Why Night Wakings Don't Mean You're Doing It Wrong And How to Stay Calm When They Happen

If you've spent any time on parenting forums, in Facebook mom groups, or even just scrolling through Instagram at 3am while your baby feeds for the fourth time that night, you've probably encountered the pressure. The well-meaning advice. The sleep training recommendations. The "by six weeks, my baby was sleeping through the night" comments that leave you wondering what on earth you are doing differently.

Here's what I want you to know first: you are not doing anything wrong.

The Pressure to Sleep Train and Why It Starts So Early

We live in a culture that puts an enormous amount of pressure on new moms to get their babies sleeping through the night as quickly as possible. Sleep training is often presented as the obvious, logical solution, and for some families, it works beautifully. But for many moms, especially those who are breastfeeding, cosleeping, or simply don't want their baby to cry even for one second, the pressure can feel overwhelming and isolating.

What nobody tells you, at least not loudly enough, is that night wakings are completely, developmentally, biologically normal. Not just in the newborn stage. Not just in the first few months. Well into toddlerhood.

When I first started researching infant sleep, I came across a book that genuinely changed my perspective: The Gentle Sleep Book by Sarah Ockwell-Smith. If you haven't read it, I cannot recommend it enough, especially if you're in the thick of broken nights and feeling like your baby is somehow broken. Sarah breaks down the science of infant and toddler sleep in a way that is reassuring rather than prescriptive. She explains why babies wake, why it's normal, and how to navigate the night waking years in a way that works for your family without forcing a method that doesn't feel right to you.

Reading it was the first time I truly understood that my baby wasn't doing something wrong. And that realization changed everything, not the sleep itself, but my relationship to it.

Two and a Half Years In and Still Waking Every Few Hours

I'll be honest with you, because that's kind of the whole point of why I'm here.

My toddler is two and a half years old. She still wakes every two to three hours in the night. We cosleep. I'm still nursing. And for a long time, I'll admit I felt a quiet jealousy toward the moms whose babies seemed to figure out sleep early. The ones posting about their eight-hour stretches while I was on my fourth waking of the night. I found myself wondering what they were doing that I wasn't. What I was missing. Whether my baby's sleep was somehow a reflection of my parenting.

It wasn't. And it isn't.

If you are cosleeping and wondering whether you are making the right choice for your baby's safety and development, I also want to point you toward Safe Infant Sleep by Dr. James McKenna. Dr. McKenna is one of the world's leading researchers on mother-infant sleep, and his work completely shifted how I thought about cosleeping. Rather than treating it as a risk to be managed, he explores the biological and evolutionary basis for why babies sleep best close to their mothers. Reading his research helped me feel not just informed, but genuinely confident in our choice.

Between these two books, I went from feeling confused and a little envious of other moms to feeling grounded in the path we were on.

Finding Calm in the Broken Nights

Here's the part nobody really talks about. Even when you understand that night wakings are normal, even when you feel confident in your parenting choices, the broken sleep is still hard. The exhaustion is real. And in those early sleepy days, I found that the frustration could creep in before I even realized it. Not toward my daughter, but toward the situation. Toward my husband in those half-asleep moments when communication is clumsy and everyone is running on empty.

I didn't want to keep reacting from that place of exhaustion. I wanted to find a way to show up with more calm, more patience, and more presence, even at 3am.

So I started writing affirmations for myself. Little reminders I could come back to when the tiredness started to feel like too much. Words that could cut through the fog of sleep deprivation and call me back to the mother I wanted to be in that moment. Things like: your exhaustion does not have to lead you. Beneath the tiredness is someone resilient and strong.

And slowly, it worked. Not perfectly, and I still have hard nights. But I found that if I could ground myself in those words before the night began, I could shift my perspective enough to respond instead of react. To meet my daughter with softness instead of frustration. To remind myself that she wasn't waking to make my life harder. She was waking because I am her safe place. And that, even at 3am, is an honor.

What started as a way to help myself has become something I want to share with every mom who has ever laid awake in the dark feeling frustrated, depleted, or completely alone in this.

You Are Not Alone in This

If you are in the night waking years, whether your baby is three months old or your toddler is two and a half like mine, I want you to know that what you are feeling is valid. The exhaustion is real. The frustration is real. And the love underneath all of it is real too.

You don't have to white-knuckle your way through the night. You don't have to pretend you're fine when you're not. But you also don't have to let the tiredness lead you.

I created the Night Waking Calm Affirmations for Moms meditation specifically for this, for the moms lying awake before the night begins, wanting to show up with more calm and less guilt. It's a gentle, three-minute guided affirmation audio designed to help you set a calm and steady intention before sleep, so that when your child wakes, you are ready to meet them with softness.

Because you are capable of that. Even at 3am. Especially at 3am.

Ready to try it? Click here to listen to the Night Waking Calm Affirmations for Moms, available now as an instant digital download.