The super sneaky reason why your baby wakes up after being a total rockstar at bedtime

Macall Gordon, M.A.
Sep 29
2 min read

Parents will sometimes say, “Oh, he’s great at bedtime. We just give him a bottle and he’s asleep in five minutes. The problem is that he keeps waking up at night.”

Here’s the thing: Falling asleep fast (<10 or 15 minutes) at bedtime is not actually a good thing. We want them working harder than that. Conking out fast tells us that by the time they hit the mattress, a baby’s brain is already almost all the way down the road to sleep, and that often sets the stage for more frequent baby wakes up moments overnight.

Why does this matter?

Let’s say they fall asleep five minutes after you put them down. That means they’re already 80% drowsy, and they are really only going 20% of the way to sleep on their own. So, when they wake up in the middle of the night, they need you to get them back to 80%, and THEN they can take it from there.

We really want them to know how to go almost the whole way from “awake” to “asleep” so that when they open their eyes in the middle of the night, they can say, “I know how to do this.” We basically want them AWAKE when they go into the crib. The term “drowsy” trips adults up. Instead of “drowsy but awake,” think “ready for sleep and awake.”

Here's a big takeaway: You can’t expect them to do in the middle of the night what they aren’t doing at bedtime. If you are rocking or feeding them to sleep at bedtime and then expecting them to just go back to sleep in the middle of the night, it doesn’t work that way.

You need to give them the skills they will need in the middle of the night at bedtime and then there will be consistency in the way they go TO sleep and go BACK to sleep.

Here’s the GREAT news: You have options for working on these sleep skills.

There isn’t JUST one way. If you want help with a plan, I offer one-time 60-Minute Zoom Consults to help you craft a gradual strategy to build that go-to-sleep roadmap so your kiddo has a way to go back to sleep when they wake at night. Get more info on all my consult options here.

BOOK DIRECTLY HERE

About Macall Gordon

Macall Gordon, M.A., has a master's degree in applied psychology from Antioch University in Seattle with a research-based specialization in infant mental health, sleep advice, and parenting culture.