What I wish I'd known before I had my first baby

It’s 2am, and I’m scrolling. My first daughter is a few months old, and somewhere in the haze of exhaustion I’ve found an Instagram post, that tells me she needs to be able to self-settle by four months old. If she can’t, I’m told, she won’t pass through the sleep regression, I’m building bad habits. I’m setting her up for sleep problems down the line. The clock is ticking. This same page also told me to reduce and stop night feeds by 6 months and “offer water only”. I’m sorry, WHAT?!

So did I follow it?

So I believe it. Of course I do, I’m a new mum, running on little sleep, who put her trust into someone because they had a large following. They had just handed me a deadline for something I didn’t even know was a test. It became a goal that I needed to help her achieve. What I believed, and why, I didn’t question it, not really. It was presented as fact, the kind of thing “everyone knows,” repeated confidently enough that it didn’t occur to me to ask where it actually came from. Four months. Self-settling. Or else.

So I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I watched the clock instead of watching her. I treated rocking her to sleep, something that came so naturally, something she clearly found comforting as a countdown to a problem I was supposedly creating, rather than what it actually was: connection. Looking back I can see how much that pressure cost me. Every nap and bedtime that didn’t go “to plan,” I felt like I was failing at something. I wasn’t following her, I was following fear. Fear of regressions. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear that if I didn’t fix it by some arbitrary date, I’d have a much bigger problem on my hands. I don’t think I’m the only parent who’s felt that. I think it’s incredibly common, and I think it’s one of the quiet cruelties of a lot of mainstream sleep advice, it turns something instinctive into something you have to get “right” against the clock.

Training as a holistic sleep consultant changed everything I thought I knew. It took so much unlearning... I learned that a lot of what I’d been told, self-settling by a certain age, strict wake windows, the idea that comfort-based associations like rocking are inherently “bad habits” simply isn’t backed by the evidence I’d assumed it was. I learned about infant sleep development in a way that finally made sense of what I’d actually been living through, rather than what I’d read on social media at 2am.

And I learned about temperament, really learned it, not just as a concept but as something I could see clearly once I knew to look for it. One framework that really helped me understand my daughters was the idea of "soothers" and “signallers. Babies who are “soothers” babies who settle relatively easily and adapt quickly to change. Others are “signallers” - babies who feel things intensely and communicate clearly, loudly, and often, when something isn’t working for them.

Why temperament changes everything

My first daughter, it turns out, was a soother. Self-settling came easily to her, almost without us trying for it. She found too much patting and rocking overstimulating in the end and was quite happy to fall asleep independently. Which meant that all that fear, all that pressure I’d put on myself, it was never really about her. She was always going to find her way there gently, in her own time. I always say, if I had my second daughter first, I would have really felt like I was failing and getting it all wrong.

I found that out properly with my second daughter, because she is not a soother. She’s a signaller, through and through. And this time, I knew better than to follow a deadline. I was so grateful to have the level of understanding around sleep that I do now, as I have felt no pressure to have her settling independently, to stop feeding during the night, to stop responding to her in a way that feels natural to me. I want to shout it from the rooftops so all parents know they are not breaking their babies... by being there and supporting them. Independence will come, but first they have to build this confidence, and you support this every time you show up for them. Not when you leave them to cry.

Final thoughts

The more I learned about normal infant sleep, attachment, and temperament, the more I realised the problem wasn't my baby. It was the expectation that every baby should follow the same timeline. This is exactly why I became a holistic sleep consultant, because I know what it feels like to be a parent doing everything “right” according to someone else’s timeline, and still feeling like you’re getting it wrong. I know what it’s like to follow fear instead of your baby. I learned that many of the claims I'd accepted as fact weren't supported by the strong evidence I assumed existed. I don't believe every baby needs to self-settle in order to sleep well and I don’t believe there’s a deadline for anything. I believe in responsive, attachment-based sleep support that starts with who your child actually is, not a chart, not an age, not a rule that worked for someone else’s baby.

Some babies are ready for more independence early, gently, and without distress. Others need more time, more support, more closeness and that’s not a problem to fix. It’s just who they are. If you’re in the version of this I was in - worried you’re “creating bad habits,” watching a clock instead of your baby, following advice that doesn’t sit right in your gut… I want you to know there’s another way. One that’s rooted in your child’s actual temperament and needs, not a countdown. That's why I became a holistic sleep consultant, to help parents understand their child instead of chasing someone else's timeline.