Snowchickie- my DD did EXACTLY the same as yours for months from around 3 to 6 months and it drove me/us bananas. She was just never settled for the night until 10/11pm no matter what we did. She would go down at 6.30 or 7 and then wake up about half to 1.5 hours later, be wide awake and then hours later would settle down easily to sleep. And like you, I agonised over what was wrong/was was going on with her/what was I doing wrong etc and in the end, I figured I had no control over it. We played with her day sleep times, feed times, amount of milk, stimulation, feeding to sleep, patting, singing, dummy, nightlight etc etc to no avail. We even went to sleep school and still nothing changed. We were so puzzled as we didn't think it was normal and never heard of anyone else's bub doing that. Finally we just had to accept that's how she was and dealt with it how we could. Like others said, prepare dinner during the day etc and just take it as it comes. One day DD stopped doing it and is now a 12 hour sleeper which is unbelieveable given what we went through every evening.
KatieRabbit - Glad to hear someone else has experienced it also but not so great that nothing to resolve it.
DD hasn't been too bad lately I must say. We seem to be getting more of a predictable pattern going which i can handle. If I know to expect it then I'm more prepared and don't struggle with trying to settler her if I just know she isn't ready. She seems to be fighting her tired signs less now whereas before she was showing obvious tired signs but just wouldn't go to bed. We've left the night light idea on which seems to have helped somewhat.
She has been having random 1hr naps in the mid afternoon. Then she is up for a little while and I usually give her a snack and a bath. Then down again for another 1hr nap around 6pm which is great as I then go and cook dinner. She then is waking around 7pm and is up and I feed her again and she sits in her rocker for awhile and then back to bed. I think essentially she is tired, as she is usually not her cheerful self, but she may just be trying to cluster feed a little also..
We've had her out and about a few nights this week but she has handled it well. She is now at least asleep around 8.00-9.00pm and stays asleep till about 2-3am when i feed her and then back to sleep till anywhere between 7am-9am..
She had her first dinner out at a restaurant this week and didn't get to bed till 10pm so she then slept through till 4.30am and then through till 9am which was just wonderful and gave me such a good chunk of sleep. The next night we then picked her up from my parents around the same time and bought her home and straight off to sleep again.
Tonight she was asleep at 7.30pm and I went to get some groceries expecting her to get back up when i was gone, but she has stayed asleep.
Earlier this week she had 2 days where she woke for breakfast, was awake 1.5-2.0 hours and then went back to bed for only an hour. Normally after breakfast she'll sleep till lunch time (a good 2-3 hours) but she was waking after one sleep cycle. I soon figured out though that she was waking and not resettling herself so on day 3, i popped her dummy back in and she resettled and back off to sleep, problem solved and hasn't done it again.
I feel like she is trying to prepare herself to sleep through so I'm just trying to run with it and see what she does.
Can anyone advise at what age that it should be expected that a baby will sleep through up to 12 hours?? I guess I don't want to have expectations of her that aren't realistic but I have spoken to numerous people whose babies are sleeping 10hours+ at night but I'm guessing they are just very lucky cases..
To be honest, I don't think that there's any age that a baby should be expected to sleep through. Some do, some don't. My DS is 12 months old and still goes to bed at 10:30 or later each night, and has been sleeping through for between about 7-9 hours for the last couple of weeks. But that is not the norm around here - prior to that he was waking anywhere from 1-4 times a night. Teething has been the main culprit; since I've been using a teething necklace he has been sleeping through, but never for longer than 8-9 hours.
Some babies / children may sleep through at certain times but go through stages where they don't, for a number of reasons. It seems that it is more common to not sleep through than it is to sleep through.
with the sleeping 10+ hours, i don't think there is any age that I would say they do that at, my 5 year old gets in bed at 7pm asleepby 730pm and she is normally awake at around 6 she just sits on her bed and plays. Even if we keep her up she still wakes at 6.
When you asked earlier in you thread how do other parents managae dinner time with a baby that wakes around that time. I put my dd in my back in an ergo and cook with her there, also usually have her there while showering the other two and doing things with them otherwise would never get stuff done.
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