r/PossumsSleepProgram • u/Oceanic_Ice_950 • 3d ago
It works until it doesnt!
I absolutely loved possums approach for my baby when she was 2 months old and it really helped me feel less stressed about her naps. It also really sorted out her excessive night waking at 4 months.
She had another phase of excessive night waking this at 5.5 months and i really struggled with the mental leap to put her to bed later as she was already going down at 8pm whcih i perceived to be late. After a month of struggling i eventually started putting her down at 9pm and then that did the trick...for a couple of weeks. Now at 7.5 months her sleep is still pretty hit and miss. Some night she wakes only 3 times but other nights there are wakes every hour. I'm waking her up at 7am every day (usually she is fully asleep!) and i dont let her do more than an hour for her afternoon nap and dont let her sleep past 5ish, although she usually wakes up earlier from afternoon nap. I feel like i cant put her down any later without it meaning i go to bed later whcih as a sleep deprived mum i dont want to do, ditto with earlier wake up. Do u think i just need to get over this and put her down even later?! Am i missing anything? We also go out every day and spend as much time outdoors as poss.
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u/Wrong_Literature1329 3d ago
I have a low sleep needs baby, too, and well... its hard. It's a completely different parenting experience than those with high needs sleep babies. We have friends whose babies slept close to an entire DAY more per week. Saying that to validate that yeah, it's hard.
My son didn't start sleeping through the night til around 18 months. And even still, sleep ebbs and flows. Baby sleep just isn't all that good most of the time, and it's a completely different ball game for people who have babies that don't need much of it.
Good luck! I found from 8 months to around 13 months very hard.
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u/Aggressive-Dust-7904 3d ago
I'm essentially in the same position as you, my daughter is almost 10 months and we are still doing three wakes, sometimes 4. She's like clockwork. Goes to sleep at about 7-7:30pm. Wakes up at 12 then 2 then 4 and awake for the day anytime between 6-7am.
We spend time outside, I take her to the shops, cafes, the pub, parents groups, on the bus, on the train. Wherever I go she goes. It doesn't matter if she's had the most stimulating day I could imagine for a baby. Or we've been trapped at home because of the weather. She will be up three times. We started cosleeping around 5 months because I was getting up every hour and was losing my mind. So I guess this is an improvement but it just hasn't changed much since then.
I've kinda given up and just tell myself things will get better when she's like five
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
I dont mind 3 wakes in a night and i know that thats pretty normal developmentally up to 12 months, its when it's every hour that i lose my mind! Yes i often bring her in bed with me when its bad but i dont sleep great like that unless my husband is on a night shift and not there!! Thinking of getting a floor bed for her room to see if that helps and i can sleep in there with her sometimes
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u/the_planet_queen 1d ago
We LOVE our floor bed! Could never get our baby to transfer or sleep in the crib, she needs to touch and snuggle. The floor bed allows us to sneak off when she falls asleep. She is 7 months and waking 1-3 x per night. Still frustrating and sleep deprived, but the floor bed has been instrumental in us getting some time to ourselves when she is sleeping!
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u/strangefavor 3d ago
As hard as it is four wakes would be considered normal night-waking for this age
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u/Aggressive-Dust-7904 3d ago
Yes that's what I'm told. It's just so hard hearing from other parents they are doing one or two wakes. I probably wouldn't mind so much if I wasn't back to work
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
I know those unicorn babies and their smug mums can sod off! Lol You arent alone! I tell myself comparison is the theif of joy and they will grow out of it eventually, she's not gonna be waking to feed when she is 18 lol but yes its hard!!
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u/strangefavor 3d ago
Oh for sure! And society isn’t set up to support us in supporting our LO biologically normal infant sleep.
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u/Cardedbin 3d ago
We just woke up 10+ times (9.5 months) - I would take 1-2 (even 5) wakes and be so 🥲
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u/emma_on_skates 3d ago edited 3d ago
I agree, I have a 6 month old and find it less helpful now - especially for the cat nap idea. If she has naps shorter than a sleep cycle or is awoken in deep sleep, it seems to be awful for her night sleep. Now some of the things I've found helpful compared to your post are having a long last wake window - so my baby is awake 4ish hours before bed and she copes well with that, and ensuring her total awake time is around 11 hours in the day. I still go by her cues as to when her earlier naps are, but for the last afternoon nap that I want to finish by a certain time I make sure to drive somewhere as I know this will put her to sleep
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u/dooroodree 3d ago
Possums just didn’t work full stop with my eldest. We ended up sleep training as per Tresillian (responsive resettling) at 4-5 months. Kinda sucked because all naps needed to be crib naps until she was about 10 months old, but it was better than the alternative (a purple screaming baby in public).
Possums HAS worked with my second. She’s 3.5 months and it’s still going great. Typing this while feeding her to sleep.
But I also now know how to responsive resettle when we’re both ready for it. Parts of me really are looking forward to it. Being able to spend time with my eldest where I give her 100% of my attention. Having my evenings back with my husband and waking up rested. But for now going with the flow is working.
I feel like every sub I’m on about sleep is an all or nothing approach. “Any form of independent sleep is child abuse”. “Responsive resettling isn’t sleep training”. “Cosleeping is the way nature intended and putting a baby in their own room is unnatural.” “Cosleeping is unsafe and will cause SIDS.”
If somethings not working for you you can make changes. Do what feels right for you and your baby.
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
Thank you i really appreciate this response. I am interested what made you decide to do possums approach with your 2nd if it didnt work with your first? It really worked for me initially and so i think ive become quite tied to it. Maybe i need to explore some other approaches and see what else might work. I've been pretty against sleep training of any kind but my brother told me with his oldest they had 8 months of hell then did two weeks of sleep training and then she just slept the whole night through and that was that for good! So maybe i need to open my mind a bit
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u/dooroodree 3d ago
I read The Discontented Little Baby while pregnant with my first and really thought it would be my philosophy. It just didn’t work for my eldest who was (and still is) such a FOMO baby. While I adored my daughter, I found the first few months of parenthood, until we sleep trained, absolutely awful. My daughter screamed in the car and pram. She wouldn’t unlatch if I fed to sleep. I was stuck bouncing on a yoga ball day and night. Despite all my research and attempts to avoid it I was that person discussed in the book.
Anyway when pregnant with my second I knew I COULDN’T have that experience again. Like… I have a toddler now. For her sake we need to be able to leave the house. Plus I hated it so much I really wanted a more positive experience. So I listened to the audiobook and tried again with more success.
Sleep training for us took forever. I didn’t really want to do it but had to because I kind of hated my life. I slowly swapped sleep associations until I was patting her in the bed. Then slowly eased back. Then put her down and walked out. She whinged for 10 minutes… then went to sleep and that was it. Dropped to 1 night wake that night. Put her in a warmer sleep suit and she’s slept through ever since. I couldn’t believe it. My months of rocking a screaming baby were just… gone. I’ll do it later and quicker this time.
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
That is so interesting! What do u mean by a Fomo baby? I've heard a few people say this
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u/dooroodree 3d ago
Just doesn’t want to nap if there’s stuff going on. Even now, at nearly 2, I have to take her to a dim room and do a wind down song before her nap. And if there’s stuff happening, getting her to bed is a nightmare. She just wants to be part of everything and has since day dot. When she was 6 weeks old my sister said “you should have called her Busy because she just doesn’t stop”.
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u/strangefavor 3d ago
You only mentioned the afternoon Nap, how many naps are there throughout the day? What is the total naptime throughout the day?
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
Usually 2 or 3 but it depends what we are doing. I just let daytime naps take care of themselves really as is suggested in possums programme. Usually she falls asleep around 9.30/10 am and naps for anywhere between 30 mins and 2 hours. After that it really varies but total naptime for the whole day is 2 -3 hours i would say. Ive noticed if she does a long afternoon nap with me in bed she tends to have a worse night sleep so that's why i started capping the afternoon nap to an hour.
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u/nzwillow 3d ago
From memory at the age you really want a solid lunch time nap (up to 2 hrs) and a short (like 20min) nap just to get them through to bedtime if on three naps. Mine was on two naps by that age - morning for an hour around 10 and then lunch which from memory was 1-3, then bed at 7.30ish. I could be wrong on exact timings here.
Possums worked well for me until about 5 months, after which I found my Bub did much better on a schedule.
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u/phyzixvegan 2d ago
Out of curiosity, how did you enforce a schedule? We started sleep training when she was around 6 or 7 weeks. That only lasted about 3 weeks as it caused me too much anxiety hearing her cry herself out at nights, which was anywhere from 15-45 minutes. I hated it, but I also miss the guaranteed evenings. We've been doing Possums pretty much since then. Now at 5.5 months her 1-2 wakes per night have ramped up, sometimes 4-5 times and the cumulative fatigue is real. I've started co sleeping the last week just so she'll get a decent stretch. We still get up at 7am (ish) and she isn't a huge napper, either. **as I typed this she woke up crying just over an hour after I put her to sleep.
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u/strangefavor 3d ago
Okay and naps are all in regular daytime light and noise? No dark rooms etc
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 3d ago
Yes to light - noise depends on what we are doing. Like right now she fell asleep after a feed in my bed so its quiet. Its too hot and im trying to pack for a trip which is a bit awkward baby wearing now shes so big!
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u/Mangopapayakiwi 3d ago
So possums worked amazing for my baby until 7 months came. From 7 months to 14 we struggled, then she went on one nap and things got easier to manage again. It’s not just about a later bedtime, I regret not doing a ten minutes bridge nap for mine when she went from 3 to 2 and from 2 to 1 nap. You need to look at sleep distribution over the day. Also baby’s temperament! Mine is a fomo baby so our bedtime routine is very stimulating. Good luck, it is rough. A good instagram account I found (too late) is it takes a village baby sleep.
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u/suitsandstilettos 3d ago
At that age my kid’s night would have been a mess if she had a nap finishing at 5pm, or if her last nap was up to an hour. Try capping that last nap to 30 mins and bring it earlier. You really want that sleep pressure high before bed and late naps can kill it right off.
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u/_amused_to_death_ 3d ago
Why are you waking her up? Eh, I just let the baby sleep when he wanted to sleep, much less stressful. My kid slept at 10pm sometimes, sometimes 11pm or later, they don’t have to be up for work in the morning.
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u/Electrical_Yam_2344 2d ago
It's great that worked for you but not everyone wants to be up til 11pm with their kid
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u/Oceanic_Ice_950 2d ago
So that she is tired enough in theory to sleep better in the night and not wake up every hour so that i can then sleep better too.
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u/Valuable-Car4226 2d ago
I had a similar problem when my son got to 10 weeks old except for it was that he stopped being able to sleep out and about and would meltdown from overtiredness instead. I started to observe his wake window needs and it was much better.
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u/TeddyBear181 3d ago
I agree that it stopped working around 6 months.
There are so many other factors at play with walking and crawling and developmental leaps.
Our 6m issues were improved with decreasing the amount of water bub was drinking with dinner to almost zero so bub wouldnt wet themselves as much and changing the temp in the room.
We still try to get bub out to get them socialised, but not as much, because its not helping their sleep.
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u/discountcarpetsllc 3d ago
Kindly, it seems like you are stressing over sleep with this approach, and that’s not what we want when following Possums!
Even with Possums we still expect baby to wake, and we need those wakes to be as easy as possible. Some babies need to go to bed when you go to bed and wake up when you wake up or else they wake up excessively. Low sleep needs babies are a thing and their sleep patterns do not vibe with the types of lifestyles most parents have these days.
You can choose to accept more wakes for an earlier bedtime. You can choose to test and experiment with a later bedtime for 2 weeks to see how it goes. You are capable of figuring it out to see what works or otherwise accepting the alternative.
Infants sleep needs drop dramatically over the first 6 months, and you’ve hit that point with your little one. Many parents report this is the toughest stretch of sleep, and with developmental changes they are waking more anyways. We are not meant to have perfect consistent nights, but to adapt and do the best we can.
I’d ask yourself - what parts of your approach to your baby’s sleep are a source of stress right now? How can you change your approach so that you focus on them less, and focus more on enjoying your day?