07/06/2026
Most sleep advice treats night waking as a single broken thing to fix. Drop the night feed. Push bedtime earlier. Stretch the wake windows. If that approach worked, you probably would not be reading this.
It helps to think about sleep differently. Sleep is the last thing that falls into place when a lot of other things are going right. It sits at the end of a chain: how your baby is fed, how they are developing, their temperament, the room they sleep in, how supported you are, and whether anything physical is making them uncomfortable. When sleep falls apart, one of those pieces is usually out of place. The job is to find which one, not to force the sleep itself.
Here are the pieces I look at with families. Read them with your own baby in mind.
You, the parent. What is happening inside you affects everything else in the house. Postpartum depression, anxiety, and rage are all far more common than parents are told, and all of them make it harder to read your baby and trust your own instincts. Your own childhood matters too, because how you were parented shapes how you respond to crying without you even noticing. None of this is about blame. It is about seeing the whole picture honestly. If you are running on empty, that is not a side issue. It is one of the first things worth addressing.
Your co-parent and your relationship. Paternal depression is real and easy to miss, because it often shows up as withdrawal, irritability, or burying himself in work rather than sadness. Tension between parents gets absorbed by the baby, who is extremely sensitive to the emotional weather of the home.
Routines. Babies settle better when the lead-up to sleep is a predictable sequence. The key is that a good routine is cue-driven, not clock-driven. It is about the order things happen in, not the exact minute on the clock.
Temperament. Some babies are highly sensitive, highly alert, or slow to adjust to change. These babies are not broken and you are not doing it wrong. They are wired to need more support around sleep, often for longer than an easygoing baby would.
Development. What the industry sells as a sleep regression is usually a progression. Your baby's brain is doing major work, and that work spills into the night. Teething, new motor skills, language, growth spurts, and separation anxiety all disrupt sleep in fairly predictable ways. When you know that, you stop trying to fix something that is not broken.
Birth. A hard birth, an early separation, or interventions like forceps or a cesarean can affect a baby's comfort and nervous system in ways that surface later, including around sleep.
Feeding. If a baby is not getting enough during the day, they will often make that up at night. That is a nutrition pattern, not a bad habit. Food sensitivities and allergies are common and frequently missed, and a baby in low-level discomfort will not sleep well no matter what else you change.
How sleep actually works. Babies spend far more of the night in light, active sleep than adults do, and waking between cycles is normal infant biology, not a problem. Wake windows are a loose starting point for observation, not a rule to obey. The baby's cues always come first.
Emotional wellbeing. Play, especially outside, helps a child work through the day. A child who has not moved enough or had room to release feelings often carries that unprocessed energy straight into bedtime.
The room. Darkness at sleep time (for bedtime) and bright light on waking help set the body clock. Screens are worth their own mention, because the blue light from phones and tablets suppresses melatonin, and that includes you scrolling during night feeds. Noise and temperature matter too.
The medical layer. Snoring, mouth breathing, restless sleep, and frequent waking can point to an airway issue worth checking with a doctor or ENT. Reflux, ear infections, constipation, and gas all wreck sleep and are worth ruling out, especially when good sleep suddenly turns bad.
The reason this matters: the things that bring families to me, the night waking, the early rising, the short naps, the false starts, the bedtime battles, are not behaviors to eliminate. They are information telling you which piece needs attention. The family who has tried everything has almost always tried things one at a time, without ever stepping back to look at the whole puzzle.
Karola Marais
