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Please DON'T do what I did and spend months adjusting feeds and wake windows before finding out the real reason your baby keeps waking up… when I look back at those eight months with my first, I realize I made it SO much harder than it needed to be. With her, I was convinced I just had to be more consistent with sleep training. I thought "she can obviously fall asleep on her own. So why won't she STAY asleep?" And I'd watched so many moms talk about sleep training like it was the whole answer. But oh boy was I wrong.... It started off with me buying a white noise machine I also bought the Snoo and downloaded every wake window tracker on the App Store. And those were the decisions that wasted almost seven months of our lives. Because here's what none of that changed she would wake up every 60 to 90 minutes. All. Night. Long. She'd go down perfectly fine. No crying, barely any fussing. She knew how to fall asleep. And then at the 90-minute mark, like clockwork, she'd be up. I'd feed her. She'd fall back asleep. And I told myself she was hungry because that’s what made sense right? I spent months adjusting her daytime feeds, adding more ounces, adding a dream feed. I thought I wasn't feeding her enough. I thought her wake windows were off. I thought I was failing her. She did eventually start stretching her sleep just kind of on her own around seven months. Like... Excuse me??? SEVEN MONTHS just for you to decide?? 🤦🤦🤦 So when my second was four months old and the night wakings started, I felt dread. Not excitement. Dread. I looked at my husband and said: "I cannot do another seven months of this." So I was venting in r/sleeptrain one night. Just typing into the void at 2am because I had nowhere else to put it. And I got a DM from someone named Jennifer and that's when everything changed. "I know exactly what you're going through," she said. "I was in the same place six months ago. Can I ask you something does your baby fall asleep fine at bedtime but can't stay asleep?" Yes, I typed back. That's the part I don't understand. She goes down awake, no crying, maybe some fussing. But she knows how to sleep. So why doesn't it work in the middle of the night? "Because it's not about knowing how to sleep," she said. "I thought the same thing. I spent months trying to sleep train harder, thinking I was doing something wrong." "But it's not behavioral. It's physical." Physical? What do you mean? "When babies first fall asleep at bedtime, they drop straight into deep sleep. Heavy, solid sleep. Nothing wakes them." "But after that first cycle about 90 minutes the rest of the night is lighter." "And during light sleep, if their breathing isn't perfectly smooth, their body tenses up. Tense body means awake baby." But she's not congested. I don't hear anything wrong with her breathing. "You wouldn't be able to. It's not the kind of congestion you can hear." "It's just tiny airway resistance. Even the smallest amount is enough to make breathing feel like work." "And when breathing feels like work during light sleep, the nervous system goes on alert. Which means awake." I sat there on the floor of the nursery, reading this over and over. That's why she wakes up every 60 to 90 minutes? I typed. Not because she's hungry? "Right. Not because she's hungry. Think about it when you feed her, she falls back asleep?" Yes. Every time. "Not because she was full. Because nursing calmed her nervous system down enough to drop her back into deep sleep” “For one more cycle. Then 90 minutes later, light sleep again. Breathing feels off again. Body tenses again. Awake again." Oh my God. That's exactly what happens over and over all night long. "I know," she said. "I went through the same thing. I thought I was going crazy." "But here's the thing there are two parts to fixing it. Most people only ever fix one." What do you mean? "Everyone talks about calming the nervous system. That's why lavender works. Why warm baths help. Why white noise is recommended." "You're lowering stress hormones so the baby's body can relax. That's the first half." "But the other half the part no one talks about is keeping the airways clear so breathing stays smooth during those light sleep phases." How do you do that? "Fir needle," she said. "It helps relax the airways and makes breathing feel easier. Think of it like eucalyptus when you're stuffed up but gentle enough for babies." "When you combine it with lavender one to calm the nervous system so they can fall asleep, one to keep airways smooth so they can stay asleep you're fixing both parts of the problem." I had never heard of fir needle for sleep. "Most people haven't." "I found this organic sleep cream called Slumberlee. It has both lavender and fir needle, with jojoba and olive oil as the base. Four ingredients total. Nothing else." "I started using it on my daughter's chest and feet before bed and within three nights she was sleeping six-hour stretches. After a week, she was sleeping through the night." That sounded too simple. But the logic made sense. So I ordered it. I didn't read her any books. I didn't change her schedule. I just added it to the end of our normal bath routine. Warm the cream between my palms, rub it on her chest and feet, pajamas on, down she goes. Night 1: She woke up at the 90-minute mark. Same as always. But when I went in and settled her without feeding, she actually went back down. She'd never done that before. Night 3: She slept four hours. Then woke once. Then four more hours. I stared at the monitor like it had broken. Night 7: She slept from 7pm to 5am. SEVEN. HOURS. I looked at my husband and said, "Are you kidding me? We did almost seven months of this with her sister and it was just the breathing the whole time?" My husband said, "Well. At least we figured it out eventually." Also!!! My sister-in-law has been going through the EXACT same thing with her four-month-old. Waking every two hours, feeding to go back down, every single night. I sent her the link and said "just add it to the bath routine, let it do the second part that lavender can't do alone." She texted me four nights later: "She just slept five hours straight. I am literally sitting here crying." It wasn't that our babies were bad sleepers. It wasn't that we weren't doing the routine right. It was just that their breathing felt like work during light sleep and their bodies had no way out but to wake up. So if you are doing everything right and your baby still wakes up every 60 to 90 minutes all night long don't spend seven months thinking it's a hunger problem. Hope this saves another mom a few months of 2am feeds she didn't need to be doing. EDIT: Getting a lot of DMs asking which cream. I thought I mentioned it but here is the link: https://slumberlee.com/products/organic-sleep-cream-single