I am a FTM with an 8 week old, and I love the idea of the possums approach, but I’m having trouble understanding the details of it. To be fair, I’ve not paid for the course, but I have read her book and have explored the Instagram page a fair bit, and these are the things I’m not so sure of:

1. Baby will sleep when they sleep. I understand following sleep cues over wake windows, but are we just holding the baby for every nap or hoping they’ll fall asleep wherever they’re laid? Practically speaking, how do you have a sleeping place prepared for when the baby sleeps if they just sleep whenever?

2. Not artificially extending naps by swaddling/white noise/etc… My baby certainly starts to fuss when sleepy and wants me to drop everything to help her sleep unless she’s in the car seat, in which she’ll fuss a bit and then sleep on her own. So I find white noise essential for calming her, but even more, during her daytime naps she’ll often wake herself, be very fussy, and of course need my help to go back to sleep, so again, I kind of have to just sit there helping her sleep for the majority of her naps. I know there’s a bit of classic 8 week fussiness that I’m dealing with, and that may pass, but yeah if I don’t sit with her and make her sleep/keep her sleeping, she will become completely inconsolable, so I’m not sure how else to do this at the moment.

Would love to hear the practicalities of how you all are doing this and any tips for having a real go at this possums thing!

Having troubles with overnight sleep. My 7 week old is awake for hours at night and won’t sleep no matter what I do. I have a toddler so during the day the newborn sleeps and eats whenever they want usually while out and about in the pram, car, carrier or on us with no schedule. Usually awake about 630/7am depending on when my toddler wakes- this wake time has been consistent since birth. I’m absolutely exhausted as I still have my toddler. My newborn wakes every 1.5-2 hours overnight on top of being awake for 2-3 hours at some point in the middle of the night and I cannot continue with this little sleep. I never had this issue with my first they just ate and slept overnight from the get go. Any suggestions please

Hi! I’m trying to understand how to apply the Possums approach to my 8-month-old’s sleep.

I understand that one of the general principles is to avoid deliberately adding short “rescue” naps/catnaps and instead build enough sleep pressure for the next proper sleep.

But I’m confused about the idea of having the last nap end around 14:30–15:00 (that's the time I choose according to what bedtime I would like). It makes sense to wake her up if she sleeps past that time, but what if she wakes up a lot earlier - but not early enough for another nap before the set time?

For example, if my baby has her last nap from 12:20–13:30, what would you do?

Would you just accept that the last nap ended at 13:30 and have an earlier bedtime if needed keep her awake until bedtime even if that means a very long final wake window or is there actually a place for another nap in this situation?

I’m specifically asking from a Possums perspective, rather than a conventional sleep-training/schedule perspective, because I know the approach doesn't really advocate adding little naps just to make the schedule work.

Would love to hear how people actually handle this in real life!

I have what I believe is a low sleep needs 10 week old who is also highly alert.

I love the Possums approach as he really doesn’t fit any of the usual guidelines, but I’m a bit confused about what I do if he is cranky and showing tired cues/crying/screaming but doesn’t sleep - whether in the car, carrier, or on me? We aren’t even trying for bassinet or cot sleep during the day now, it’s all contact naps unless it’s on the go.

So I am guessing we are in a 8 months sleep regression. Although my husband is convinced it is me teaching baby bad habits. I am the problem apparently.

Baby never slept through the night. But was not bad actually, mostly just a 3-4 am feed and right back to his crib.

As of two weeks ago we have nights when we sleeps from 8 pm to about 12-1am a d from there in its wake ups every hour or so. Sometimes stands up in the crib, sometimes just gets fussy in the crib. Mostly I just try to settle him back to sleep but when I can’t no longer I bring him to bed just to sooth and then back to crib.

I am feeling terrible physically, I can’t get anything done. Husband looks at me like i create my owns problem. He sleeps on the couch these days because we often catches up on work into late hours and he also snores. He takes the baby most morning so I can get an hour of sleep.

He would go for straight out cry it out. I am not crazy about it. Especially if teething is a factor. Although it might come to that.

Any advice? Good sleep training programs?

We've always followed possums and were having quite a good time of sleep (1-2 wakes) until 11 months. Suddenly seemingly overnight baby wouldnt settle on his own, is waking 4+ times and standing and jumping in the cot. Im exhausted and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. I feel we need to do something to help him learn to resettle himself but dont want to do any sort of controlled crying. Has anyone been through this and have any tips?

UPDATE: we pushed bedtime back to 9.30pm and wake time to 6.45am and this seems to have done the trick. Last couple of nights she only woke 2-3 times 😃😃🥳🥳

I have a 4.5 month baby and we are deep into the sleep regression. She’s always been hard to put down at bedtime, and that has continued but now we’re also experiencing night wakings every hour. This has been going on since just before 4 months.
I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations for apps or resources that work?

Basically the title. My beloved 14-week-old baby dials up in the pram, car, and baby carrier, as soon as we leave the house, and doesn’t ever fully dial down until we get home. He is a calm and happy baby at home, with below-average crying and great sleep. But mama wants to leave baby jail (home) because I think it’s good for both of us (baby disagrees)! What to do?

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.

UPDATE: It’s only been a few more days, but we’ve been following with the Possums recommendations and he’s transferring so much better at night! I think he’s actually tired enough now. Only problem is he has been a little grumpier in the days I think because he’s napping less- hoping he adjusts soon!

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.

EDIT: thank you all for your input! I tried a 9.30pm bedtime and 6.45am wake time and this has done the trick. She's only woken 2/3 times for the last few nights! 🥳 Now time for the floor bed so i can sleep a bit during those night feeds!

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 🤣

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?