About the Lab

One writer, a small stack of studies, and a rule against inventing numbers to fill a chart.

Why this exists

Most baby sleep advice is written to be reassuring, and it is very good at that. What it is less good at is telling you where a number came from. You will read that a four-month-old can stay awake for two hours, and nowhere on the page will it say whether that came from a study, a textbook, a sleep consultant's experience, or a guess that got copied.

This site is an attempt at the opposite. Every range published here is traceable to something you can open: a consensus statement, a review, national guidance. Where the evidence is thin, the page says so instead of sounding confident. Where the evidence gives a range, the range is printed in full, edges and all.

It is a small site on purpose. A new guide appears when it can be sourced properly, not on a publishing calendar.

A nursery nurse beside wooden cots on a covered veranda, Netherlands, c. 1952 — Cots on a covered veranda, c. 1952. Nationaal Archief, CC0.

A baby lying awake in a metal cot, Netherlands, 1952 — Awake in a metal cot, 1952. Nationaal Archief, CC0.

A small child standing in a wooden cot holding the rail, Netherlands, 1952 — Standing before walking, 1952. Nationaal Archief, CC0.

The photographs are public-domain scans from the Nationaal Archief's collection, chosen because a 1950s nursery is a useful reminder that babies have always slept badly and the furniture has changed more than the babies.

Who writes it

Mara Ellison is a former paediatric nurse and the mother of two children who did not read any of this. She spent six years on a children's ward watching families get handed sleep advice that contradicted the advice they had been handed the week before, and started writing down which parts were actually supported.

Everything on the site is written and checked by her. There is no freelance pool, no AI-generated drafts, and no guest posts. If a page carries a name at the bottom, that person wrote it and can defend every number on it.

She is not a doctor, and this is not a clinic. The site exists to make the research legible, not to diagnose anything. The editorial policy sets out the rest of it.

What this site will not do

It will not sell you a course to unlock the good advice. The guides are the whole thing. There is no upsell, no template pack, no consultation funnel at the end of the page.
It will not put a number on something that has no number. If the honest answer is "somewhere between four and six hours, and it depends", that is what the page says.
It will not tell you that you have damaged your child. Nothing in the sleep literature supports the guilt that gets sold alongside it.
It will not recommend a method. The comparison pages lay out what the evidence says about each approach. Which one fits your family is not a question a website can answer.

If something on the site is wrong, the correction is welcome and gets published. Write tohello@sleepschedulelab.com.