Medical disclaimer

MoonWise is a tracking tool with an informational assistant attached. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and nothing in it — not the stats, not the wake windows, not the schedules, not a word Luna says — is medical advice or a substitute for care from a qualified professional.

Your pediatrician, family doctor, midwife, nurse practitioner, lactation consultant or public-health nurse knows your child. We know what you logged. Those are very different things, and when they disagree, they win.

Luna is a language model. She reads your baby’s logged history and a knowledge base of child-development research, and she answers directly rather than hedging — that directness is deliberate, because vague advice is useless to an exhausted parent at 4am. It also means she can be confidently wrong.

She has no eyes on your child, no examination, no chart, no weight curve and no history beyond what is in the app. She cannot see a rash, hear a cough, feel a fever, or notice the thing you have not thought to mention. She does not know about a prematurity adjustment, a diagnosis, a medication or a feeding difficulty unless you tell her.

Treat her the way you would treat a very well-read friend: worth listening to, worth arguing with, and not who you call in an emergency.

Every sleep-related suggestion in MoonWise is written to sit inside the American Academy of Pediatrics’ safe-sleep recommendations. If anything in this app ever appears to contradict them, the AAP is right and we have a bug — please tell us. The short form:

• On the back, every sleep, for every nap and every night, until the first birthday.
• On a firm, flat, separate surface — a crib, bassinet or play yard with a fitted sheet and nothing else. No inclined sleepers, no car seats or swings for unsupervised sleep, no couch, no armchair.
• An empty sleep space. No pillows, loose blankets, bumpers, positioners or soft toys.
• Room-sharing without bed-sharing, ideally for at least the first six months.
• Stop swaddling the moment your baby shows any sign of rolling. That is a suffocation cutoff, not a preference — it is not negotiable and it is not about what settles them best.
• No smoking, and no impaired caregiving around sleep — alcohol, cannabis and sedating medication all change how safely you can share a room with a baby.

The AAP updates this guidance; read it from the source at aap.org/safesleep. In Canada, the Canadian Paediatric Society and Health Canada publish equivalent guidance.

MoonWise describes sleep-training methods — what they are, how they work, and what the research says about them — because parents ask. Describing a method is not recommending it, and none of them is required. Whether to sleep train at all, and how, is a decision for your family, worth talking through with your child’s doctor first, especially if there is any concern about weight gain, feeding, reflux, a medical condition, or prematurity.

This is not a complete list, and no list replaces your instinct. If something feels wrong with your baby, get them seen — nobody has ever been criticised for calling about a baby who turned out to be fine.

• Any fever in a baby under 3 months old.
• Trouble breathing: fast or laboured breathing, grunting, pauses, ribs pulling in, or blue/grey lips or face.
• Unusually hard to wake, floppy, unresponsive, or crying in a way that is not their usual cry and will not settle.
• Signs of dehydration — far fewer wet diapers than normal, no tears, a dry mouth, a sunken soft spot.
• Blood in stool or vomit, persistent vomiting, or prolonged severe diarrhea.
• Not feeding, refusing feeds repeatedly, or not gaining weight the way their care team expects.
• A seizure, a head injury, a fall, or a choking episode.

If you think it is an emergency, call your local emergency number or go to the nearest emergency department. Do not ask Luna first.

Sleep deprivation is not a character flaw and postpartum depression and anxiety are common, treatable, and not something to push through alone. If you are not okay — or if the way you feel about your baby frightens you — please talk to your doctor, a public-health nurse, or a crisis line today. That is a better use of the next ten minutes than any app.

Use MoonWise to see your baby’s patterns clearly and to think out loud with Luna. Use a professional to make decisions about your child’s health. Keep the two jobs separate and the app is genuinely useful; confuse them and it is not.

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