Positive no ST story
I wanted to post here a positive story to help those who are struggling with a baby that is chronically waking up numerous times a night since birth.
My 7 month old went through the 4 month regression around 13 weeks and it lasted up until 6 ish months. Every night he was up every 1-2 hours with a lot of false starts. Newborn stage was also rough and barely slept 3 hour stretches.
After coming to Reddit for help, it turned out it was a scheduling issue and he needed less daytime sleep. His total daytime sleep is 1.5hours which according to the ‘average day sleep for your baby’ is low and could lead to overtiredness. This really was holding me back from stretching his wake windows.
However since having bigger wake windows - before bed usually 3.5 hours, he has been waking up once or twice a night. We also set up a side crib which is working well for us as we ended up having to co sleep to get him to sleep slightly longer during the regression.
This all happened without sleep training and I never thought he was capable of sleeping 5-6 hour stretches. If I continued to use the sleep apps and follow the advice of google etc this would have never happened. Overtiredness leading to more night wakes isn’t evidenced and this really might be holding a lot of parents back, leading to trying to rescue day naps and worrying about extending wake windows.
Of course sleep will go up and down for us, teething has disrupted it this last week but I’m so so happy sleep has FINALLY settled. It just goes to show that we shouldn’t be following generic advice and really trial and test what your baby actually needs.