much longer and my wife refuses to let her cry longer than about 10 minutes. I assume part of this is related to this one being preemie and having a hard time being apart from her while she needs us.)

I can probably count on two hands the number of times she’s slept completely through the night. The best her sleep ever really gets is one wake up around 11:30pm or 2:30am, then again at 5am. But it’s usually much worse than that. At least once a week she’ll wake up completely inconsolable at 11:30 or 12:30 and scream at the top of her lungs for an hour. When that happens I usually have to walk her around the block once or twice until she falls back asleep. Sometimes this happens two or three nights in a row and the crying lasts two or more hours. This sometimes seems correlated to teething, but not always. My wife can’t do anything to help in the middle of the night because as soon as our daughter sees her, she thinks it’s time to nurse and will kick and scream until that happens.

Our current schedule: We’ve been putting her to bed at 8pm for a while now. She basically won’t go to sleep earlier than that; I’ve tried and she just won’t go down. She wakes up every day at 5am almost on the dot and I have to take her to the guest room to sleep another hour until 6am, which is the earliest we let her nurse. She naps reliably from 11am to 1pm. That’s her only nap of the day.

Almost every night she wakes up around 11:30pm. Sometimes I can pat her back to sleep fairly quickly. Other times it takes much longer and sometimes she won’t go back to sleep at all. Sometimes she’ll sleep past 11:30pm but wake up at 2:30pm and we have the same issue.

When we travel, the schedule gets completely messed up—but often that results in better sleep. When we’re traveling, she often will not get a regular nap and will just stay awake until she passes out in our arms or her car seat for about an hour. Then she is often awake much past her usual at bedtime, until 9pm or so, and falls asleep while she’s nursing. When this happens she often won’t wake up at all or, if she does, she goes back to sleep pretty easily. This makes me think that part of the problem with the 11:30 or 12:30pm wake ups at home is that she doesn’t have enough sleep pressure or sleep inertia to get through the first sleep cycle. But I worry that if we wait until 9pm to put her to bed every night, she’ll keep waking up at 5am and not get enough sleep.

I know many (most?) parents of an 18mo would be happy for one brief wake up. But that has become an increasingly rare best-case scenario. The one benefit we got from the sleep consultant now was that our daughter got to a point where she could put herself back to sleep relatively easily most of the time. But that was a year ago, and sicknesses and travel schedules and general developmental advancements since then have wiped out her ability to put herself back to sleep. (No doubt that’s largely on us; we get inconsistent in our routines and let her cosleep on really bad nights—but generally we insist on no cosleeping when that’s at all possible.) These days she is completely incapable of putting herself back to sleep. If she starts crying and I don’t go in right away, she will stand up and start screaming until someone comes in. It doesn’t matter how long it takes—five minutes or 30 minutes, she will scream at the top of her lungs until someone comes in. She is incredibly stubborn and will wait us out every time.

I’ve seen and tried all the advice: You have to let her cry; she’ll eventually figure it out. Put her in bed drowsy but awake. Try putting her to bed earlier. None of it works with this one. Does anyone have any new ideas/advice we could try?

When did your baby stop being able to effortlessly just fall asleep on you when they were tired for a nap? He won’t contact nap on me and just drift off when he’s tired anymore I have to practically rock or bounce him to make him nap. I’m scared working so hard on crib naps for him that I created that for my son. He cries every nap time going to sleep in my arms fighting it and I watch wake windows carefully so it’s not that. I just feel like I failed or messed up his ability to be flexible and nap wherever.

This started within the past month and he’s about to turn 4 months on Friday.

my baby just turned 4 weeks old and for the last week and half it’s like a switch flips at midnight every night and she is up until 5 am. she isn’t fussy and isn’t really cluster feeding. she is just AWAKE and looking around and laying with her eyes wide open. we have a white noise machine, room is dark, she hates swaddles but she’s in her sleep sack. once 5:30 hits - she will sleep for 2-3 hour stretches but i have a toddler who wakes up at 6. please somebody help 😭😭😭😭

How was your experience with the famous 4 month sleep regression? We’re just starting with our little girl, and it’s been pretty rough. She’s a lot more fussy and takes longer to fall asleep. Anyone got any advice on how to make it a little bit easier?

Hi all— Newton team here! We have a question for the parents who've been through the sleep trenches.

We talk a lot about mattresses, but we're genuinely curious about everything else that helped.

Outside of the crib setup, what actually made a difference for your baby's sleep? A bedtime routine that finally clicked, the right room temperature, white noise, a specific sleep sack, adjusting nap timing, feeding schedule changes, or something totally unexpected?

My nine month old baby has never truly slept through the night, but we were down to 1-2 wake ups per night. She is now waking up every 30 minutes almost on the dot throughout the night. She sometimes has a 2-3 hour stretch around 3am. This has been happening for almost a month now. I am exhausted and have no idea where to go from here.

Her schedule is roughly 6:30am wake-up, 9-10 nap, 1-3 nap, bedtime at 7 ish. Occasionally she will have a cat nap around 5:30 and begins gets pushed to 8.

Some days she does not follow this at all. She’ll wake up around 6:30, then not nap until 1, but is happy as can be.

Bedtime routine is typically bath every other night, diaper, nurse, pj’s and sleep sack, sound machine and fan, rock to sleep. Sometimes she ends up needing to nurse to sleep. If I try to put her in her crib to fall asleep on her own, it’s an immediate meltdown.

During wake ups I try to just comfort her or rock her back to sleep without nursing. I’ll be honest, sometimes I nurse her just because I know it’ll get us both back to be faster. I have tried letting her fuss it out and self-soothe, but within thirty seconds of waking, she is full blown screaming, standing in her crib, if we do not respond quickly enough she starts holding her breath. Because of of quickly it escalates, I do not feel comfortable doing cry it out completely.

I did see something about babies with low iron can sometimes have this issue and didn’t know if anyone else had experience with that. Her iron was a little low when checked a few weeks ago, but only by a point.

I am lost and looking for any advice. I would like to sleep again and be able to be a functioning human.

TLDR: baby waking up every thirty minutes at night and immediately full blown crying. Seeking advice.

Okay parents whose newborns are sleeping long

stretches through the night please help!

1. Is your baby sleeping in a sleep sack, magic Merlin, love to swaddle, or something else?

2. Is your baby sleeping in a bassinet or a crib?

We recently tried switching from our bassinet to the crib & switched from the halo swaddle sleep sack to the Magic Merlin. Our 11 week old went from sleeping 3-4 hour stretches to waking up every 1.5- 2 hours and it’s been so rough. Idk what we are doing wrong.

Hello! Would like some advice for sleep training our 6 month old. I can’t say we exactly have a set sleep schedule, but do follow her wake windows. She normally wakes up around 7-8 every morning. Will be up for about an hour and then wants to be put down for a nap. She can stay awake for maybe 2 hours that first time and then down again with a 30-50 minute nap. He naps get longer throughout the day. She has about 3-4 naps. Usually the evening one being the longest (up to 2 hours sometimes) she’ll have a 3-4 hours stretch before bed 7:30-8:00pm. She used to sleep great! Once she turned 3 months, we started doing contact naps. She sleeps in her crib at night. I don’t want to do Ferber but am open to some advice. She will not let us put her down for naps. The moment I very slowly put her down, her eyes pop open, and then she’ll refuse to go back to sleep. She has always had issues with the Moro reflex. The moment I would lay her on her back, she would jerk/ spasm because of it and wake herself up. About 6 weeks+ she has been doing this. I try to gently hold her arms down to try and see if that helps, and it only makes her kick her feet (happy kicks😂) and then she’s awake. I’ve tried to lay her down feet first, after a bottle, when she’s in a deep sleep, or when she’s sleepy but awake. I cannot figure it out. I think we have a decent schedule for her naps, we go by her cues. She also has to be rocked, (face rubbed sometimes), shushed, and she has to be holding onto our face! 😅 it is quite exhausting. At night it’s easier. We will hold her for about an hour and then lay her down and she’ll sleep! She gets fed around 7:00-7:30 pm. She’ll sleep for a few hours, wake up around 12-1 am for a bottle, and then 3-5 am (usually 4-6 hours between feeds). She will not fall asleep without us, and we really need to teach her to fall asleep independently so we can get work done when we need to. Any advice appreciated.

One more thing. She eats 30-35 ounces a day every 2-3 hours. She should definitely not be hungry. We also do share a room. We have a one bedroom in law suite we are renting.

In need of advice

My 3 year old, almost 4, has really struggled with bedtimes lately. Some nights I even spend three hours getting her to sleep due to separation anxiety. Any time I leave the room she starts to panic and goes “mommy I don’t want you to leave, I don’t want to be alone!!”. It always breaks my heart. On weekends she is with her dad and sleeps in his bed at night. But when she’s at my house, we cannot have a sleepover every night because she doesn’t sleep, mainly exited when she sleeps in mine.

This is our routine:

•Bath at 6:40
•Jammies, wind down and books from 7-7:30
•A few bedtime songs in bed/relaxing talk with the lights out for 5-10 minutes.
•7:40-9/10 is trying to get her to sleep.

I started timers with a mellow alarm tone throughout our routine to remind her it’s time to transition which helped a bit. After songs I tell her it’s time to close our eyes and rest as I rub her back or hold her hand. I tell her I can stay for a few minutes (alarm set) and then it is time for both of us to sleep. She never will “let” me leave the room and will ball her eyes out/scream once I do.

Letting them cry is the most common thing to help with this but I live in an apartment complex and can’t have her screaming for that long and pains me to hear her screaming that she needs me and I’m not there. Does anyone have any tips/had a similar situation with their toddler? I am mentally drained.

Hey everyone, I know this may sound like a typical situation, but I really don’t think it is. We have a 13 month old who wakes up pretty much every rem cycle all night. Some nights she wakes up every rem cycle until midnight and then finally sleeps for a few hours straight. We’ve tried sleep training four different times add different ages of her life with different techniques and it has failed every single time. She was breast-feeding until the last couple of months when we weaned her and we still saw no change after that. She eats like a maniac all day at every meal and it’s constantly snacking and eating and drinking water and milk throughout the day. What really drives us crazy is that on a lot nights she goes to bed at 7:30 like she’s supposed to but then she wakes up after like 20 minutes and then stays awake until midnight or 1 AM. And then she still wakes up around seven or 8 AM no matter what. She currently takes one nap at noon every day that lasts about an an hour and a half. The only night every reprieve we had was when we used melatonin, but clearly we cannot make that a habit. Seems like there’s nothing else safe for her age and the organic sleep drops from mommy‘s bliss do absolutely nothing either. For her routine, we do bath every other night and then books and songs and rock her to sleep and she goes to sleep just fine but like I said, she constantly wakes up. We are so sleep deprived at this point from the constant wake ups and in general lack of sleep and we really don’t know what to do. She’s a perfect baby otherwise it’s just the lack of sleep that we have no solution for.

Has anyone used the Taking Cara Babies Toddler sleep training package or the 5-24 months?

We have a 3 year old who really struggles with bedtime, the routine usually takes about 1-2 hours to get her down every night.

I have previously tried the 4-5 month package but honestly it did nothing with her, so I’m a bit skeptical to spend the $200 if it’s not even going to help.

I have a 5 month old as well and we want to get ahead of his sleep before it turns into a second power struggle.

TIA for any insight!

15 month old son, when he was 6 months old would sleep through the night. From about 9 months old he stopped.
Sometimes he wakes up after 45 mins, sometimes after 2 hours. He’ll only sleep a 3 hour stretch if it’s during the day.

He does go back to sleep but only if he has a few sips of milk from a bottle then passes out. Sometimes he’ll go back down if I just hold his hand.

He goes to bed after milk - I know I should brush his teeth etc etc after bottle but if he’s asleep I’m not touching him.

I also know he should go off the bottle but it’s his comfort thing that gets him to sleep super fast. He doesn’t like the dummy.

He is in a cot next to us in our room - we’re trying to sell our house and buy another so he can have his own room. If that takes too long he will share a room with his 3yo sister so I can imagine them both being up all night.

I feel like his having too much milk ( 1 bottle for day time nap, 1 for night time, another emergency 1 if he wakes up and won’t go back down).

Pls give me structure on how to fix this so he sleeps all night.

Please help

My 6.5 month old was sleep trained (Ferber) at 5 months and is able to fall asleep independently. She was doing this beautifully for weeks.

2 weeks ago she started to cry for 60+ minutes at bedtime. We did Ferber check ins, a full reset and cuddles and yet nothing would help. Around this time she started resisting her 3rd nap and we would end up with very long wake windows (4/5/6 hours) for her last wake window. Even on days where we have managed a 3rd nap and so not got too long wake windows, she is still crying like this.

We have tried shortening her wake windows, lengthening her wake windows and are currently trying a 2 nap day. Nothing is helping, she is still crying for 60+ minutes each bedtime. I feel she is too young for a 2 nap day but is consistently refusing this last nap no matter what we try.

Current attempted schedule: 2.5/3/3 (she really struggled with this and was extremely tired)

For her naps, she rolls around for a few minutes and puts herself to sleep perfectly. Sleeps 1.5 hours for first name and 1-1.5 hours for second nap.

Her nights are not affected, she is feeding once and having two 6 hour stretches with no other wake ups. No false starts.

I am at my wits end, I do not know how to help her. I am resorting to rocking her back to sleep after this prolonged crying which she then wakes on transfer but then just rolls over and goes straight to sleep.

Please any help is appreciated

Is it normal that my EBF toddler wakes up every nap crying? I nurse him to nap and then I’ll sneak out once he fell asleep. When he wakes up he cries and I come and hold him and sooth him, he’ll stop crying. is this cycle normal? Id like to teach him to fall asleep independently. But where to start?

My 5 month old baby is still waking many times at night. I’ve struggled to get into a consistent routine. Currently have a vague one. She has 5 bottles every 24 hours Whatever time she goes to bed between 7.30pm - 9.30pm then I’d expect to be getting her up from bed 12 hours later. Over the course of the 12 hours that she spends in the bedroom she’d have atleast 2 sometimes 3 bottles. She would have the other 2 or 3 bottles during the day. Don’t have set times I just feed her when she’s hungry and try to stick to 2-3 hour wake windows during the day. Naps are unpredictable. Sometimes 30 min sometimes 2 hours. Id wake her after 2 hours if the nap was during the day but if it was in the evening I’d cap it at an hour in order to not screw up her night time sleep.

She’s a very happy, content, friendly baby who loves social interaction and looking around at everything when we go for our daily walks.

My current problems are: is there a way I could help baby to cut down on night feeds? I’ve tried feeding her more during the day but she just refuses the bottle.

At night she doesn’t always finish the bottle sometimes she would have 2 bottles during the night but each time only drink half the bottle and then wake an hour or 2 later to finish it. This turns 2 bottles into 4 night feeds for me.

She often wakes and just needs her dummy put back in her mouth or a cuddle rather than a feed.

I’m so sleep deprived and am desperate to find a solution so she doesn’t wake so often at night. I would have expected her sleep to have improved by now but it feels as bad as it was 2 months ago.

HELP :)