6 Secrets to Solving Split Nights and False Starts

Overview

In today’s article we will be pulling back the curtain on how to know whether your baby is experiencing split nights or false starts – and what to do about each one.

You will learn:

The difference between split nights and false starts
The two most common causes for split nights
The four most common causes for false starts
The most effective, actionable solutions to solve these split nights and false starts once and for all

What Are Split Nights?

So what do I mean when I say split nights?

A split night is when your baby goes to bed for the evening, and sleeps well for a solid chunk, and then suddenly wakes and stays awake for up to 2 to 3 hours, and then falls back asleep and sleeps well for the rest of the night.

Typically, split nights are split into 2 solid chunks of sleep – one at the start of the night and one at the end.

Split nights are different than run-of-the-mill night wakings because of their nature – often times, baby seems perfectly content during the split night. Or perhaps bored or hungry. But no matter what you do to try to get them back to sleep during those hours in the middle of the night, they simply won’t go back to sleep until that stretch of awake time is up.

It’s kind of like a wake window in the middle of the night.

What Are False Starts?

False starts are different. A false start happens shortly after baby goes to bed for the night. You put baby to bed at say, 7:30 pm. And then, like clockwork, he’s up again 30 minutes to an hour later and staying awake for another wake window.

It’s like baby’s treating bedtime like another nap. Falling asleep and waking up after a single sleep cycle.

Why Is My Baby Having Split Nights and False Starts?

And both split nights and false starts are incredibly frustrating.

You may be thinking to yourself, what the heck is going on? I’ve been following the advice I read on Instagram, or that my sleep consultant gave me. And still, we’re experiencing these false starts or split nights.

Ready to tear your hair out?

Don’t. (Pretty please. I’m sure you have lovely hair.)

There’s a solution, I promise.

Why Is My Baby Having Split Nights?

Let’s begin by talking about split nights.

A couple years ago, I was approached by a mom who was at her wits end. Her 4-year-old was waking up in the middle of the night, coming downstairs to lay on the couch, and staying awake for hours before falling back asleep. Hours. Every night.

She was exhausted and ready to throw in the towel.

So what’s the problem? Well, as I’m sure you’ve guessed if you’ve been researching the baby and young child sleep space for any amount of time now, there are a myriad of different areas that could be affecting the child’s sleep.

There are, however, 2 most common reasons why babies and kiddos have split nights.

The first most common reason why babies and young children have split nights is lack of sleep pressure.
Sleep pressure is a biological force in your body – and your baby’s body – that makes you ready to fall asleep. Not enough sleep pressure means that even if you want to fall asleep, you likely won’t be able to.
The second most common reason for split nights is type and timing of parent intervention – this means how and when parents respond when their kiddo wakes in the middle of the night. And I can hear you now – saying that you’ve been trying to pull back. Absolutely. I get it! I’m not saying you shouldn’t respond at all. In the next section we’ll talk about how to adjust those responses so your kiddo can go back to sleep more easily.

How to Solve Split Nights

Now, without further ado, let’s talk about how to solve split nights.

Split Night Cause: Lack of Sleep Pressure

If the cause of your baby’s split nights is lack of sleep pressure – meaning that your baby is simply not tired enough – the solution that typically works best is carefully extending wake windows during the day. Now I say carefully, because we don’t want to cause more sleep problems by extending them too much and making your baby overtired – which will also cause nap struggles and/or more night wakings and exacerbate the problem rather than solve it.

So – carefully. Carefully extend the wake windows a bit. This means that if your baby is at 2 hour wake windows, try 2 hours and 15 minutes first for each wake window. Slow and steady. Try it for 5 consecutive days. If it’s getting better, but still not quite there yet, try extending wake windows another 15 minutes.

And if you’ve extended the wake window more and more and it’s not helping – or worse yet – the wake up in the middle of the night is getting longer, then stop and reassess. The cause might not have been sleep pressure.

Split Night Cause: Intervention

Now let’s talk about if you and your baby are suffering through split nights and the cause is the second most common reason – type and timing of parent intervention.

Remember, this is not to say that you can’t intervene when your child cries in the middle of the night. What I want you to do is assess how you respond.

This means:

Do your respond immediately, or allow her time to fall back asleep? (Of course, this only applies when you can tell it’s a normal cry and not an emergency that needs to be responded to immediately.) Sometimes babies cry out while they’re still sleeping, or grunt or squirm. For newborns this happens in 50% of their sleep – called active sleep.
For babies beyond the newborn phase, they may come to the surface of sleep and cry or grumble because they’re still tired. And if we intervene too quickly, we may stimulate them to the point that they wake fully and can’t fall back asleep.
But if we give them 5 minutes to squirm and grumble and complain, they may very well fall back asleep on their own.
Secondly, ask yourself if when you do intervene, do you accidentally stimulate baby too much? Do you turn a light on, or go out in the living room, or talk to him more than just a few words?
This is relevant to both babies – who will be stimulated if we turn on lights and bring them into the living room to nurse or the kitchen to make a bottle - and toddlers and young children if we turn on a light, or bring them into the living room so we can lie down because we’re exhausted. Bringing them out of their room as a toddler or young child is exciting and rewarding, and who wants to sleep anymore if there’s tv or toys available?
If you do need to turn on a light, make sure it’s extremely dim and a red or orange hue if at all possible. Amazon has some red nightlights you can turn on and off. (See the bottom of this section for a link to the one I would get if we needed one.)
And if you need to nurse, try to keep in in the bedroom at night. I know you know how important it is to keep baby awake for the full feed – just make sure your efforts aren’t too stimulating. I know, it’s a fine line. A difficult balance. Do your best.
Making a bottle can be trickier – you want to pick baby up if they’re crying, but carrying them into the kitchen might wake them up fully and overstimulate them.
If you have a spouse or parenting partner, this is the time to wake them and ask them to please go make a bottle in the kitchen. I know this is hard. If you think it will be faster and – this is very important - your partner won’t fall asleep holding the baby, you can ask them to hold baby and you run to the kitchen to make a bottle.
And if you don’t have a spouse or parenting partner, or there really isn’t any asking them to make a bottle or hold the baby, then let baby squirm and cry in bed – as long as they’re safe – and you go to the kitchen quickly to make a bottle.
Bonus solution – if split nights are happening because your baby has day-night confusion, this is by far most common in the newborn phase, when baby’s circadian rhythm is developing. This is a time when it’s important to wake a sleeping baby – during the day, let baby nap for 30 min to 3 hours in the first 6 weeks, or 30 min to 2 hours at a time until he’s 3 months old. Then, at that 3- or 2-hour mark, wake him and keep him awake for the next wake window. Give him a feed, and give him daylight – if you can, the absolute best thing to do during this wake window is take him outside. Remember to protect his delicate baby skin from too much sun and give him some daylight exposure. Sunlight is one of the most important parts of establishing his circadian rhythm – his body clock, his wake-sleep cycle.

Why Is My Baby Having False Starts?

Now let’s shift to talking about false starts.

False starts – when your baby treats bedtime like another nap – tend to be more common than split nights.

False starts are commonly caused by 4 things:

First, baby may be having false starts because the wake window before bed is too long. Some babies function best on wake windows that vary slightly throughout the day. For example, maybe your baby’s wake windows are 2 hours, 2 hours, 2 ½ hours.
Sometimes, however, parents accidentally keep baby up too late at the end of the day for a myriad of reasons – they want to make it to the regular bedtime, one or both parents come home and want to spend time with baby before baby has to go to bed, the parents want to go out to eat or get out of the house at the end of the day and can’t get a babysitter.
Whatever the case may be, if your baby is having false starts, this is definitely one area to look at to see if there are any changes you can make. A full, uninterrupted night’s sleep for baby – and you – is worth it. Trust me.
A second common cause of false starts is putting baby to bed drowsy. Beyond the newborn phase, putting baby to bed drowsy is just like putting them to bed asleep. Once baby is around 3 months old and up, he’s aware enough of his surroundings to recognize what’s happening when he gets drowsy and falls asleep.
This means that when he has a brief awakening after a sleep cycle, his brain will force him fully awake thinking that it can’t fall back asleep unless that same situation in which he fell asleep is there. So if you were holding him or singing to him when he became drowsy, that’s what his brain is looking for when he has the brief awakening. And if it’s not there when he hits the surface of sleep, and he wakes up fully, it can be too late. He’ll be up.
Even if this wasn’t a sleep association before, we can create new ones just by accidentally putting baby to bed when he’s already drowsy.
A third common cause of false starts is wake window imbalance during the day.
So remember when we mentioned that too long of a final wake window can cause false starts? And how some babies do function better with varying wake windows throughout the day?
Well sometimes, we assume they need varying wake windows throughout the day, and we implement them without baby really needing varied wake windows. Then, she becomes overtired from being awake too long or her sleep pressure isn’t high enough because of too short of a wake window.
And sometimes when babies do need varied wake windows, we accidentally vary them too much. For example, if your baby’s wake windows look like 2 hours, then 3 hours, then 4 hours, that’s typically too wide of a range for babies. And, she’ll either be overtired or sleep pressure won’t be high enough or back and forth throughout the day, and it will cause a false start at night.
A fourth and final common cause of false starts is persistent sleep associations. A sleep association is anything your baby associates with falling asleep. We all have them. For me, it’s white noise, darkness, lying down, and being covered with a blanket. For babies, it can be all these things and more, like feeding to sleep, being rocked to sleep, patting baby and “shh”ing until she falls asleep, etc.
Sometimes we fall back into old habits or we don’t realize that what we’re doing is soothing baby to the point of getting drowsy or falling asleep. It’s especially hard when it’s the end of the day and we’re tired, and we just want baby to fall asleep.
I know it’s tricky. If you’re experiencing false starts, just ask yourself if there could be any lingering sleep associations. Just like with solving split nights, solving false starts once and for all will be worth it.

How to Solve False Starts

Now let’s talk about how to solve those false starts.

First, if you think baby is having false starts because that final wake window is too long, then try shortening it. You can go in increments of 15 minutes if you had chosen that length of wake window intentionally.
For example, if your wake windows are 2 hours, 2 hours 15 min, 2 hours 30 min, you can first try shortening that last wake window to 2 hours 15 min.
And if you’re 100% guessing on what length of wake windows your baby needs, never fear. Send me a message with the Subject Line: “Newborn to 3 Years Wake Windows Chart - From Article”, and I will send you my Newborn to 3 Years Wake Windows by Age Chart.
Or if your last wake window is way too long and you just realized it, like if baby’s wake windows are 2 hours, 2 hours 15 minutes, and 4 hours – then go ahead and shorten that last wake window significantly. In this example with a 5-month-old, you might try 2 hours 15 minutes from the get-go.
Prioritizing getting baby to bed on-time can be a difficult decision if it means staying home when you don’t have a babysitter, not getting to spend time with your baby at the end of the day, etc.
If this is the case, get creative in what your solutions look like:
- Get out of the house to meet up with friends earlier in the day, even if that means changing the date. Or bite the bullet and ask someone you trust to babysit. Or have a date with your spouse at home.
- Spend special time with your baby in the morning instead of in the evening if you don’t get home until after baby is in bed. Or if you get home at bedtime, you can be the one to put baby to bed, and let the bedtime routine be your special time with baby each day.
And remember, you won’t feel this tight-on-time forever. Your baby’s sleep needs change quite rapidly in the first couple years of life. Hang in there. I know you don’t want to miss out on this time - and you shouldn’t!! Get creative.
Secondly, if you think your baby is experiencing false starts because you’re accidentally putting her to bed drowsy, then do what you need to do to keep her awake while getting her to bed. This might mean getting her to bed a little earlier, or engaging with her more while you get her ready for bed. Or feeding earlier in the bedtime routine if you know that makes her super drowsy – because the other activities of getting ready for bed – like putting on pjs – can reawaken her a little before you pop her in her bed.
It’s a delicate balance. You want her to be tired, but not already slipping toward sleep before you lie her down.
Third, if wake windows are varied throughout the day, and you think that may be the cause of your baby’s false starts, then play around with them and make them more consistent to see if that helps. That doesn’t mean that they have to be exactly the same down to the minute. Some babies do need varied wake windows. But lessen the variation and see if it helps.
And lastly, if you think there are some sleep associations that are hanging on, be very conscientious of what you’re doing to help get baby ready for sleep. If you think she’s associating one of the things you’re doing with falling asleep – like rocking in a chair or patting her bum, try removing it for a time and see if that helps.