Every one of these felt like the right thing to do at the time.

I wanted to be gentle. I wanted to meet my daughter's needs. And I was making sleep harder for both of us without having the faintest idea that I was doing it.

Here's what I got wrong.

1. Rushing in the second I heard a sound

What I thought: I was being responsive.

What was happening: I was waking her up during a completely normal sleep transition.

Newborns are noisy sleepers, and nobody warns you about this. They moan, they grunt, they open and close their eyes, they cry out — all of it while fast asleep. Older babies do a quieter version of the same thing at the end of every sleep cycle, and quite a lot of them grumble their way back down without ever properly waking.

If you go in at that exact moment, you can be the thing that wakes them. Which means you've now got a genuinely awake baby to resettle instead of one who would have done it herself.

The fix isn't ignoring your baby. It's waiting long enough to find out which way the noise is going — there's a trick for that here, and it takes about two minutes.

2. Keeping her awake longer, thinking she'd sleep better

Tired baby equals sleeping baby, right?

Nope. Overtired babies fight sleep and wake more.

But I want to be careful here, because this one goes wrong in both directions and most advice only tells you about one of them.

Awake too long and they arrive at bedtime overtired, which makes it harder to fall asleep and harder to stay asleep. Awake not long enough and they haven't built up enough drive to sleep, so they go down undertired and pop up again after one cycle. Honestly, of the families I work with, more of them arrive with awake times that are too short than too long.

So it isn't longer or shorter. It's finding your baby's balance for their age, and moving it gradually — five, ten or twenty minutes at a time, not an hour.

Please know that wake windows aren't evidence-based. There's no exact number to follow. Use them as a starting point and watch your own baby's sleepy cues alongside the clock.

3. Feeding her every time she woke

What I thought: I was meeting her needs.

What was happening: she was waking out of habit rather than hunger — and I was feeding her back to sleep every time, which taught her that's how you get back to sleep.

The hard part is that you genuinely cannot tell from the outside. A feed soothes as well as it feeds, so settling afterwards doesn't tell you whether they were actually hungry or just comforted. There are four signs that tell you which one you're dealing with, and I got this wrong with my own second daughter for months.

4. Making the room bright for naps

What I thought: she should be able to sleep anywhere, and I didn't want to create a baby who needed perfect conditions.

What was happening: from around three months, babies need darkness for good quality sleep (at least for one nap a day). That's when their body clock starts to mature and light genuinely affects it.

Before three months it makes very little difference, which is why this one catches people out — it works fine...until it doesn't.

5. Rocking and feeding her to sleep every single time

What I thought: I was being loving.

What was happening: I was doing all the work. She never learned to fall asleep independently.

Now — I want to say this carefully, because it's the one people beat themselves up about most.

There is no age at which rocking or feeding your baby to sleep becomes wrong. None. Plenty of babies are rocked to sleep and still only wake once or twice a night, and if that's your family, you don't need to change anything.

The test isn't your baby's age. It's whether it's still working for you.

Because for many babies, whatever gets them to sleep at bedtime is the same thing they'll need to start every new sleep cycle. So if you're up five times a night doing the same twenty minutes of rocking each time, that's not a moral failing — it's just a system that's stopped being sustainable. And you're ok to decide that you want to make a change!

If you do decide to change it, somewhere around three to four months is a great time to start, while sleep is still fairly malleable. More defined habits tend to settle in around five to six months. But easier is not the same as too late, and I've worked with plenty of families much further along.

6. Comparing her sleep to other babies

A friend's baby slept through at eight weeks, so I assumed something was wrong with mine.

Every baby is different. And comparison is the thief of joy!

I know how hollow that sounds when you're the one awake at 3am reading about someone else's eight-week-old. But it took me a long time to understand that other people's sleep stories are heavily edited, and that mine wasn't evidence of anything being broken.

What changed

We went from waking every two hours to sleeping eleven hours straight, with a two-hour lunch time nap.

Not because I stopped being gentle. Because I stopped doing six things that felt gentle and were quietly working against us.

All of these felt like good parenting. I wanted to be responsive and meet her needs, and I was making sleep harder for both of us.

It's not about choosing between attachment and sleep — you can have both!

Is this you?

Here's the thing I most want to say, and I genuinely mean it.

Only you can decide whether what you're doing is still working for your family. If you're rocking your baby to sleep and you're both fine, genuinely — carry on. That's not a problem waiting to happen. Some of these habits are completely fine at eight weeks and only start to bite at eight months, and I did most of them myself with my first.

But if you've already worked out that it isn't sustainable — if you're getting up five times a night and something has to change — then it's worth hearing what other parents said after going through my sleep programs:

"When you're sleep deprived and you're considering it, you're not even in the right mindset to know whether or not you should do things. Which is a sure sign that you should do it. And once you're in it, you start getting a night or two of full sleep, and you're like — why didn't I do this so much sooner? ... We should have done it sooner."
— Cassie & Adam

My 5-18 Months Sleep Program is the whole thing in order: the day structure for your baby's age (so they go down at the right time), and responsive settling based on your baby's temperament. It's 100 minutes of short videos.

Common questions

Have I ruined my baby's sleep by rocking her for eight months?

No. There's no window that closes. It takes a bit more consistency at eight months than at four, and that's the whole difference.

Is it too late to change this?

No. The best time to make a change is when you're ready to make a change.

Will my baby cry?

There will likely be some tears — which is what happens when you're changing how your little one knows how to fall asleep. What I can say is that you stay responsive the whole way through — you go in, you check, you reassure...or you don't leave the room at all. You get to choose. The techniques build up gradually rather than starting at the deep end, and you choose the one that suits your baby's temperament.

Which of the six matters most?

Usually number five, because it's the one that repeats every time your baby comes to the end of a sleep cycle.