Let me reassure you. It's very, very real and once you get into a really good groove of managing awake times and preventing overtiredness wherever possible, your naps can improve and your nights will too. Not to mention feeds, mood and your sanity.

When your baby wakes to start their day their sleep pressure will be nice and low after a good night sleep. It then starts building. It will bubble along until it reaches its maximum point - the sweet spot. This is when your baby is tired and well-rested and receptive to settling. If this nap is missed then the pressure continues to bubble and blow. Enter 'cortisol' to kindly flood the system.

Cortisol prevents your little one from feeling tired and ready for sleep. They will appear to have a second wind, it will confuse parents because there are no longer any tired signs and while its been hours since the last nap, the end is no where in sight.

The battle begins when you try and get them down. Pulling out allll the big guns like rocking, holding, patting, feeding, driving, bouncing, shushing still takes blood, sweat and tears (from everyone) to get them down.

Phew ! They're finally asleep.

But wait.... there's still more.

The cortisol prevents your baby from reaching a deep phase of sleep. Overtired babies tend to wake 30-45mins after going to bed and continue to wake up repeatedly in the first half of the night.

They are more likely to start their day around 5am.

Because they have woken a gazillion times overnight they start their day slightly overtired. Compound this with another late nap and you can then see how it doesn't take much for a baby to become chronically overtired.

I don't know any parent who deliberately sets out to have an overtired child. Speaking from experience, it can honestly happen so easily!

But it's also one of the easiset things to avoid when you have the tools..... awake times.

Using awake times is not sleep training. It's simply understanding your baby's limits and optimising their sleep potential.