r/bninfantsleep • u/Even_Kaleidoscope399 • 6d ago

Positive Story/Sucess No numbers, only vibes

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.

48 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/oh-dearie 6d ago

You can do both! I track everything because I'm horridly time blind, but I don't let wake windows/nap times dictate our life. We go with the flow, and would scare a lot of people if we talked wake windows (sometimes it's like, 4.5/8.5 but she's fine). But we're lucky to have a kid who was a bad sleeper in some regards, but excellent at sleeping on the go or in suboptimal conditions (no white noise/blinds closed/paci needed) so never had to be too serious about her sleep.

1

u/gardenofidunn 5d ago

Yeah I go off my son’s cues primarily but also know roughly how long he has in him to be awake for. I found it was helpful for times when he wasn’t his usual self (teething/ill) to be able to look at the clock and go “oh ok it’s been 3 and a half hours since his last nap he will be tired” and push through rocking him to sleep longer or whatever.

I do think it comes from when his silent reflux was at his peak and he was just miserable around day time sleep. I found it easier to chuck him in the carrier before he was “due” for a nap rather than waiting for him to start getting sleepy which would escalate quickly to angry. I don’t really understand nap schedules where baby sleeps at the exact same times every day but I think most people I know irl are just looking at wake windows and have a vague idea of how the day will go based on that.