There’s a trend going around right now — “what I’d tell you if I wasn’t afraid to hurt your feelings” — and when I saw it, my first instinct was: that’s not really my vibe. I’m not here to shame parents or point fingers. I never have been.

But I am here to educate. And after almost eight years of working with families and watching the same patterns play out over and over again, there are some things happening in the baby sleep world that are genuinely not helping you. Things that are keeping you stuck, keeping your baby overtired, and keeping you in a cycle of frustration when rest is actually within reach.

So I’m doing my version of this trend — with an educational spin, with love, and with a clear “here’s what to do instead” for every single point.

Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. Let’s go.

1. Waiting for Sleep to Get Better Is Not a Strategy

This one is probably the hardest to hear, because we have been culturally conditioned to believe that sleep struggles are just what babyhood and toddlerhood look like. Every other month there’s a new “regression” — the four-month regression, the six-month, the eight-month, the ten-month — and we’re told to just hang on and wait for it to pass.

Here’s what I want you to know: most of the time, it’s not actually a regression. It’s a crack in the foundation.

Sleep and development are closely connected, yes. There will be moments of disruption during big growth periods. But when you’re looking at weeks or months of poor sleep — not days — that’s not a phase that’s going to magically resolve itself. That’s a signal that something in the layers of your child’s sleep needs to be assessed and adjusted.

When we sit in a holding pattern of “it’s just a phase,” we can be waiting days, weeks, even months for improvement that isn’t coming on its own. Meanwhile, your baby is accumulating sleep debt, you’re accumulating exhaustion, and the window where small adjustments would have made a big difference keeps getting longer.

What to do instead: Stop waiting and start assessing. What does your baby’s schedule look like? Are awake windows age-appropriate? Is there overtiredness building? Are sleep associations working against you? These are the questions that move the needle — not the calendar. These are all elements of your child’s sleep puzzle and all things that I support families with so that you have clarity and a path moving forward. 

2. Random Tips and Tricks Without Consistency Will Keep You Spinning

I say this with full awareness that I also share sleep education on social media — so I want to be clear that this isn’t a knock on information. There is genuinely great sleep content out there.

The problem isn’t the tips. The problem is how they get used.

When you’re pulling a recommendation from one Instagram account on Monday, trying something from a TikTok on Wednesday, and then switching to something you read in a Facebook mom group by Friday — that’s spaghetti on the wall. And it almost never works because no single approach is being given the time and consistency it needs to create real change.

I hear this from families constantly: “I’ve tried earlier bedtimes and later bedtimes. I’ve tried different routines. I’ve tried everything.” And what I know from that list is that nothing was tried long enough, consistently enough, or with a full understanding of why it was being implemented.

Sleep improvement happens over days to weeks — not just one nap or a few bedtimes. Trying something for a day or two and then pivoting often leaves your baby more confused and leaves you more frustrated than before.

What to do instead: When you find an approach that makes sense based on your child’s actual age and sleep patterns, commit to it. Two full weeks of consistent implementation is the standard window I work with in my own coaching practice. Give it time to work before you decide it isn’t working.

3. Unrealistic Expectations Are Creating Unnecessary Stress

This one shows up in two different ways, and both are worth talking about.

The first: not having a realistic or not yet having an understanding of how pediatric sleep works aka understanding how sleep works in the body for your baby — how it connects to nutrition, development, wake windows, and sleep cycles — which leads to confusion when things don’t unfold the way you expected.

The second: holding your baby’s sleep to such a tight standard that any variation can send us into panic mode. Your baby has been sleeping great, and then one shorter nap day or an extra night waking happens and alarms start going off. What went wrong? Is it a regression? Did we break something?

Neither of these are your fault. Nobody hands you a pediatric sleep education handbook when you leave the hospital. But both of them create a relationship with your baby’s sleep that is rooted in anxiety instead of understanding — and anxiety is a tough place to be making sleep decisions.

The “why” is everything. When you understand why your baby’s sleep looks the way it does — why short naps happen, why night wakings increase, why they fight bedtime — you stop reacting with panic and start responding with clarity. You know what to look at. You know what to adjust. You move from reactive to intentional.

What to do instead: Invest in sleep education, but not always the Google or Chat GPT rabbit holes at 2am, but real, grounded information about how pediatric sleep works across development. Understanding the system makes you a better problem-solver for your specific child.

4. Teething Is Probably Not Why Your Baby Has Been Struggling for Weeks

This might be the most common thing I hear, and I say it with so much compassion — but teething is not the reason for weeks or months of sleep disruption.

Here’s the actual truth about teething and sleep: teething can be disruptive to sleep generally the one to two days immediately before a tooth breaks through. Sometimes multiple teeth come in at once, which can compound things. But the actual window of teething-related sleep disruption is short — we’re talking a handful of days but not an ongoing saga.

What actually happens is this: when a baby doesn’t yet have a solid sleep foundation, teething, rolling, crawling, illness, travel — any form of development or disruption — acts like a magnifying glass. It reveals and amplifies sleep struggles that were already there. The tooth didn’t create the problem. It just made the crack in the foundation impossible to ignore.

And then we wait for the tooth to finish coming through. And sleep doesn’t improve. Because the tooth was never really the issue.

What to do instead: When you’re seeing sleep struggles that extend beyond a few days — especially if they coincide with development or teething — look underneath. What does the foundation look like? Are sleep skills in place? Is the schedule age-appropriate? Are there sleep associations that are creating dependencies? Those are the questions to ask.

5. Your Own Limiting Beliefs About Your Baby’s Sleep Matter More Than You Think

This one is the most unexpected on the list, but it’s real and I’ve seen it play out hundreds of times — including in my own experience.

When you’ve lived with sleep struggles for weeks or months, your brain starts writing a story. “My baby is just not a good sleeper.” “She’s never napped well.” “He’s just not a baby who sleeps through the night.” These feel like neutral observations. They’re actually limiting beliefs — and they have a quiet but powerful effect on whether change feels possible.

I went through this with my own son. I believed in the approach I was using. I became a coach. And I still had this voice in the back of my head going: yeah right, this little boy who has never slept in his crib, who’s been attached to me for four months — he’s suddenly going to just… sleep?

That doubt doesn’t stay neutral. It affects how you implement changes. It affects your consistency. It affects the energy you bring into coaching.

The families I see make the fastest, most dramatic progress are the ones who can get to a place of neutrality — not blind optimism, but an openness to the possibility that their baby’s sleep history does not have to define their baby’s sleep future. What has been does not have to be what is.

What to do instead: Notice the stories you’re telling about your baby’s sleep. Not to shame yourself for them — they make complete sense given what you’ve been through. But see them for what they are: beliefs, not facts. And hold them loosely enough that a new sleep reality can take root.

6. Other Parents “Great Sleeper” Reports Are Not Helping You — And Here’s the Real Story

You know that coworker whose baby slept through the night at eight weeks? The friend whose toddler takes a three-hour nap every single day? The family member who offers that information unprompted when you’ve just had your third rough night in a row?

It’s not helping. I know that. And I also know how deeply it can make you question yourself — what am I doing wrong? Is my baby broken? Why does everyone else seem to have this figured out?

Here’s what I want you to know from the inside of this work: I have had families come to me describing their baby’s sleep as “pretty good” or “not that bad” — and when we actually dig into the details, sleep is not nearly as solid as the general umbrella of “fine” suggested. People tend to remember and report the good nights. The bad nights feel more private.

And some babies really are naturally easier sleepers. That’s also true. But it has absolutely nothing to do with you or your abilities as a mother.

What to do instead: Instead of measuring your baby’s sleep against someone else’s anecdote, it’s much more reassuring to get a real picture of what’s happening in your own home. If you’re working with me and you’re not sure whether sleep coaching is the right move, I offer a Sleep Insight Audit — you fill out an intake, I do a full assessment, and I give you specific education and recommendations. That’s the kind of honest picture that actually helps. Not someone else’s highlight reel.

7. Not All Sleep Training Is Cry It Out — And This Belief Might Be Keeping You Stuck

If you’ve decided that you’re not going to sleep train because you don’t want to do cry it out — I hear you! 

Cry it out is not actually sleep training. It’s an unmodified extinction method. It means placing your baby in their crib or room and leaving — and yes, it typically involves significant crying. That approach is not what most sleep coaches do, and it’s certainly not what I do.

True sleep training — more accurately called behavioral sleep interventions (BSI) — involves a holistic assessment of all the layers affecting your child’s sleep, a comprehensive plan tailored to your family, education about why changes are being made, and a process that allows you to be present, responsive, and connected with your baby through the process. It is not one-size-fits-all. It is not cold or detached. And it absolutely does not have to mean walking away and closing the door.

When we adopt the belief that sleep training = cry it out, we cut ourselves off from a whole range of approaches that might be the exact thing that turns sleep around for our family. We end up back in the waiting game from point one, or the spaghetti-on-the-wall game from point two — because the one structured, consistent, supported path feels off-limits.

What to do instead: Find an approach and a coach that aligns with your values, your parenting philosophy, and your baby’s specific needs. There are options. Holistic sleep coaching — what I do — is responsive, connected, and customized. If you’ve been avoiding sleep coaching because you assumed it meant leaving your baby to cry, I’d love to talk. That’s not what this is.

The Thread That Connects All Seven

Read back through that list and you’ll notice something: every single item on it — waiting, tip-hopping, unrealistic expectations, blaming teething, limiting beliefs, comparing to others, avoiding sleep support — they all lead to the same place.

Stuck. Exhausted. Wondering if this is just your life now.

And I can tell you with complete certainty: it doesn’t have to be. I have watched families go from months of sleep drama to a five-month-old taking three naps with zero bedtime resistance in a single week. I’ve seen parents who swore their baby “just wasn’t a sleeper” completely transform their child’s sleep within two weeks. I’ve worked with over 700 families and I have never once thought — this one is unfixable.

Sleep is figureoutable. But it requires the right education, the right support, and the willingness to stop waiting and start assessing.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to take the next step.

Ready to Stop Spinning and Start Sleeping?

You deserve rest. So does your baby. Let’s get you there.

🎓 Holistic Infant & Toddler Sleep Masterclass — Watch this free masterclass to understand what holistic sleep training really is, how it works, and what age-appropriate sleep looks like for your baby right now. Watch the free masterclass here.

🔍 Sleep Insight Audit — Not sure if you’re ready for full training? Anne will do a personalized assessment of your baby’s current sleep and give you specific, actionable recommendations. No commitment required — just clarity. Book your Sleep Insight Audit here.

📞 Book a free Explore Call — Ready to talk through your baby’s sleep and figure out the right next step for your family? Let’s connect. Schedule your free call here.