My neighbor Sarah thinks I’m insane. Not because of the usual reasons (there are plenty) but because I told her I set an alarm every three hours to wake my newborn. At night. Voluntarily.

She looked at me the way you’d look at someone who announced they were taking up recreational root canals.

“Why would you wake a sleeping baby?” she whispered, looking around as if afraid someone might be listening. “Everyone says you should never wake a sleeping baby.”

Yeah… Everyone also says “sleep when the baby sleeps,” “enjoy every moment,” and “you’re going to miss this.” But you have a black eye on your face from the can of Spaghetti-O’s your toddler rage chucked at you yesterday because you had the fucking audacity to peel and slice his banana. Everyone says a lot of useless garbage that sounds poetic on a Pinterest board, but it means absolutely nothing at 3 a.m.

The Logic Nobody Wants to Hear

Here’s the thing: a baby who wakes you at random intervals is running the show. A baby who gets woken on your schedule is learning that food comes at predictable times, day and night are different things, and their internal clock exists for a reason.

When you wait for hunger cries, you’re always reactive. Always behind. Always scrambling in the dark trying to figure out if that grunt was a hunger cue or just a really aggressive fart. By the time they’re screaming, they’re overtired AND starving, which means they’ll stress-eat, pass out on the boob, and be up again in ninety minutes.

When you wake them on a schedule? They eat a full meal because you caught them before desperation mode. They’re alert enough to actually finish the feed. And you set their internal clock so their body starts expecting food at those times, which means eventually they don’t need it anymore.

“But They Were Sleeping! Why Would You—”

Because I’m playing the long game, Karen. That six-hour stretch your baby randomly did last Tuesday? The one that gave you false hope? It wasn’t sustainable. It was a fluke. And the next night, they were up every forty-five minutes because their whole rhythm was off.

Controlled, predictable feeds (even when it means waking them) builds the foundation that lets you eventually drop those feeds entirely. You’re spending three hours now to gain eight hours later. That’s not insanity. That’s an investment in your future sleep.

The Part Where My Husband Thought I’d Lost It

Week one of alarms. It’s 2 a.m. My phone blares. My husband startles awake and slurs, “Is the baby crying?”

“No,” I say, already swinging my legs out of bed. “He’s sleeping. I’m going to wake him up.”

The silence that followed was so loud I could hear him blinking.

By week four, when our baby was giving us a five-hour stretch without a sound, that same husband said (and I quote) “You’re a genius and I’m sorry I doubted you.” I made him repeat it. Twice. For the record.

Night Is Not for Experimenting

Night is for: wake on alarm, feed, back to bed. No playtime. No bright lights. No stimulation. No “well, he seems awake so maybe I’ll do some tummy time.” Absolutely not. Nighttime feeds are a military operation: efficient, boring, and over in fifteen minutes.

The dream feed (a late-night feed given while your baby is still mostly asleep, usually around 10:30 p.m., to fill their tank before your own bedtime) at 10:30 or 11 p.m.? You don’t even fully wake them. Slide in, offer the feed, change if needed, slide back out like a dairy-themed ninja.

My upcoming book Mom Awakened lays out the exact alarm schedule: when to set them, when to start pushing them later, and when you finally get to turn them off for good. Coming soon.

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Clara Harper is a proud alarm-setter, a two-time sleep training veteran, and the reason her husband now believes in schedules. She wrote Mom Interrupted during nap time (scheduled nap time, obviously). Find her on TikTok.

If your toddler’s nighttime fears are bigger than their crib can hold, Anxiety Is My Monster helps little ones name the worry and shrink it down to size.