A mom with an almost 6-month-old says she is hitting a breaking point after three straight weeks of brutal sleep. Her baby used to be an amazing sleeper, the kind of baby who could do seven or even nine hours at night before the 3-month mark.
Now she says those nights feel like a distant memory.
For the last three weeks, her baby has been waking up every single hour, almost exactly on schedule, and she is starting to feel like she is losing her mind trying to survive it.
She Kept Waiting for the Bad Stretch to End but It Never Did
In her post on Reddit, the mom explained that sleep had already gotten a little rockier after the 3-month mark, but it still felt manageable. There would be a few rough nights here and there, but her baby would usually bounce back to sleeping in three- to four-hour stretches.
That is why this stretch has hit so much harder.
The first week, she tried not to panic. She assumed it was one of those temporary phases that would pass on its own. The second week, they had visitors, so she figured the extra disruption was probably the reason her baby was still waking so often.
But now they are into week three.
The visitors are gone, nothing obvious has changed, and her baby is still waking up every hour through the night. She said that if she sleeps with the baby, she might get a slightly longer stretch, but even then it is usually only about two hours at a time.
At this point, she is not describing an inconvenience. She sounds completely worn down.
The Hardest Part Was Knowing This Was Not How Nights Used to Look
What makes the post hit is that this is not a mom saying sleep has always been bad and she does not know anything different. She had already seen what it was like to have a baby who slept well.
That is part of what makes this feel so maddening.
She knows her daughter is capable of longer stretches because she used to do them. So when those nights disappeared and were replaced by wakeups every hour, it stopped feeling like normal tired-parent exhaustion and started feeling like something was seriously off.
She also mentioned that her baby will be 6 months old in just over a week and is exclusively breastfed, which adds another layer to the exhaustion. When every wakeup becomes part of the feeding routine too, the whole night can start to feel like one long loop with no real rest anywhere in it.
A Lot of Parents Saw a Familiar Sleep Spiral in What She Described
In the replies, a lot of people told her this kind of sudden sleep collapse around this age is painfully common, even if that does not make it any easier to live through. Several pointed to sleep regressions and developmental leaps, saying babies often hit rough patches every couple of months when learning new skills starts wrecking their nights.
The mom replied that this rough stretch did begin during what she described as the fussy phase of a leap, but what is throwing her is how long it has lasted. She said similar phases had happened before, but they usually cleared within about a week. This one has kept dragging on.
Other commenters said this was the point when they started seriously looking into sleep tools or sleep training, while also acknowledging that approach is not for everyone.
The overall reaction was a mix of sympathy and survival-mode honesty. Most people were not acting like there was one magic fix. They just seemed to recognize the same brutal pattern: a baby who once slept beautifully suddenly starts waking nonstop, and the parent left dealing with it ends up feeling like they are unraveling night by night.
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