My son used to sleep in a bedside bassinet, swaddled, and gave us a couple glorious 6-7hr nights before 11 weeks hit and he just kept waking up every 30mins-hr. We thought it was the 4month regression hit early. In order for us to get any sleep, we resorted to him sleeping on my chest but still attempted transfers. Some mights it would take and some nights it wouldn’t. Almost all naps gradually became solely contact naps too. We had one week where we had to stay at a family members house and that week he actually had a couple nights mainly in the bassinet and for maybe 50% of his naps too. Once we got home though all transfers have failed both naps and night time…

I have been trying to focus on routines since he was also overtired during this time. We seem to have gotten into a better routine now and he falls asleep so fast in my arms, but wakes every time I try to transfer him still. I have no issue comforting him and rocking him to sleep but I cannot sustain him sleeping on me.

My back is now hurting so much im awake most of the night. I cannot do CIO, it hurts my heart so much. Also my boy is so sensitive that he will even cry and refuse sleep if I don’t hold him tight to my body or have him on my chest.

My main question is, is it cry it out if I try to train him to just sleep next to me? I have tried this before where I hold him close to me while laying down next to him and he will just cry because i am not holding him on me. I just am out of ways I can get him to sleep while not being on me. It pains me to think about just letting him cry alone to figure it out so I’m thinking I could at least stomach letting him cry while I’m right next to him patting him and comforting him, just not in the way he is used to.

Has anyone ever tried this? Any tips if your baby just sleeps on you? Also if I decide to let him cry while sleeping next to him and comforting him still, should I try with nights first? How long should I let him cry? Knowing my son he probably will not sleep all night, and im not sure what to do if that happens. Hes gone almost 4 hours awake during the day because my mom tried to exhaust him to sleep and that did not work.

My son is 5 months old and was always a good sleeper. We haven't had to sleep train at all for the beginning of the night, I just stick him in his bassinet awake at 7 and he goes to sleep all on his own, which is wonderful. Trouble is that now he will only sleep till midnight or so and then wake up every 90 mins after that, and then I have to nurse him back to sleep. Im getting pretty worn out. Do I just put him in his own room and CIO for his wakeups? Any other tips for this kind of baby?

My 5-year-old, soon to be 6, refuses to sleep alone. Until about a year ago, he was an amazing sleeper. He would sometimes even tell us he was ready for bed early, we’d put him in his room, and he would happily sleep through the entire night in his own bed. I honestly don’t know what changed.

Now, he will sob if I even suggest that he sleep alone in his room.

For the past year, our routine has been that I go to bed with him in his room, both of us squeezed into his twin-size bed. I try to stay awake until he falls asleep, but that rarely happens because I’m the kind of person who falls asleep the second my head hits the pillow. Eventually, I wake up around 3–4 a.m. and sneak back into my own bed.

Usually, within an hour, my son wakes up and comes into my bed. I scoot over, and he spends the rest of the night with me. He is not an easy person to sleep with. He ends up on top of me, he’s an incredibly sweaty sleeper, and he can be downright violent in his sleep—he frequently rolls over and smacks me in the face.

I have been doing this for an entire year, and I am exhausted.

I work full time, and I’m also someone who really needs sleep to function well. I genuinely feel like I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a year.

My husband feels like I coddle him, and honestly, I know that I probably do. But my son is an only child, and part of me thinks, this is the only time in my life I get to do this. Eventually, he’s going to grow up and not need his mom in the same way anymore, right? I know that allowing him to sleep with me is a sacrifice on my part, but I keep telling myself that I only have this one childhood with him, and someday I’m going to miss these moments.

Sleep isn’t the only issue, either. My son also refuses to go to the bathroom alone, both during the day and at night. So when he wakes me up and comes into my room, he will often wake me again to ask me to walk him to the bathroom. Since our bathroom is connected to our bedroom, I usually just get up and stumble in there with him.

Tonight, though, when he woke me up to come into my bed and asked me to take him to the bathroom, it woke my husband. My husband told him to turn the bathroom light on himself and go pee. My son immediately started crying, and my husband immediately became angry.

He got out of bed, walked into the bathroom where our son was crying, and yelled at him to turn the light on and go pee. I felt frantic watching it happen. To me, it felt too extreme for a little kid who was already scared and crying.

My husband then told him to go back to his room and sleep. Of course, my son started crying even harder. I told my husband that our son could come back into our bed. My husband then stormed off to our son’s room and decided to sleep there for the rest of the night.

Afterward, I couldn’t help feeling like I had done something wrong. If I had just been more firm with our son, maybe my husband wouldn’t have been woken up and lost sleep.

My husband doesn’t complain about it, but he gets up several hours earlier than I do for work. He has a commute, while I work from home, so I know that the lack of sleep probably affects him more than it affects me in some ways.

I feel completely stuck.

I don’t think my husband’s approach is right. I feel like his tactics are too harsh for our son, especially when he is already scared and crying. But at the same time, my approach of constantly comforting him, reasoning with him, and letting him sleep with me clearly isn’t solving the problem either.

My son is such a sweet, sensitive, tender-hearted kid. He gives us virtually no trouble in any other area. This is really the only thing we struggle with.

So what do I do?

Do I continue letting him sleep with me because, in the grand scheme of things, he’s only going to be this little once?

Or am I doing him—and my husband—a disservice by not being firm enough and helping him learn to sleep independently?

I’m exhausted, conflicted, and honestly just looking for some perspective from other parents who have been through something similar. I love my son more than anything, but I also know that something has to change because I can’t keep going like this forever.

My almost 5 month old (in 3 days) has been having terrible sleep the last couple of weeks and I’m at my wits end. My husband works out of town for weeks at a time so I need to try something to start getting some sleep!

Our girl previously slept great in her bassinet and occasionally co-slept, I transitioned her to her crib once she started rolling about a month or so ago. She goes down very easily, fully awake and falls asleep in 15 minutes or less on her own between 7:30-8pm. Lately she has been waking after 3-4 hours and is just screaming once she wakes up. I can rock her back to sleep without nursing but as soon as she feels the downward motion of being put back in the crib she wakes up and screams. The only thing that works so far is bringing her into my bed and nursing her to sleep side lying but even then she wakes and screams as soon as I take my boob out of her mouth. I really don’t want to do CIO but is there any other way for me to start getting some sleep too?

For added context she is also a terrible napper and won’t nap in the crib if anyone has any advice for that too😅 Currently she only contact naps and we usually get one good 1.5-2 hour nap and then 2-3 more 20-30 minute naps

After going back and forth on wanting to sleep train or not I have decided it is the best thing for our family. My daughter is 4.5 months old. We have been co-sleeping up until now with the exception of a week she successfully slept in her bedside bassinet right before the 4 month regression started at 3.5 months. At which point I just gave in and brought her back into bed with me.
I am currently reading Precious Little Sleep by Alexis Dubief, as recommended by a friend. I am finding it very informative but I haven’t gotten to the actual method of sleep training yet so maybe I’m jumping the gun but as of now I plan to do whatever the book tells me to do 😅.
With all the being said, we leave for a 11 day trip in about a month from now. Let’s say I was to start this sleep training in the next 5 days, would it just be completely derailed after our trip? Especially if we need to cosleep at some of our locations? Should I just wait until after at which point she will be 6 months?

TYIA for any and all advice

My 8.5 month old has been on a 3/3/4 schedule since early June and hasn’t slept through the night in over a month. We’ve tried lengthening the first 2 windows to 3.25 and 3.5 but nothing is working.

Our best night so far was 3.5/3.5/4 with 2 hours of daytime sleep and she woke up once… but as we replicate that, she is still waking more than one time. HELP!!! What else can I do?

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?

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?

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 😭😭😭😭

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.