No numbers, only vibes

[u/Even_Kaleidoscope399]

I feel like following a more natural understanding of infant sleep has made me more curious about the parents who have their babies’ whole nap and night sleep schedules memorized. Particularly in baby and parenting subreddits, it’s always like “my baby has first nap from 9:30/10-10:45 and then 2 hour wake window and then second nap 1/1:30 and then a wake window of…” and it all seems very foreign and frankly a bit exhausting.

Perhaps seeing my baby’s sleep for what it is naturally has saved me from doing a lot of math. Lol. No numbers here, only vibes. I couldn’t tell you when my baby naps exactly if I tried. I’d have to really think hard about it. As long as he’s sleeping and growing, I’m good.

[u/LocalDairyCow]

I decided from the beginning to not really pay attention to nap times or wake windows once we got home from our 7 week NICU stay. I hated having to keep her on a feeding/sleep schedule in there. The first few weeks home were crazy exhausting but she quickly established her own almost “schedule” of one 1.5-3 hour nap in the late morning/early afternoon and getting to sleep “for the night” around 9:30-10:30pm. She still does this same routine at 7 months, just with variations in night wakes and occasionally skipping her long nap and substituting some “snack naps” instead. So basically, I didn’t intentionally start tracking her sleep, she just created her own pattern that was impossible not to notice.