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Notes from a Mom Who’s Still Figuring It Out

This is a note on schedules.

If you’re a schedule mom — color-coded charts, consistent nap blocks, bedtime that happens like clockwork — this probably isn’t for you. But if you’re a mom just getting by in the chaos, sometimes crushing it and sometimes drowning, you might be in the right place.

I’ve never been great at following routines. We have the ones that just make sense — dinner, bath, bed — but making that happen neatly by 7:30 or 8 every night? Not so much. With my two older kids, we mostly went with it, and they grew into flexible humans as a result.

I’m not talking midnight bedtimes — although by four, they could make it through New Year’s Eve without falling apart — but 9:30 at age three? Totally happened.

My oldest would fall asleep the moment the lights dimmed. My daughter? You could tuck her in at eight and still find her back downstairs at eleven, whispering stories to me or my husband — sometimes at three in the morning when he got up for work.

Both of them dropped naps around eighteen months and just powered through the day on sheer energy. It worked well for them. We had lulls instead of naps — a show here, a cuddle and a few stories there. The thing is, they weren’t fussy or dysregulated. They weren’t whiny or emotional. They were just busy.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes envy moms whose kids napped. An hour of quiet sounded luxurious — time to gather my thoughts, pee in peace, or even fold laundry without background chatter. But that wasn’t — and still isn’t — my story.

So this time, I thought maybe I’d do things differently. That if I leaned into consistency, I could make life easier for all of us.

For a couple of weeks, it even worked. He’d go down around 7:30 or 8 like clockwork, and I started to think maybe we’d found our rhythm.

Then it all fell apart again.

For about a week, we’d turn on our little Cloud B fawn — the one with the soft light and the gentle babbling-brook sounds — and he’d drift off without nursing. It felt like progress. Then we had a swim-meet weekend, and everything changed. From that point on, he refused to sleep unless he was attached.

Now, we sit in the car during swim practice, nursing while the older kids train, and half the time he’s asleep by six. Other times, he’s wide-awake, completely alert, and fascinated by the movement of the water — eyes following the ripples and splashes as the light dances across the pool.

Naps? Fluid. No matter how carefully I read the cues or how much I try to follow a wake-eat-play-sleep pattern, it shifts daily.

And to the social-media moms who say they just changed one thing and now their perfect angel sleeps through the night — if that makes you feel a little less capable, you’re not alone.

If you’re panicking because you’re returning to work soon and someone else will have to navigate your baby’s wild rhythm, you’re not alone either.

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🌙 Why It’s Not You — It’s Biology

At this age — around four to six months — babies are still developing their internal clocks. It’s not lack of effort; it’s just how they’re wired.

Around 3–4 months, babies begin to develop more predictable 24-hour sleep and feeding patterns, though naps can still vary widely from day to day (Cleveland Clinic). By 5–7 months, wake windows typically stretch from about two to four hours, depending on the baby’s temperament, growth, and daily rhythm (Cleveland Clinic). Most babies in this stage need approximately 12–16 hours of total sleep over a 24-hour period, including naps (American Academy of Sleep Medicine via Cleveland Clinic). The well-known four-month sleep regression isn’t really a setback — it’s a neurological sign of growth as babies shift from newborn sleep cycles to more mature patterns (Cleveland Clinic).

None of that means you’re failing. It just means you’re parenting a small human who’s still learning how to exist in time.

It’s beautiful, frustrating, and altogether mind-boggling.

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🩷 Finding a Rhythm (Not a Schedule)

What’s helping me right now is letting go of the idea that “consistency” means same time every day.

Instead, I’m looking for consistency in how we end our days, not when.

Some nights it’s a proper bedtime routine. Other nights it’s a car nap at swim practice followed by a feed and a soft landing into sleep. Either way, we get there.

I remind myself that rhythm can be felt, not timed — the pattern of dimming lights, quieter voices, a change in pace. Babies recognize that.

And when it doesn’t happen? We try again tomorrow.

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☁️ For the Mom Who’s Tired of Trying to Time Everything

If you’re fighting the feeling that everyone else has a system and you don’t — you’re not broken.

You’re just living a different version of motherhood, one led more by intuition than by clock.

And that matters.

Because not every family runs on structure. Some thrive on flow.

There’s beauty in that too — the kind that shows up when you stop checking the time and start noticing the moment.

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🌸 Gentle Reminder

This stage won’t last forever. The sleep, the unpredictability, the long evenings in the car with a nursing baby, or sitting poolside watching your older kids swim — it all shifts, slowly, until one day it doesn’t feel so impossible.

For now, the goal isn’t to get it perfect.

It’s to find peace inside the mess — and to cherish the flow and chaos, because it’s those little moments in the middle of it all that you’ll remember.

Like my oldest son running his fingers through my hair while we read his favorite story.

Or my daughter’s whispered questions in the dark of night, cuddled into my arms while we all tried to drift back to sleep.

Author’s Note
Motherhood isn’t a test you can pass. It’s a rhythm you learn to move with—one day calm, the next chaotic. Writing these reflections helps me notice the beauty in both. If you’ve found yourself somewhere between structure and surrender, you’re not alone here.