Sleeping through the night

[Maruschke]

Just wondering, when did your child start sleeping through the night (and I don't mean 5 hours, more like 7 hours+).

If your child slept through the night earlier than others, what did you do? Did you have a routine or co-sleep or CIO or CC?

[Indadhanu]

About 2months.... until about 3.5 months.... and she hasn't done it since... no change in routine or anything, one day she started doing it, 8pm - 3/4am, and then just like that she stopped!

[OceanPrincess]

You're going to get so many varied answers to this...

My DD has only a couple of times slept about 6hrs at a stretch, no more than that.

My niece didn't sleep thru til about 6-7months.

My friends' three babies have all slept thru (12hrs) from a young age - 4wks, 2wks and 8wks. And she had the gall to complain about the one that took until 8wks!!

My sister and I are quite similar in parenting techniques - no strict routine. But my DD is a better day sleeper than my niece. Neither of us cosleep.

My friend doesn't have routines either, and nor does she cosleep.

Not sure what CIA is...

[Ginger]

ds1 started sleeping through the night at 16 months old.

[Maruschke]

Not sure what CIA is...

Ooops, CIO (cry it out).

[Visitor8]

I can count on one hand the times Ashton has slept from 9-7, usually he is up at 11, 2, 5 then 7.

[jamakin]

Ds started 'sleeping through' at around 7 months, he is bf but dh started doing a rollover/dreamfeed with formula at that time so i could get some rest. he does 7 till 7 with the feed at 10pm(although hes dropping the 10pm now) it has worked quite well for us, i like to have a routine, and ds seems to like it too - not super strict, i can be flexible but feeds and sleeps at similar times each day. he likes to know what comes next iykwim? he sleeps in a grobag, in his cot, in his room and has done since 4 months. Saying all that if he is teething or something else is going on he can be more wakeful.
these bubs are so hard to know! it can drive a person crazy wondering why they do the things they do!

[~Trish~]

My DS1 started sleeping 8 hours overnight at 6 weeks, I got lucky with him! I did have him on a bit of a routine during the day (feed/play/sleep) which he thrived on and started sleeping through all by himself.

DS2 was about 5 months old when he started sleeping through regularly even though he was on a similar routine to his big brother.

[Sammiejane]

MJ started to sleep through the night at about 8 weeks (like 10 hours) and then at 6 months she stopped and would wake anywhere from 2hourly to 6hourly, sometimes for 5 mins, sometines for an hour.
Now she sleeps from 7.30ish - either 10.30, 12.30. 2.30am 0r 6.30am. depends on a lot of things, last night she slept staight through to 2am and then woke cose she had a soaking wet nappy, changed her, couldnt resettle so came into bed with us (i had to work in the morning so gave up quickly!!!) then slept through til 7am (i snuck out at 5.30am).
the night before she slept from 8pm til 6.30am
the night before that she was awake twice, 10.30 (quick to resettle) and then 2pm longer to resettle.

IMO there is no way to really 'teach' this, what one baby does is not necessarily the norm. My CMHN said that its not 'normal' to sleep more than 8 hours until the age of 2... so there could be a lot more wakeful nights.
We have Not done routines or CIO. on and off coslept, but mostly in her cot in her room (no room in our bedroom for anything else!)
We could attribute nothing to the change at 6 months.

How you deal with wakeful nights is the key to getting through all these months. I see it as my baby/toddle needs me for something, be it feed, too hot/cold, comfort, cuddle or reassuarnce... she has no real way of communicating with me so she cries to let me know that she needs something.
Its my job to work it out and get her comfy again. its not goingto be like this forever, and now MJ can tell me if she needs a drink when she wakes, so it does get easier.
Just try and go with the flow and dont be anxious... yes other babies maybe sleeping through the night, but a heck of a lot are not, probably more are not that are.
This doesnt help, but do what comes naturally, if something doesnt feel right - like letting MJ cry felt wrong for me- then it probably is not right.... kwim

[AliBaby]

A gf of mine who has a baby that now is formula fed started sleeping through at 6months, goes to bed at 9pm and wakes at 9am!

Has continued to do this for the last 2months.

[~*Niadalla*~]

DS didn't sleep longer than 4 hours at a time until he was 12 months old. Since then, he has slept 12-14 hours a night pretty consistently.
DD has had 5 nights in her 6 weeks of life where she's slept over 7 hours.... she normally goes at least 6 hours per night though and has done so since she was only a few days old.
2 completely different kids they are.

[Jakabella]

Bella started sleeping through at 3 months from 6.30 pm till 6.30 am and still does it now - very rarely will she wake at night and if she does then she gets her dumy back in and back to sleep she goes.
Our routin was set by her and is still the same to this day - up at 6.30 bottle and then back to bed for how ever long - bottle evey 4 hrs (was 3 when she was younger) and she has a sleep evey 2 hrs on the dot - all set by her. Now we have added solids and some times she has more or less day seeps but allways bed at approx 6.30 and always 12hrs or more - some days 14+.

Your bub will do it when ready - all bubs are different!

Kate

[jamakin]

IMO there is no way to really 'teach' this, what one baby does is not necessarily the norm. My CMHN said that its not 'normal' to sleep more than 8 hours until the age of 2... so there could be a lot more wakeful nights.

i agree with Sammiejane and wanted to add, if ds does wake in the night its usually because he needs something and its his way of communicating, so i will feed in the night if thats what he wants. i couldn't do controlled crying or anything, but if he's just having a whinge and i know that hes fine i will leave him and he usually drops off to sleep. you just have to do what feels right to you and whatever gets you through so your not up all night and whatever gets you back into bed quickly!!

[Marlene]

Jack slept through the night at 13 months....ONE NIGHT...LOL. If I did anything different that night I wish I knew what it was. He is still waking up at least once, sometimes twice.

[Shanti]

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....

[AnnaChas]

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