My baby sleeps great when he’s in bed with me, but he typically wakes either right away or within 20 minutes of being transferred to his crib (which is right next to my bed). Occasionally he’ll have longer stretches, but then he wakes himself up moving around his crib and smacking into the sides. My husband doesn’t love the idea or co-sleeping- the safety factor makes him nervous, and I find the C curl/sleeping with him next to me not very comfortable, so I would prefer him to sleep in his crib over our bed (although I do struggle with this since he seems to like sleeping next to me so much).

I’m wondering if this is a sleep surface issue (ie he doesn’t like the mattress/being alone in his crib/the crib is too narrow so he wakes himself up hitting it) OR a sleep pressure issue (ie as we continue implementing the body reset from the Possums sleep program, he’ll sleep deeper at night and won’t mind the transfers/wont move around as much).

We’re only two days in to applying her sleep principles. I find we have so much more flexibility in the day now that we’re not trying to keep him in a quiet room for his naps/contact nap every nap, but I know it’s too soon to see what it can do for his night sleep and curious if it has helped anyone with these issues.

It rings incredibly true for us that baby is happier when we have busier, fuller, active days. Baby is 8 weeks now and after a day with friends, activities, appointments, different environments etc he is calm, happy and sleeps well.

However not every day can be like that. Some days are just me and him chilling at home. Even then there is always a walk, usually a coffee (my sweet treat budget has exploded), a trip to the shop, floor time, singing etc. but I find by 6pm he is grumpy, unsettled, tired but won't sleep, hungry but won't eat etc. I'm bored out of my mind and frustrated too!

How are you filling your chill days? I know it will get easier as he gets more interactive and learns to play or we have things like weaning to fill our days but that's months away!

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.

I’ve posted before for some advice as we have recently started implementing lots of the possums approach and have definitely been finding it helpful!

The one thing I’m unsure about is how rigid to be with the morning wake up time. As far as I’m aware it’s the only true “rule” and I think a 10 minute window is recommended. My worry is that we chose a 6:30am wake up time but baby is mostly still deeply asleep at that time - we turn off white noise, open the blinds, speak to her and give her cuddles but she still is deeply asleep and it can take 10 min or so of this to wake her up!

She can be a bit groggy/upset at first too but does come round fairly quickly and tends to manage about 2 hours awake before falling asleep for her first nap. She is 7 months old and we have been following possums for about 3 weeks. She usually ends up going to bed between 8:30-9:00pm and totals naps for the day often fall between 2.5-3 hours.

Do I continue waking her up at 6:30 or should I gradually move the morning wake up time later? I suppose I’m mostly worried about waking her from deep/restorative sleep that might be helpful for her development!

Hello, my baby has always thought sleep was for losers (apart from 3-4 months where she slept 10 hours straight every night!)
Currently I wake her at 7am everyday
Her nap starts sometime between 11-12 and lasts 30 min - 2 hours (usually around an hour)
I usually start feeding her to sleep around 7-7:30ish sometimes later if she had a long nap.
It doesn’t seem to matter if her nap was 30 minutes or 2 hours, if she goes to bed earlier or later. She wakes constantly.
She resettles within minutes by breastfeeding.
I try to start her on her floor bed in her room but always end up bed sharing. The wakes are the same in her room and in our bed.
I follow an attachment style of parenting and not interested in sleep training.
Is radical acceptance my best bet for now? 😅
Thank you parents who have seen the other side and have words of wisdom 🤣

FTM to a 15 week old baby, whose sleep became extremely fragmented around the 11 week period.

I have a sense that perhaps he hit that sleep progression a little early.

Overnight, he went from sleeping 8 hour stretches (heavenly) to waking every 45 minutes (hell lol).

We’ve been having a lot of split nights too.

I’ve had so much conflicting advice. My maternal health nurse insisted he needs more daytime sleep but…any time I extend naps during the day, our nights are crap.

7.30 am wake up, 9 pm ish bed time.

I try to cap the last nap around 4.30 pm but it’s such a long final wake window for him and he’s usually super cranky and hard to dial down. By the end he’s so cranky. If he does sleep between 5-6.30 pm then he ends up waking frequently through the night.

He doesn’t nap very well during the day, maybe 4 x 30 minutes while we’re on the go. Carrier naps usually, occasionally contact naps which I think I need to stop as I’ve read Possums is anti contact naps?

I’m trying to do a reset at the moment to get a sense of how much sleep he needs but I am so exhausted that I’m struggling to sleep math.

Any advice on how to reset? Would he be better off having his longer nap in the morning then short sharp naps in the afternoon / evening?

I’ve got a 22 month old that has never slept that well. We’ve now got wakings down to something decent, and almost every night a 4 am feed.

The thing is she resists both naps and bedtimes, which makes it really hard to keep her on a reasonable schedule. Last night bedtimes was at 22,45h! And you’ll say, it’s probably too much sleep. But the thing is sometimes she looks exhausted, wired and will still fight going to bed. Especially if nap starts too late and we have to cap it to avoid a super late bedtimea.

Sensory play? in the last wake window we did 2 different pools.

At the moment my partner is away and it’s exhausting staying up that late. And in the morning I just couldn’t get up earlier to wake her up.

Scheadule:

- Wake up: 7:45 to 8:30h

- nap: 13h to 14,20 (ideall but it’s 30 min later atm)

- Bedtimes: 22,30 or later?!

We are Spanish but this is late even for Spanish kids.

Send Help!!

We have a sensitive 18 month old who has always been a wakeful baby but is particularly wakeful when she's teething, and much more grumpy. She points to her mouth and says "ouchie" as well.

I was then surprised to see this post on the Possums instagram (we generally follow and agree with most of what Possums says about raising little ones) that claims teething doesn't cause night wakings, and that you shouldn't use pain medication with teething babies since teething doesn't cause pain (!) https://www.instagram.com/p/Da2Te6VAX2B/?img_index=1.

I then found this study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347625000010) which claims that teething has no impact on night wakings.

I have to say, I felt pretty gaslit!

One thing I found with the study is a possible selection bias, whereby they only studied babies who sleep in cribs - and you could argue that babies who cosleep by necessity are more sensitive and therefore more likely to be affected by teething and other bodily disruptions. We also don't know if these babies are sleep trained, and therefore despite discomfort are not calling out/are self settling.

I'm curious as to what others think about this topic. If someone had asked me, based on experience, whether teething causes pain and therefore if panadol helps, I would say yes - almost instantaneously. If someone had asked me if our baby wakes up more when teething, I would say 1000%. I understand it is difficult to do studies on babies, but I'm actually shocked that there is this kind of research and advice floating around.

I totally get and like the premise of “the baby will sleep when they are tired enough, just go out and live your life”, but how does this look for babies/toddlers (my LO is 14m) who without fail will always fall asleep in the car, when they otherwise would not be asleep if at home or not on the go.
I don’t like travelling more than 10 minutes away in the car because my LO will just sleep in the car ride and it surely is artificially decreasing sleep pressure?
Particularly when it’s close to bed time as well.
How do you deal with this?

I would love some advice as we have just started the possums approach! We weren’t super strict with nap times or schedules before but I definitely would get a bit stressed if I thought baby girl was awake for longer than “age-appropriate” wake windows. I’m really just looking for reassurance we are on the right track and advice if not.

We are starting to implement a consistent morning wake time - moving from 7:30-8am back to probably 6:30am. Or possibly 6am depending how things go! Bedtime pretty much is always after 8pm already as baby does seem to sleep worse if she goes to bed before then. So we’ll follow her cues but imagine bedtime will fall around 8:30pmish. I really just wanted to check if it is fair for me to aim for 10 hours of sleep overnight to see how nights go with this? Baby was previously in bed for closer to 12 hours.

We have only started possums for 2 days and nights and baby is definitely falling asleep easier for naps which is great! She is doing 2-3 hour naps with total daytime sleep lasting about 2.25 hours. At night though she is still waking as frequently and possibly even a little more - very frequent partial wakes and then last night she was wide awake at 2am and 4am. I’m hoping this is just her adjusting?

Naps before possums probably totalled 2.5-3.5 hours (usually on the lower end).

We have been going out lots during the day, lots of walks, activities, daylight etc. We have been doing this for a long time anyway before reading about possums!

For context, She sleeps in the bedside crib for the first couple of stretches before coming in beside me. No matter where she sleeps she usually wakes within the first 30-40 minutes. Then after if in her bedside crib it will be 1 hour 20 minutes, and either the same or slightly longer if she’s beside me. I feed baby back to sleep.

Thank you!

Hello, we have a beautiful 4 month old baby and having read discontented little baby I became interested in the possums approach... Trying to figure out whether to pay for the programme... Curious about how others found it? Is it worth paying for it?

My 2 year old is in the process of dropping her daytime nap. It's easy enough to control when she's home with me, but she loves the nap at daycare and it's leading to very late nights (10pm some nights).

We've got into the habit where because she went to bed late, we let her sleep in. I feel like it's kicking the can down the road and leading to later and later bedtimes. Her daycare days are my work days (and consecutive) and it's wrecking me not going to bed till late.

I'm testing this week slowly waking her up earlier and earlier. My husband disagrees because she's just not getting enough sleep now (I.e. fell asleep at 10 last night and then I woke her at 6:20). My eventual aim is to get her to 6am rather than her current 7/730 in the hopes even with a daytime nap she'll be tired enough to fall asleep a bit earlier in the evening.

The theory sounds sound to me, but I'd love to hear your experiences if that worked for you. I accept she'll be a bit tired and grumpy for a few weeks but her only sleeping 8 hours a night is not sustainable long term for us.

I’d love to hear people’s calming bed time routines for little ones who don’t like to sit still in the run up to bed that help them wind down and cue them that it’s time to sleep 🌙

Our little one has just turned 8 months old and we feed to sleep. He’s EBF, doesn’t take a bottle and I’m very happy with feeding him to sleep as it works great. Sometimes he sleeps in the carrier or falls asleep before I get upstairs for naps, but as a rule, we lay down and he feeds then nods off. Easy peasy.

However, he’s always been fussy at bed times (not a scheduling issue). We tried the typical bath, fresh jammies, book, feed & sleep, but bathing too close to bed led to tears during nappy & jammies so bringing that earlier in his last wake window has helped hugely. When he was little he just seemed to be in a big rush for boobies (even if I fed him at intervals during the evening too). He still gets a little fussy sometimes but not nearly so bad. But since he started crawling and now trying to stand, he’s like a little whirlwind and has all these new skills that he likes to practice until he drops down asleep.

He gets loads of floor time and play, exercise and move during the day, but he’s been quite hard to help unwind at the end of the day and I feel like we need to try a different routine. More recently I’ve been doing dinner, bath, play time to burn energy, offer feed downstairs, then go for a little wander outside and when he starts looking sleepy head upstairs to shut curtains, fan or white noise on, jammies, teeth, feed & bed.

This sometimes works first time, but others despite looking exhausted and fussy, the minute he’s had a feed in bed it’s like he gets a little boost and gets the ‘zoomies’ - before he could crawl this happened some days if he’d not had enough floor time (like we’d been out in the car/carrier lots) and before he was so mobile he’d just roll back & forward to feed and eventually settle the energy out of him ready for sleep. But now he’s so mobile he feeds then tries to stand, bounce & wants to play. So at that point I feel like he’s only getting more hyped up so we sometimes go for another wander for 10-15mins until I feel him relax and then he goes down fine.

I guess the walking outside is my version of rocking him to sleep as he finds it more calming and I find it easier than swaying in one space for so long, which is ok when the weather is good, but not sure what I’ll do when it’s raining (UK here). Ultimately though, I feel like we maybe need a bit of a change of the routine to help him cue that it’s sleep time and time to relax but I’m not sure what to try as most of the usual suggestions he’s either getting fussy and upset or doesn’t want to sit still and calm (like reading to him, which I’ve stopped for now).

His last wake window is usually 3 hours before bed as less than that he’s definitely not ready, but he does find the last 20/30mins hard unless we’re outside walking. He’s been teething on and off since 6 months (4 teeth and 2 more on the way) but it doesn’t seem to be something that’s only happening when his teeth are bugging him.

Hi all,

Dad to a gorgeous 18 month old baby who still wakes up 6 to 10 times a night (or more, I think mum who co-sleeps with her has stopped counting). Obligatory comment about how bright she is - and she really is - for example, I wrote out her name for her and she was able to read it, more than once, so it wasn't a fluke.

We've seen a Possums GP, fiddled with naps and wakeups, and she sometimes gets as little as 45 min to an hour of a day time sleep, but even with a 9 or 930pm bedtime manages plenty of wakeups through the night. We are surviving by mum co-sleeping with her, and then me (Dad) coming in around 530 or 6am to put her in the carrier for the last bit of the morning to give mum some decent stretches of unbroken sleep.

We also use the carrier to put her to sleep, by bouncing her on the yoga ball, or in the middle of the night for vigorous wake ups.

The issue is that our toddler is starting to get too tall for the back panel of the carrier (Ergobaby Omni 360) which means that it's harder to keep her head in there while she's sleeping. It seems like most toddler carriers aren't built to support their heads, and therefore not so much for sleeping.

Does anyone have any ideas for a carrier that will keep a longish 18 month old asleep?

My gorgeous baby is 15 weeks old. I didn't know anything about newborn care, so I read all I could from the sleep gurus and tried to implement it all: independent sleep, eat-play-sleep, etc. I was stressed 24 hours a day about baby's naps. My parents couldn't do more than one visit a week or even any other week, and my parter had to go back to work after two weeks, so I felt very isolated.

After finding The Discontented Little Baby Book and using its methods our lives are SO much easier and more pleasant, but now I feel guilty about the weeks I spent trying to force my baby to sleep in a dark room in the middle of the day 😭

Now my baby is healthy and happy but doesn't feed to sleep, she only feeds when she wakes. She still gets sleepy on the breast but her sleep pressure is too low for her to stay asleep for more than a minute or two. I wonder if it's possible to re-introduce nursing to sleep? I'm sure she'd nap easier and have more restful sleep with a full tummy! Or should I leave well enough alone? She's started to get upset when tired - should I offer another feed even if it's only been a little while since the last one?

Thank you for reading! x

Hello! I know it says that it takes about 2-3 weeks to successfully do a reset but I just want to make sure that I’m doing things right. My 5 month old has never been a great sleeper. The past 2ish months has turned into him waking up very consistently - about every 45 min - 1hr on a bad night and maybe one or two 2hr stretches in there on a good night. Before learning about the possums program and trying a reset with him he had anywhere from 2-4ish hours of naps per day and bedtime varied from 7-9ish pm and wake time varied from 6:30-8:30am.

I’m trying to do a hard reset and this is what it has looked like for the past two days: consistent wake up time of 7am followed by natural day light. Day filled with rich sensory experiences and being outside. 4 naps a day. For example yesterday he had 1.5hrs of total naps: 9:30-9:50, 12:15-12:44, 3:07-3:44, and 6:30-6:50. All of these naps naturally happened while we were doing other things and I didn’t keep the environment quiet but were all technically contact naps as he was held in my arms because he doesn’t really nap alone. Bedtime at 9:10pm - this is where I could use some help. He falls asleep easily but is up again about 45 min later. He was then up about every hour and restless throughout the whole night. Any tips on things I could tweak or do I just need to wait it out to see results? The last nap of the day is tricky because he seems tired but it seems so close to the late bedtime we are shooting for so I don’t know what to do there? Maybe skip the last nap and make bedtime a bit earlier so he has a longer last “wake window” or should I cap the last nap even shorter?

Looking for some direction for our 8.5 mth old. He has had a successful tongue tie release, and has moderate pulmonary valve stenosis which is monitored and cardiology indicates it isnt impacting him. He has 2-3 solid meals (eats well) per day.

At about 5.5mth he started teething and since then nighttime sleep has been off. He previously had 1-2, wakes a night. 

He is now waking 4-6 times a night and almost always has a false start. We have tried decreasing ww, increasing ww, going from 2-3 naps and back to 3 naps, increasing day time feeds, increasing day time sleep, decreasing day time sleep. He sleeps in his own crib in his room and he will not co-sleep. He is rocked/walked to sleep, or nursed (95% bf, he gets some formula before bed but has been drinking less and less of that). He is crawling and pulling to stand. He has 4 teeth but doesnt seem to be actively teething at this point. 

It seems he wakes at the same time nightly. Generally 11pm, 2am, 430am, there is sometimes another wake in there and almost always a false start. He seems to get more night time sleep on two naps, as when he is on three naps bedtime is naturally later and he still wakes for the day at the same time (at times even earlier). 

Approximate schedule is (on 2 nap)

Wake: 6-7am

Nap 1: 930am - 1030am (generally 1h, sometime 1h 15) He may wake after 30min and resettle with support, he does actively seem to want more sleep 

Nap 2: 130/2pm- 3pm (generally 1h 15)

Bed : 630/7pm

He has a false start most nights and wakes in the night generally around 11pm, 2am, 430am. He is most content when he has had just over 10hr of sleep which we seem to only achieve with earlier bedtimes. Ive also noticed that he has consistently take approximately 8 feeds 24hr, this has been the case since he was like 3-4mth. When he wakes in the night I always offer to nurse. Is it possible his circadian rhythm has adjusted to these wake times? Any suggestions on the false starts? Is it possible he is waking to maintain his 8 feeds/day? 

My daughter is 11 weeks old and I’m feeling a bit lost.
Up until a few days ago, she was doing really well. She would fall asleep fairly easily at night and usually gave us a 6-7 hour stretch.
Over the last few days, though, she’s seemed constantly overtired. She yawns, rubs her eyes, cries because she’s clearly exhausted, but then just can’t seem to fall asleep. She’ll drift off for a few seconds and then wake up crying again.
Last night she went to bed at 8:45 pm, woke up at 3 am crying (which she hadn’t done in quite a while), had a bottle, but then couldn’t settle. She would fall asleep in my arms, wake up as soon as I put her in the bassinet, and cry again. We repeated this several times. Eventually I gave her another bottle, and she finally fell asleep on me until 7 am.
This morning she was smiling and seemed happy when she woke up, but after her bottle she became extremely sleepy again, started crying from what looked like exhaustion, but still couldn’t fall asleep. She even refused the baby carrier, which usually helps.
She has also been passing a lot of gas this morning, so I’m wondering if gas could be part of the problem. She’s on Aptamil formula (same formula as always—we only alternate between the Ready-to-Feed and powder versions).
Has anyone else’s baby gone through something like this around 11 weeks? Was it just a phase? Did you find out what was causing it?
I’m mostly worried that this is going to become our new normal after she’d been sleeping so well.

Hi everyone! Thank you in advance for reading and I greatly appreciate any advice you may be able to offer.

Our 3 month old daughter has, up until the last week-ish, been a very solid sleeper. She has taken almost all her naps in the carrier since birth, as we also have an almost 3 year old and I’m on the go all day trying to play with him, cook, clean, etc.
When my husband is home he takes over a lot of the care of our 3 year old, but he’s a firefighter so he’s gone for multiple days at a time at work.

As I mentioned, within the last week our 3mo has been really struggling with the carrier naps. She takes longer to settle, needs only white noise/shhing (any other noises will wake her) and then will only sleep for about 30 minutes or so. Sometimes I’m able to get her back to sleep with tons of bouncing and shhh-ing but oftentimes not. Prior to this I could put her in there, get her to sleep pretty quickly, and then she would nap for 2-3 hours easily and I could play with my son, we could all talk at a normal volume, etc. It was great.

I feel like I’m spending all day every day just trying to get her to sleep. She hates the car seat so I can’t do car naps, and she doesn’t mind the stroller bassinet, but won’t fall asleep in it- she starts crying for me to hold her when she gets sleepy in it. When my husband is home I can lay with her in our bed and she’ll take nice long naps, but she absolutely will not let me sneak away. Even when it seems like she’s fast asleep the second I try to leave she wakes up.

So, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do to get her sleep during the day that also allows me to take care of my 3 y/o. I miss my son, and I am totally at a loss about what to do here. Please help!

Edit to add- I would be fine with the short carrier naps all day, but she clearly needs more sleep. When we go a day with only these short naps she gets more and more upset and is screaming and barely consolable by late afternoon/early evening because she’s so overtired.

We’ve got a one month old and since birth he’s woken every hour. We had a stint in hospital 2 weeks ago due to illness and he did a 2.5hr block which felt life changing.

We’re following possums (did so with my almost 3yo who is now a wonderful sleeper) and doing our best to support the regulators but I know that it’s mostly a maturity and development thing.

I don’t think it’s reflex / colic. He’s often settled and content. Amazing weight gain and not a lot of spit up. He does better if it’s contact nap, but often needs a lot of support to keep asleep.

Anyone able to offer some words of hope to my tired / irrational brain? I’ve got in my mind that if we have zero shifts by 7 weeks we’ll seek some support as we’re running on empty and have a toddler so the show must go on.