My kids don't. DD has done it before, but not regularly. She is 26mths old now. She still wakes at least once. Usually twice for her dummy or for a drink. DS has never slept through more than 6hrs straight, and that has only been a few times. Last night I was up 5 times with him. He had 3 full feeds over night and was awake for a party at 2am, for an hour. We bf and co sleep so I get as much sleep as I can. We are having a tough time with sleep at the moment between teething and growth spurts, more than 3 hrs straight sleep is rare in this house. I'm tired. But I love sleeping with my kids. They are little for such a short time and in the long run these 3-4 years will seem like nothing!
Kye is FF - he started sleeping through (8:30pm till 5:30am ish) at about 3 months, then it stopped at about 5 months.
He has for probably the past two months been sleeping on average 10-11 hours a night with no wakeups, well bar the few nights when his teeth were cutting.
I switched to the feed/play/sleep routine and it has done wonders!!! Should of done it earlier
From about 14 weeks..... DD will sleep from 630pm until about 3 or 4am... wakes for a feed then back to bed til 7am. I think that's excellent for a BF baby too as I have read many times BF babies tend to wake more frequently needing more feeds.... not sure if true or not but thats what I have heard.
The first 14 weeks though I was up every 3-4hrs!!
We introduced a night time routine/bath routine from 8 wks onwards and that REALLY helped prepare her for that long sleep of a night time..... although even now she still can wake at 1am for a feed and surprises me!!! lol so its unpredictable some times.....just when you think it's happening, they change!!!!!
It's still early days hun, it will happen enjoy the night cuddles in the meantime....
Okay - meant to post a reply earlier, but we have had a crazy couple of days and this is really the first time I've had to sit and type.
DS has been really good with naps and has, in the past week, started sleeping from around 11pm to 6.45am (with the exception of the last night but that might be because he has been sick - even so, he has slept from 11pm - 3.30am, and then wakes up at 7am). He has also had a couple of nights (in weeks 5 and 6) where he slept 11pm - 6.30am as well.
We have been using 'Babywise' by Ezzo. I can hear the objections now, however, we have been following the system in the book (funnily enough, it is a feed/wake/sleep routine) and have been quite flexible with it.
We started in week 2 (it says quite explicity that in week 1, feed, feed, feed) with a 2.5hr - 3hr feed/wake/sleep routine (it explicitly says that there should not be more than 3 hrs between feeds at least until week 5). It was hard in the first few weeks to have much awake time, however I took the sleep cues from DS and when I saw them, he went for a nap. Up until week 4, we did this routine which meant feeds at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm, 1am, 4am. If DS was asleep at when he was meant to have a feed, I woke him up. I set my alarm so that he could be fed at 1am and 4am. Of course, if DS was hungry at other times apart from these, we would feed him and then readjust the feed/wake/sleep pattern to suit. At around week 5, we started going to a 3hr - 3.5hr routine. This was good and DS seemed to like this and we have been following this timing up to now. Sometimes we have to go to a 2.5hr - 3.5hr routine during growth spurts as DS just wants to eat, eat, eat at these times. At all times, we have been flexible with feed/wake/sleep.
At around week 4, we started having his last feed between 10pm-11pm, then just letting him wake up by himself during the night (usually anywhere between 2am - 4am), at which time we would feed him, change his nappy (if needed) and then pop him back in bed. It never took much time to settle him again after this feed.
Nowhere in Babywise does it advocate a 4 hour feeding routine for infants. It even says that the time between the last feed (between 10pm and 11pm), to not let more than 5 hours pass until the middle of the night feed, at least for the first few weeks.
In terms of crying, DS is not really much of a crier. If he is grizzly and crying when going down for a nap, we do a modified CIO. It's modified in that I let him cry for a bit (no more than a couple of minutes) and if he still crying, I go in, pick him up and give him a cuddle and put him back in his cot. This usually does the trick and he goes to sleep within around 15 minutes, with no more crying.
We don't co-sleep (but we have morning cuddles in bed when we first wake up), he sleeps in his own room and cot and has done so since we came home from hospital.
His wake times at present are between 40mins and 80mins (this includes feeding time) depending on his mood. We try to have his naps to be at least 1.5hrs long each time. We have found that this is the minimum that he needs to not be cranky upon waking from a nap.
Most days (perhaps 95% of the time), DS will be awake, alert and chatting to himself after a nap when I go in to get him for a feed. This is particularly true for the 7am feed.
When reading Babywise (as with any other baby book I have), I kept an open mind and didn't take each word as gospel. For example, Babywise is against slings and baby wearing, however we do have DS is a sling and baby wear at least once a day.
Babywise does not force FF - to the contrary, it advocates BF for as long as possible, but we had had to FF with DS.
I have found that the sections on colic, GERD, growth spurts etc as well as other potential problems that can occur to be quite informative.
For us, Babywise has worked and our child is not failing to thrive (far from it). He developing and meeting his developmental milestones.
I know that Babywise is controversial and there are a lot of sites and people against it. I would like to post this as an 'other side of the argument': Babywise 101 | SmartParentsBlog.com
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enjoy the night cuddles in the meantime....
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