“Five more minutes” — every night, for an hour
Water. Wee. One more story. A different teddy. Bedtime has become a negotiation you lose slowly.
The Negotiator · Gradual Retreat
It's 3:12am. They're in your bed again. Starfished.
Answer 90 seconds of questions and get a personalised night-by-night sleep plan for your child. The Night Shift gives you a clear 14-night reset, word-for-word scripts, and a tracker that shows whether things are improving.
It saves to your account, opens on any phone you sign in from, and installs to your home screen — so tonight's step is always one tap away.
- 14
- nights, one small step each
- 6
- methods, matched to your child
- £27
- instead of £300–£1,000
Does this sound like your night?
Four patterns. Yours is one of them.
The assessment reads your child's actual pattern and assigns a profile — because the plan for a contact sleeper and the plan for a 2am visitor are not the same plan, and following the wrong one is why most attempts fail.
They cannot fall asleep unless you're touching them
Cuddled, fed, hand held, hair stroked. The moment you creep out, they surface — and it starts again.
The Contact Sleeper · Camping Out
It's 3:12am and they're in your bed. Starfished.
They go down fine. Then the door opens in the dark and nobody has the fight left in them at 3am.
The Night Visitor · Rapid Return
Awake and singing at 4:58am
Bedtime is fine, the night is fine, and then the day starts before the heating does.
The Early Bird · Wake-Up Signal
The reframe
The waking isn't the problem
Every child surfaces four to six times a night. So do you. The problem is that they can't get back to sleep without recreating the conditions they fell asleep in — if they fell asleep being cuddled, they need a cuddle at 2am. Fix bedtime independence first and the night wakes largely resolve themselves.
“However they fall asleep at 7pm is what they'll ask for at 2am.”
- 1. Bedtime
- 2. Night wakes
- 3. Early rising
Always in that order, never all at once. Your plan is sequenced for you, so you're only ever changing one thing.
Your first ten minutes
You could have tonight's plan before the kettle boils
There is no course to work through and no theory to get on top of first. You start it now, in daylight, and you walk into tonight knowing exactly what you are doing.
- Minute 0–4
Answer ten questions
Age, sleep setup, how they fall asleep, how many times they surface, what you're currently doing at 3am, and how much is left in your tank. No account, no card, nothing to download.
- Minute 4–5
Read your child's profile
One of four patterns — Contact Sleeper, Negotiator, Night Visitor, Early Bird — with the one reframe that explains why the last three months haven't worked. Most parents recognise their child in the first sentence.
- Minute 5–8
Your 14 nights appear, already written
Gradual Retreat, Camping Out, Rapid Return or the Early Bird arc, sequenced night by night for your setup. Every night is browsable from the start, so you can see exactly where this ends before you begin.
- Minute 8–10
Run tonight
One card: tonight's step, the words to say, and what to do when it goes wrong. Print the routine card for the wall and the handover sheet for whoever else does bedtime. Then close the app and go and do it.
By bedtime you are not guessing. That is the whole difference between a fourteenth bad night and the first night of the end of it.
Inside the app
Not a PDF. An interactive programme that knows what night you're on.
One card. Under 150 words.
Tonight's step, your exact words, and what to do if it goes wrong. Nothing to decide, nothing to scroll.
- No decisions at 3am
- One step, one script, one action. Everything else is hidden until you need it.
- Always on tonight's night
- Read ahead whenever you like — it still opens on the night you're actually doing, saved to your account.
Night 6 of 14 · Chair to the middle
Move the chair halfway
- Same routine, same words, same time.
- Sit halfway between the bed and the door.
- Sit still. Be deliberately boring.
I'm here. It's sleep time. I'll see you in the morning.
Log tonight — 30 seconds
It's yours, properly
It lives on your phone, not in a folder
Installs to your home screen
Add it once and it sits next to your other apps. One tap from the lock screen and it opens full-screen — no browser bar, no hunting for a link at 3am.
Signs you in with your email
No password to forget. Type your email, a sign-in link lands in your inbox, and you're in. That's the whole login.
New phone, same programme
Change device, borrow your partner's phone, switch to the iPad. Enter your email and you're back on tonight's night with every log intact.
Everything saves itself
Your child's profile, your plan, your logs, your tracker and your routine live on your account — not in this browser tab. Nothing to back up, nothing to lose.
The arc
Your fourteen nights
Every night is readable from day one, and the app keeps you on tonight's card so you're only ever doing one thing. The example below is the Gradual Retreat arc — yours is written for your child's profile and age.
Nights 1–2
Foundations
Change nothing yet. Lock the routine, audit the room, start logging an honest baseline.
Nights 3–4
Chair beside the bed
Present, calm and deliberately boring. A script for every callback and every wobble.
Nights 5–6
Chair to the middle
The night-wake protocol activates: the same position at 2am as at bedtime.
Nights 7–8
Chair to the doorway
Halfway. This is usually the night your chart visibly turns.
Nights 9–10
Just outside the door
Promise-based check-ins — and always, always coming back when you said you would.
Nights 11–12
The Excuse-Me Drill
Brief, believable exits, stretching gently. They practise being alone and calm.
Nights 13–14
Independent settling
Goodnight, leave, scheduled check-ins only. Graduation, and then Maintenance mode.
And then what?
What happens after night 14
The fortnight is where sleep changes. What keeps it changed is everything that comes after it — and that's included, not sold to you later.
Nights 15–21: consolidation
You don't get dropped on night 14. A seven-night bridge holds the gain while the new habit sets, with the reassurance steps most plans leave out.
Maintenance mode, for normal life
Teeth, holidays, a nursery change, a bug going round. Maintenance tells you what to protect and what you can safely let slide for a few days.
The 3-Night Re-set
For the regression that will absolutely come. A short, written protocol that pulls sleep back without starting the fortnight again.
Yours for life
Sign in in eight months, or with your next child at the right age, and all of it is still there waiting.
Personalisation
Four profiles, four different fortnights
The Contact Sleeper
Camping OutFalls asleep only with touch — feeding, cuddling, a hand on their back.
Night one changes nothing but the room and the routine. Then touch fades to voice, voice to presence, presence to distance.
The Negotiator
Gradual RetreatBedtime takes an hour of stalling, requests and rising panic.
Night one you write the routine down and stop improvising. The chair starts beside the bed and walks to the door.
The Night Visitor
Rapid ReturnGoes down fine, then appears at your bedside at 2am — or you wake up already cuddling them.
Night one sets one line and one action, repeated identically. The honest peak is nights 2–3, and the app tells you so in advance.
The Early Bird
Wake-Up SignalUp before 5:30am, cheerful, ready for the day. You are not.
Night one measures the true baseline wake time. Then a visual wake-up signal, moved in small, boring increments.
What you get
Everything a consultant would build for you — for £27
UK sleep consultants charge £300 to £1,000 for a package. This is honestly most of what they'd build for you, and you can start tonight.
- Personalised 14-Night Sleep Reset, built from your child's exact pattern
- The complete Method Library — all 6 methods, in full
- The Script Bank — word-for-word, for every 3am moment
- Night-by-night tracker with progress charts
- 3am SOS mode
- Bedtime Routine Builder + printable card for the wall
- Partner / grandparent handover sheet (printable)
- A permanent account — your plan, logs and tracker saved and waiting on any device you sign in from
- Installs to your home screen and opens like an app, so it's one tap away at 3am
- Nights 15–21 consolidation, Maintenance mode + the 3-Night Re-set, for every future regressionYours for life
All of it, for less than a takeaway — £27.
One purchase covers one child.
Sleep consultant
£300–£1,000
Personalised, but a few calls and a PDF. Nothing on your phone at 3am.
A sleep book
£12
General advice for a general child. You work out your own plan, then keep your own place in it.
The Night Shift
£27
Personalised plan, scripts, tracker and 3am mode — saved to your account, on your home screen, night by night.
Why this works
Why this works
Built on established graduated-settling methods used by sleep consultants.
Every plan is personalised from a 90-second assessment of your child's exact sleep pattern, then delivered as a night-by-night 14-night reset — one card per night, word-for-word scripts, and a tracker that shows the wake-ups falling.
I built this because I've been the dad on the landing floor at 9:40pm, and the one doing sums at 3am about how much sleep I've got left. I'm not a sleep consultant charging hundreds for a package — I'm a parent who needed a plan that told me exactly what to do tonight, stuck to it for a fortnight, and got our evenings back. That's what The Night Shift is: the plan I wish someone had handed me.
Before you ask
The questions every tired parent asks
Care, not fine print
When to talk to your GP instead
This plan is for healthy children aged 1–7 with learned sleep habits. Loud snoring, gasping or pauses in breathing, extreme distress that never improves, suspected reflux or pain, or night terrors deserve a doctor, not an app — as does any instinct that something is medically wrong.
The Night Shift — £27
Instant access. Your personalised plan starts tonight.
Saved to your account · opens on any device · yours for life