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Naptime and bedtime have been extraordinarily unpredictable — especially in the wake of a pandemic that’s kept my girls home with me.

My 10-month-old cluster feeding like a newborn hasn’t helped either.

Trying to figure out her sleep schedule along with playing chef, teacher, mediator, camp counselor and nurse all while working from home is downright tiring.

But, as the modern-day adage goes: there’s an app for that.

Huckleberry is an app designed to improve children’s sleep by studying their natural rhythms and creating a customized strategy for you to follow. With a premium plan, AI and pediatric sleep experts team up to personalize your family’s sleep guide.

Sleep consultants can cost up to $100 a session, and Huckleberry helps make pediatric sleep care affordable. The National Sleep Foundation found that 76 percent of parents want to change something about their child’s sleep, and 42 percent of children between 6 months and 5 years wake up a parent every night.

Huckleberry, a small California-based startup, has welcomed more than 500,000 families, including mine, in its short existence. It is designed for children from birth up to 5-years old. 

The free app is just as useful as the premium, because you’ll still benefit from the SweetSpot®. The Huckleberry hallmark is by far my favorite function.

The feature, which kicks in at 2-months old, is an absolute gem. It predicts when your child will be ready for his or her next sleep — and it’s impressively accurate! 

Once you start tracking your child’s sleep, the app analyzes natural habits, developmental stages and more to make the SweetSpot predictions.

After a couple days of tracking my youngest daughter’s sleep, I got this cute notification alerting me of her SweetSpot for a three-nap day. It pops up about 40 minutes before the suggested time and adjusts for different nap amounts as you transition. When my baby was due for rest, I could see sleepiness brewing in her little eyes.

I put on her favorite song (Brian McKnight’s Anytime for the soulful child), and she was out!

I’ve since looked forward to the SweetSpot notifications because the app is doing work that I don’t have to.

I’ve been using the premium plan, so I’m currently following the customized sleep guidance the experts sent after I submitted three day’s worth of tracked sleep. The paid feature was detailed and unique.

Free or premium, moms looking for a little relief in planning and improving sleep can benefit from Huckleberry’s offerings.

Huckleberry’s Free App: The Basics

Color coding day and night rest, the app is easy to use and tracks more than just sleep. You can also keep a running diary of your child’s eating, diapers, temperature and even your pumping.

Its minimalist design is colorful and fun.

You can customize your dashboard within the app to choose your focus area. And along with the SweetSpot predictor, you’ll also have access to monthly charts, which puts your sleep averages on one screen. 

And no worries when it comes to tracking sleep; you’re able to go into the sleep function and adjust the time (there have been quite a few instances when I looked at what time she went down but forgot to start the timer at that moment).

When you track sleep, you can include how the baby went to sleep and any other pertinent notes after a nap or night’s rest (did the baby go to sleep while being nursed, held, rocked, driven in a car and so on). I nurse my baby to sleep most of the time, and the experts addressed that when creating my sleep plan.

Huckleberry is also very clear that it is not a medical provider. The app was simply created by parents who’ve been there.

Why Moms Need It

Huckleberry takes some weight off your shoulders.

That alone makes it worth a shot, but in the long run, it helps creates consistency for your little one. And the app adjusts as your child grows.

I was all over the place when we first went into quarantine.

Seeing that SweetSpot holds me accountable. When I get the notification, I start preparing for sleep — turning the lights down, playing old faithful Brian McKnight (or white noise as was noted in my sleep plan) and making sure to step away from my computer. It provides plenty of notice to prepare my daughter’s sleep environment, and let me tell you: it’s worked.  

Before Huckleberry, I didn’t think to dedicate any real effort to get her to sleep. I didn’t have the energy. I let her sleep when she felt like it without considering her patterns.

She’s been sleeping more consistently through the night and taking more regular naps, which helps improve her — and my — overall mood. When we hit her marks, I’ve also noticed she doesn’t wake up cranky either.  

Huckleberry has given me the plan, guidance and consistency I never knew I needed.