When did your LO start sleeping through the night?

[Platypusmama]

Posted on behaviour and development but thought I'd try here as well.

I have a 14 month old dd who still wakes to breastfeed anywhere between 3-6 times a night. I'm so unbelievably exhausted I feel like I'm going to keel over.

Starting back at school next week and dd is starting at nursery but I can't even bare the thought of trying to balance studying and coursework as well as the house on barely any sleep. My OH is away most of the time for work so I'm kind of on my own a lot.

Please tell me there's relief coming soon?!? I have nothing against sleep training but I just can't do it. Dd is in a floor bed so would just come and find me anyway

Around 7/8 months, but was bottle fed. He was eating quite a lot by that age, too. I also noticed a big difference in his sleeping when using one of those sleeping bags (sounds strange, but with both my DC this worked. Without one, they'd be awake constantly through the night). Hope this helps.

DD2 was 9 months when she started sleeping through. I was due to go back to work and stopped her night time bottle. She's slept through 7-6 ever since.
You must be exhausted OP. Like PP said I suspect she is waking up at night looking for comfort rather than needing a feed.

He's 11m and has recently (within the last month) started sleeping through probably 5 nights a week. And this is only because we're co-sleeping now, before this he was in his cot and woke around 10-15 times a night. He's bottle fed but hasn't fed in the night since 9m

My 6 year old still frequently wakes up in the night from nightmares or needing a week. I know it's not what you want to hear but honestly think you just need to accept that all children are different and some are more prone to waking at night.

I'm just used to the lack of sleep now. As a single parent I think I can count on one hand the nights I've slept a full 8 hours. I find coffee helps.

Mine slept well but I put this down to being the world's heaviest sleeper, as whenever she may have woken to fuss a bit, I didn't, so I think she figured out how to self soothe early on. She had to properly yell to wake me and she rarely did .

Both of mine were around 12 months.

I am on my knees!

She's never taken a dummy or bottle so it's been 14 months of me being a source of comfort and nutrition (which I love!).

I absolutely adore her and we have such a close bond but I am so sleep deprived I can't function whatsoever. I have no energy to do anything I also get no down time because some night she just doesn't settle in bed. Last night she didn't sleep until 11pm. I'm going to have to sleep train, aren't I? Also need to think about night weaning but have absolutely zero idea how to do that!

DD1 - 8 weeks
DD2 - about 3 and a half years but then not reliably.

Well, I have never sleep trained, but, as I sat in her room at 3.30am, I thought about how that is probably the reason why she doesn't/ can't go to sleep by herself (although we didn't sleep train DD1 either and she slept). I was considering going from sitting by her bed holding her hand while she goes to sleep (what we do now) to telling her that won't be happening anymore and doing a sort of gradual retreat, so sitting in the chair but not holding her hand, then sitting on the floor by the bed, then sitting in the room by the door, then sitting outside the door. I don't know if I have the strength to deal with the screaming that will involve, especially in the middle of the night when DD1, DH and the neighbours also have to sleep. Also, she is starting school the week after next, so this probably isn't the right time to unsettle her bedtime. Maybe I just wait until I die from sleep deprivation... (at least I will be able to catch up on sleep in the day a bit on days I am not at work once she is at school)

@Platypusmama please do try sleep training. My DSis is a paediatrician, she has read ALL the studies and swears it's not harmful at all. It's also not cruel, your DC must also be sleep-deprived, so teaching her to self-settle is just another life skill she needs for optimum health.

It took us 5 days - DS has since slept through the night, it's the most glorious feeling. And he's much happier too, he goes to bed happily because he knows he can fall asleep himself, and is far less grumpy during the day.

26months and still wakes up at least once a night and is a super early riser as well (Im talking like 5am!)

My dc went from waking 3 times a night every night to sleeping through about half the time (and waking once or twice the other nights) overnight at 18 months. Both of them did this at about the same age.

I'm afraid they only reliably slept through every night from turning 3!

16 months when we stopped breastfeeding to sleep, night weaned and put DD in her own room. We’d always co slept and bf on demand through the night- I was on my knees with sleep deprivation.

You don’t necessarily need to sleep train. We started with a new routine, bf downstairs on the sofa, upstairs for bath time, pj’s, 2 bedtime books and then into bed. Stay with and offer all comfort except bf. We had a rough 2 days and then it all clicked and DD learned that she could fall asleep independently without bf to sleep. We didn’t go cold turkey with night weaning, I just aimed to go 3hrs between feeds initially and then extend the time from there but I never had to implement that to be honest. From night 2 she only woke once in the night for a quick feed and that quickly petered out naturally.

Because she wasn’t feeding to sleep anymore when she woke in the night she didn’t need me to get her back to sleep. Within 2 weeks she was sleeping through. She has a cup of water in case she is thirsty through the night.

Also, get a stair gate on her bedroom door, then she can’t wander in to your room whenever she likes. That will help with night wakes too.

22 months and still waiting ..........

The best we get is 2 hour naps at the start of the night then it's game on

Two and a half. I put him in his own bed in my room and he night weaned and slept through from the first night. He did cry for about 5 minutes for a few nights.

Last night I didn't feed to sleep, I just lay her back down and stroked her back if she was crying and just tried to reassure her. When she stopped crying I stopped stroking her back and just let her mumble herself to sleep, did actually take as long as before, maybe twenty minutes? She woke up 3 times last night which is honestly a dream! Will keep up with this every night now and hope it keeps on improving.

One more question, do I do the same for naps or do I continue to feed to sleep for those? Have a really awful cold at the moment that I can't shake, and seem to have a cold sore coming on (???), never had one so can't be sure but I'm so run down I wouldn't be surprised 4 weeks today until OH is back, then I'm booking myself for a spa day 😂

Thank you for all your advice! Hope everyone else's little chicken starts to settle ❤️

DS1 was formula fed and didn’t sleep through until 18 months and then he just started out of the blue sleeping 11-12 hours solidly.
DS2 was breastfed and refused bottles, one weekend I went away and DP managed to bottle feed him and within a few weeks he started sleeping 11-12 hours a night. It took a few nights of us going into him and patting and shushing rather than feeding him back to sleep and we’ve had no bother since. Nursery also managed to get him to self settle for his nap too, very gentle sleep training and that helped massively.

@DameSylvieKrin what method did you use? My dd is 4 months and I'm planning to sleep train her at around 6 months, but I'd rather avoid CIO or controlled crying too...

Ds slept through from last feed at 11:30pm until 6am from 8 weeks. 🥇

Nothing to do with any particular skills on my part.

Then at 7 months when I returned to work if he wasn't in my bed he woke 3-4 times a night, that continued until he was around 5. 😩

Between 5-11 he woke me once a night probably 3-5 nights a week. 😢

11+ he started sleep walking at least once a week. 😭

15 now and still sleepwalks occasionally. Can be scary for a moment being woken by a (sometimes starkers) 5ft 11in shadow in your bedroom at night having an argument with you about what time of day it is, or telling you he's lost his phone, or going into the ensuite for a shower.....

4 years, breastfed and woke every hour until about 18 months, but still 2-3 times a night from ages 2-4.

@HavelockVetinari what sleep training method did you use?

19 months. It just suddenly clicked. We were on our knees by then.

DS slept from 7-7 (with one quick night feed, fell straight back to sleep) from the day we came back from hospital ... then went right through from 8 months when I stopped breast feeding. I don’t know if we were just very lucky or because I was quite strict & followed the GF routine (which I know is despised on MN) but I never ‘fed him to sleep’ or hovered over him whilst he fell to sleep.

16 months and it feels amazing. Still breastfeeding once a day at 18 months (bedtime) but on the odd occasion he wakes up at night, I absolutely do not feed him. We feed once a day and that's it. I'm not judging sleep crutches at all, we still use the pushchair for naps and last resort for difficult bedtimes.

DD - I was amazingly lucky, it was about 12 weeks. Bfing hadn't worked out so I gave up at about that point and switched to bottle and she started sleeping through

With DS the bfing worked, and after 6 months he was down to waking for one feed for the next four months and then slept through.

Nothing I did, just very fortunate. Hope you catch a break soon, OP. I don't think there's any reason for a 14mo to feed more than once a night, so may look for advice on cutting out night feeds? I don't know if that feels too much like sleep training to you, but a few nights' effort may improve the situation a lot.