u/Neat_Use_1313

I follow the Possums approach and generally follow my 4 months and 3 week olds sleep cues rather than sticking rigidly to wake windows. Her wake windows vary day to day, and we get out every day with the dog, either in the carrier or with her watching from her high-chair attachment, so I don’t think lack of sensory input is an issue.
One thing I’m considering is waking her at the same time every morning. I stopped doing this in the first few months because her bedtime was so variable that I felt I was unnecessarily losing sleep. Now bedtime is consistently around 7:30–8:30pm, and she can sometimes sleep until 9:30am, so I’m wondering whether I should start waking her around 8am.
She’s definitely a low-sleep-needs baby, and non-contact naps are very hit and miss. Sometimes she’ll sleep in the car/pram with no problem, other times she screams until she’s red-faced.
My biggest issue is bedtime. She has occasionally accepted the cot since birth and has had a few nights sleeping through in it, but most nights she ends up in our bed. I feed her to sleep in my arms and transfer her, but she often wakes immediately or within 10 minutes. Sometimes this happens even after as little as 2 hours of daytime sleep.
We have a sidecar cot, and if she wakes, she’ll resist going back to sleep even while feeding until I bring her into the bed. I’ve spent hours battling this before, sometimes until 11pm, and I’m not willing to do that anymore just to get an hour or two in the cot.
For those following Possums: what does this suggest about sleep pressure and bedtime? If she’s having so little daytime sleep, how can she still supposedly not have enough sleep pressure at bedtime? And would waking her at a consistent time in the morning help?
Any advice/experiences would be really appreciated!

I just started pick up put down method tonight as baby is showing repeatedly that she does not want to fall asleep at the boob any more and I don’t want to get back in to rocking her to sleep. She did amazingly well, no tears or big crying and she fell asleep after an hour and twenty. She then woke up 10 mins later and was upset, it was an hour after bed time by this point so she was falling asleep instantly in my arms and really crying so I pulled the plug. Where do we go from here, just try again tomorrow?

My baby is 11 weeks old and since she was 2 weeks old it has always taken us an hour (bare minimum) to wind down for bed. I do the same routine every night for bed time, the time varies based on when her last nap was etc. I have been persisting with trying to get her into the cot (and failing recently!) so I think this adds time onto her getting to sleep but on average it’s taking 1.5 hours to get her to sleep every night just to get her down on a flat surface (bed or cot). The time is taken up with a combination of feeding and rocking, she doesn’t persistently cry but some nights she fusses a lot. I thought it would start improving by now, but she’s late to be ready for bed time anyway and recently wind has been waking her up in the night/early in the morning and I’m completely exhausted. Just wondering if I’m missing something in the bedtime routine or if this is normal!

My 9 week old has been successfully taking a Lansinoh bottle from being 3 weeks old, roughly once a week without any issues. My husband gave her a bottle a couple of weeks ago while I was out and said she was a little bit fussy but nothing major and took it in the end so we decided we had better give her a bottle more frequently to avoid refusal - she then took it a couple of days later from my MIL with no issues. Then literally the next day she had her 8 week jabs and she’s been refusing it since (we tried a bottle the day after her jabs and assumed the refusal was due to her being unsettled). I think it’s coincided with her feeding to sleep at the moment, following a period of taking ages to get her to sleep by rocking her etc. She has taken an ounce here and there since her 8 week jabs but she is getting very upset and fussy when she needs the comfort of the breast, but she’s associating feeding time with sleeping now. Am I overthinking it? I’m so worried about leaving her and she becomes so distressed, hungry and tired all at once. Shall I try to break the feeding to sleep cycle? I don’t know what to do but the thought of not being able to leave her for a few hours until she’s 12 months old makes me feel very anxious and it’s been on my mind constantly.

I live in an old terrace house, the gardens used to be one big plot of land shared by the houses (which I believe used to be common in the uk) and over the years the plots of land have been divided between the houses and now we all have our own (in the deeds etc all legal). The gardens have gradually been developed and in the 6 years we’ve lived here all we’ve done is try to establish hedge borders instead of fences, which hasn’t really worked. Our neighbours to the left are very handy and as we moved in they were doing a lot of work on their garden and put some fences up, but only 3ft ones halfway up. This works for them as they have landscaped their plot so it’s much further down so probably feels more private. I want to get fences but I want them to be 6ft and I want additional trellising on the existing 3ft fences so we can actually use our garden and have some privacy. I’m aware there’s a lot of etiquette around fencing but I’m not sure what it is and how best to approach the situation with my neighbours? They are really nice people btw.

My baby has gone from going to sleep at around 4:30am for the first 2 weeks, to then going to sleep at 2am until around 6 weeks and then it was 12am - I was fine and happy things were going in the right direction and she started accepting sleeping the first stretch in her cot again from around 6 weeks. Now she is 9 weeks and I have found she will sleep the whole night in her cot if she goes to sleep at 2am (she had two nights where I tried getting her in bed at 11:30 for a quicker wind down hoping for sleep at 12 but she needs 2 hours of winding down and cluster feeding before she will go down in the cot). We always open the curtains and start the day at 9am regardless of the time she went to sleep. I have tried capping naps, no last nap etc. nothing seems to work. I’m assuming the good sleep at 2am is due to a buildup of sleep pressure but I don’t know how to recreate this at a more reasonable time!

My ebf baby has become progressively harder to get to sleep which I know is normal but I am now at the point where she won’t go for a daytime nap unless she’s in the carrier, otherwise I am rocking her for half an hour plus and then she’ll wake up if I sit down. I’m getting her to sleep when I see sleep cues (yawning, red eyebrows) it’s game over if she is over tired. At night it always takes an hour, sometimes two. This is partly due to her doing a night time cluster feed and taking a few goes to get her to settle in the cot, so I’m less concerned about the nighttime. I just wonder if I’m missing something I could be trying? I want to avoid dark rooms etc through the day especially while she still has a lot of daytime naps as she will only contact nap at the moment. Her wake windows are very stimulating, we go out on walks, have lots of interaction, optimise tummy time and sensory play etc.

Im 5 weeks PP. I gained a lot of weight during pregnancy so naturally assume I’ll have some work to do to shift it. During the third trimester I seemed to swell an awful lot, since giving birth most of the swelling has gone (my shoes fit me normally now) but my hands are still swollen? I can tell because my rings still don’t fit me which is so annoying as they fit right up until the middle of the third trimester. Google says the swelling goes in 1-2 weeks but could there still be some leftover or is this just from weight gain? It just seems odd that it’s dropped off quite a bit everywhere apart from my hands which have stayed the same? I’m also breastfeeding but google says that doesn’t cause further swelling!

My baby is a month old and breastfeeding is going well - she is gaining an average of 14oz a week so transferring is very effective. I have done loads of research online and taken advantage on every bit of hands on support I can get, so I know all the well known tips (nose to nipple, baby to breast, flipple). However, the latch could be better. My left nipple in particular is sore (never cracked or bleeding) but could be improved as I can tell when the latch is right when there is no pain at all which is quite rare. However I do know the difference is when she opens her mouth wide, I often wait for her to cry before offering her because her mouth will be wide enough. No matter how much nose to nipple and being patient I do, she just does not open her mouth wide enough. Any tips would be welcome!

Currently 39+6 and baby has dropped, I’m experiencing a lot of pelvic pressure and have been since about 37 weeks. Yesterday I was experiencing contractions from 2pm-12am. They was no significant pattern, they were varying from 10 minutes in between up to an hour but I’ve had braxton hicks all through my third trimester so I could tell the difference. As soon as I got into bed everything stopped and when I got up this morning I haven’t experienced anything. My stomach was hard throughout the whole day yesterday and it’s gone back to normal now. Baby is moving lots and I have no concerns, I feel well. I’m just wondering if this was a sign of things to come or not? I’m feeling so fed up and frustrated. All of the others signs I’ve been expecting (diarrhoea, vomiting, mucus plug etc) haven’t happened which is why I didn’t feel confident it was the true start of things yesterday, but the contractions (or whatever they were) were definitely there, I was also slightly nauseous. I’ve seen people experiencing latent labour on here for 2 weeks 😭 what are people’s experiences?