The three worst sleep advices for babies
The three advices that harmed my baby's sleep the most.
5/8/20245 min read
It’s been almost two years and our little one is still not sleeping through the night. I cannot count the many times I’ve been googling ‘sleep tips’ or ‘how to get your baby to sleep through the night.’
In my night google sessions I discovered there were several advices that were repeated so often they were pretty much presented as facts. Which made me totally doubt in my own mother instincts when these turned out to be the worst and I mean worst possible advice for our little one. In fact, I think these advices were the main reason our daughter struggled so much with sleep. It’s pretty obvious that’s she’s never going to be the world’s best sleeper, but since I ignored these three ‘so called’ sleep advices, there have at least no more sessions of 1.5 hours bouncing on a birthing ball to try to get her to sleep. (best workout ever though) And she’s slept through the night for a 9 solid hours many times since. Right now she’s going through a bout of separation anxiety so sleep is suffering again, but that’s a whole other story for another time.
Obviously, these famous sleep advices work for quite some people, otherwise I suppose they wouldn’t be so widely shared, but if you have a little one like mine, I hope you take comfort in the fact that all little ones are different and even if you don’t know anybody with sleep needs like your little one, it’s absolutely not your fault that they’re not sleeping at night.
That is… I mean to say, if you’re not giving them Red Bull before they sleep or something. You might be laughing now but I saw a documentary a while back about healthy eating and one of the women literally put Mountain Dew in her baby’s bottle. Seeing as you’re googling how to improve your baby’s sleep (maybe even at 3 AM) I’m guessing you wouldn’t do that.
Ok so what’s the first one? Shall I start with the bad, worse or worst? Ok, let’s start with bad. Really bad sleep advice for me was:
‘When you see tired signs, put baby to bed.’
So I’m genuinely sure this one works really great most of the time. But… my baby doesn’t have tired signs. She just doesn’t stop. I’ll give you an example.
Yesterday I went with her to the shop. We skipped her nap, because she was protesting way too hard and I’m not going to fight her on that, that’s way too much stress.
So imagine: At 17:00 (5PM to all you Americans out there) I have to go to the shop. She’s been playing without so much as a yawn up till now. It’s dark out, and she’s been up since about 6:30 without a nap. (she’s not even 2 years old) After a few minutes of walking, she, of course, asks me to pick her up:
“Mommy carry you”
Yeah, she hasn’t really grasped the whole ‘me’ and ‘you’ concepts which is pretty hilarious.
I pick her up and of course within a minute, her eyes close. Obviously, I do everything I can to keep her awake. Which is pretty easy, despite some cranky protests.
Fully awake, she proceeds to walk the almost 1 km to the shop. Pushes the cart in the shop, helps me put things in and is her usual sunny self. She then walks about halfway home herself before commanding me to pick her up again. When I do, there is no chance anymore that she will fall asleep, she is once again wide awake. And she stays that way until about 21:00 PM which is her approximate bedtime. At this time, she still looks fully alert almost all of the time. No rubbing in her eyes or yawning to be seen. So at our house yawning or no yawning, she’s going to bed.
So let’s move on to advice number two:
Don’t put baby to sleep overtired. Or my favorite one, if baby falls asleep within 5 minutes, baby was ‘overtired’ and you have to put baby earlier next time.
Wow, this one almost ruined my life. So, as I’ve discovered after many months, there is only one way I can get my little one to sleep and that is if she’s drop dead tired. If I avoid putting my baby overtired, I will have to get ready for an extended cardio session, because I’ll be bouncing, jumping, walking most likely for an hour and a half or so, before she’ll be tired enough to fall asleep.
Now, I know for a lot of you this actually can be pretty good advice, because some baby’s are pretty difficult to calm down when they’re overtired. But my little one is very easy to calm down when she’s ‘overtired’ in fact I don’t know what's ‘over’ about tiredness anyway. From everything I experience I also realize what a wide variety of sleep habits and preferences we all must have. What one person says is ‘overtiredness’ I just call ‘ready to sleep’. This sleep advice is definitely the one that caused me the most stress, so recognizing that ‘overtiredness’ is just something I never need to worry about with my little one actually is the one thing that released the most stress within me.
Last but not least, ‘put baby to bed early, when you put baby to bed at seven they will sleep a good solid 12 hours.’
Haha in your dreams. Yeah, if I even get my baby to sleep at 7 (most likely it will be me bouncing, walking and rocking until 9pm) then she will happily wake me up at 4, thinking: Enough already, let’s get this party started.
Some people might think, yes but all these advices are great for when you sleep train your baby. (we’ve tried sleep training) But I think sleep training is a topic for an entirely different time.
What I learned over all this time is to trust my own instincts. But blindly trusting your instincts also isn’t the greatest idea, or at least that doesn’t keep me calm. I really like writing things down in a little diary: what my little one ate, or what we did and how she slept. That way, you conduct your own little ‘scientific research’ and you, or at least I can let go and trust easier. Because I can always look back at the diary to spot connection, or to check something.
Anyway, I hope this helped you a little bit in your own journey with your child’s sleep. Parenting is a little like trying to piece together the manual on your kid. Nobody on the internet is going to tell you what’s best for your kid. Other people might give you inspiration or point you in the right direction, but it’s up to you to figure out the details.
Don't forget if you're having trouble with your baby sleeping, or you're just looking for some soothing music to start your bed routine, we've got a Spotify playlist made especially for baby sleep, you can check it out: HERE

Listen To Our Soothing Baby Playlist
(And finally get some sleep for your baby and yourself )