Few things feel more counterintuitive than waking a sleeping baby. You may have spent twenty minutes feeding, rocking, walking or negotiating with the universe to get them to sleep, and now somebody is suggesting that you deliberately wake them up. I understand the...

There is something particularly painful about seeing 5:12 a.m. on the clock when your baby has decided that the night is over. At 2 a.m., at least everybody agrees that it is the middle of the night. At five, things become less clear. Your baby may be wide awake,...

There is a very particular kind of tiredness that comes from being awake with a baby at two in the morning who appears to have absolutely no intention of going back to sleep. They are not necessarily crying. Sometimes they are quite cheerful, which can make the whole...

Some babies seem to arrive in the world with an unexpected talent for sleep. They fall asleep fairly easily, tolerate being put down and give their parents longer stretches at night surprisingly early. Other babies wake at the slightest attempt to move them, nap for...

“Is your baby sleeping through yet?” It is one of those questions people seem to start asking surprisingly early. Sometimes it is just conversation, but when you are the one getting up several times a night, it can land differently. If other babies in your antenatal...

Your baby sleeps beautifully on you and wakes three minutes after you put them down. Is this something you need to change — or simply something babies often do? There is a particular kind of optimism involved in transferring a sleeping baby. You wait until they look...

If you have spent any time reading baby sleep advice, you have probably met drowsy but awake. Possibly many, many times. The idea sounds perfectly reasonable. You feed, rock or cuddle your baby until they are lovely and sleepy, then — at exactly the right moment —...

Are Sleep Associations Really a Problem? If your baby falls asleep breastfeeding, rocking, cuddling, being carried or lying beside you, there is a good chance somebody has warned you not to let them “get used to it”. This phrase has followed parents around for years....

“Your baby needs to learn to self-soothe.” It is one of those phrases that sounds so established that we rarely stop to ask what it actually means. Sometimes self-soothing means falling asleep without being fed, rocked, held or otherwise helped. Sometimes it means...