To get wound up about MN and sleep advice

[LittleMilla]

I love MN and will often come on to get advice...can normally count on it for sensible pointers for everything except for sleep.

AIBU to wonder why noone on MN seems to want their children to sleep through the night? I no of noone in RL who co-sleeps - but everyone on MN seems to? And people seem to think it's entorely normal for a 8 month old baby to wake repeatedly through the night.

I just don't get it. So much valuable advice...yet everyone on here seems to go madly soft when it comes to sleep.

Am I the only one?

Haha, erm sorry anothernumberone I thought it was more valid than my research base of one toddler who is 2 next month, who has slept more than 6 hours straight about 10 times in her life

You have one toddler such you can extrapolate that out to the teenage years at least.

WestieMamma - you sound like you're working very hard. Hang on in there…it does get easier!

Totally agree with you OP.

MN is mostly amazing but I do sometimes wonder who are the children and who are the parents.

Katese she was in reception when she started reliably sleeping through, I guess a full day at school knackered her out. dd3 was sleeping through at nursery. I mean they weren't going to bed at 7pm or anything, but they weren't waking at 1 or 2am either.

Last year she came home from a school trip and announced "I need my bed" and I crowed with delight. Now she will happily slope off to bed early even! Hang in there, it gets better.

My 2 year old granddaughter isn't sleeping through reliably either.

To imply that people with babies who don't sleep through aren't doing anything (noone on mn seems to want their baby to sleep through) is being a bit naive.

I have sleep trained DS in that he goes to sleep on his own (usins Elizabeth Pantley not CIO) and he sleeps through sometimes but no - definitely not the majority of time. He is 8 months old and I just think that there is so much going on at that age that they do find it hard to sleep. That is where the luck comes in - even with gentle sleep training some babies will just not sleep through. Whether its teething, illness or trying out new skills something always seems to mess around with his sleep.

knowing that this is common in rl (even if others have great sleeping babies) makes the pain that much easier to bear!

Hi Humphrey Cobbler - we did gentle sleep training after having established a really good night time routine. It used to be bath feed until the baby was asleep then into bed. We switched it round so that we did feed, bath then I would take DS to the bedroom and sing (blowin in the wind is favourite - can't stand lullabies - haha). In the beginning there was a fair bit of crying but I stayed in the room with him. After about a week no crying - sometimes he talks for a bit sometimes out like a light. I always stay in the room with him.

saying all that though he still doesnt actually sleep through the night so maybe my advice is bollocks

ds1,2 &3 didnt sleep through until 2ish

ds4 slwpt through from about 8 weeks and is now very hit and miss.

it really does depend on the dc.

my friends first 3 slept through from early on, her 4th is up ever 1.5 hours even now at 8 months

im sure if youd asked her after the first 3, she qould have put it down to parenting and good routine. it obviously wasnt though!

judgey judgey judgey judgey, ahahahahaahaahh

i co-slept, thirty years ago, and dd and her dh co-sleep with their dd. because it works. and because its lovely.

ok then, don't snuggle in with your babies. don't breastfeed. don't be happy. mostly i don't care.

but i'd rather my dgd lived in a world full of people whose parents treated them the way they'd want to be treated.

Op, YANBU.

It never fails to amaze me that people feel completely comfortable criticising sleep training on the basis of very little knowledge about it. It does NOT have to involve crying. And it most certainly is NOT about ignoring babies' needs for the convenience of caregivers

To return to the dreaded comparison with teaching kids manners - I spent some time yesterday with a dear friend who is being driven up the wall by her daughter's naughty behaviour. She spent the vast majority of our meeting desperately trying to manage and improve it. She had no luck (ha!), however, as unfortunately she was not practising many of the correct techniques required to keep a lively six year old girl in tow (eg praise and reinforcement of positive behaviour; establishment of appropriate boundaries; ignoring poor behaviour as far as possible; giving her suitable outlets for her vast energy; establishing sanctions for really unacceptable behaviour, and then following through with these; refraining from criticising her in front of others ("and THIS is why she's an only child!" ).

I would never in a million years say that she's not trying to improve her daughter's behaviour, because she does nothing but. However, due to a lack of skill in her part, she's simply not doing it that well unfortunately. My kid behaves much better, I think largely because his parents have much better parenting skills. Luck undoubtedly plays some part, by determining the temperament your child is born with, but I believe that far more of it is down to how you parent your children.

I think the advice you get on the sleep boards is skewed because most of the posters replying there have babies with sleep problems. It's more like a support group.

I frequented that board a lot as my DD was a crap sleeper - we were BFing and co-sleeping but it had to finish as I was going back to work. I eventually took some RL advice from friends and family and did controlled crying which worked really well. Now she sleeps through in her cot (mostly).

Now I don't go on the sleep board but if I did I'd recommend CC for older babies. However a lot of the threads there start off by the OP saying they won't consider CC which is fair enough but does really limit the sort of advice that's given out.

I've luckily had 3 brilliant sleepers. My dd2 was born in November and will sleep 5-6 hours at a stretch through the night. But none of the older 2 slept through at 8 months and neither will this baby. That is just unrealistic. They've just literally started weaning at that age, how can they go 8-12 hours without a milk feed? . Tbh, I've never met anyone in RL with a baby that sleeps through at that age.

DD - almost 8 months - hasn't been the world's best sleeper.

It's only in the last month or so that we've had stints of 6+ hours (aside from a one off 7 hours just after she went into her own room at 4.5 months). On Sat night just gone, we got 9.5 hours. (She was still noisy in her sleep, waking us though!)

We haven't done any sleep training at all. She is able to self settle, and seems to do this better at night than during the day when she fights it more.

She's been mostly asleep since about 6.30 last night, waking for food at about 9.20 and 5.20. Normally we get about 11 hours in total between 7.30pm - 8.30am.

We are very baby led with feeding and sleep, letting her take her time to get her own pattern. I never thought I would be like this, but it's not too bad.

About the same time as she started to sleep longer she adjusted her feeds to every 4 or so hours, so some timing thing has maybe clicked somewhere? I've no idea, but I have every sympathy for people whose babies sleep badly.

Oh, apparently sleeping through is technically 6 hours, not all night. So many babies sleep through, even if it's not what people think of as sleeping through!

I don't think it's as simple as believing that the vast majority of 8 month olds can sleep through the night (whatever that means to you).

For most people the reality is that once they get past one child it is quite normal to have some kind of combination of one child being on the verge of dropping a nap and not wanting to sleep till 11pm, one child waking at 5 every morning, one child suffering from night terrors, one child waking up to want to go to the loo, one child teething, one child having a cold, etc. etc. etc.

And some children, like some adults are just awful sleepers.

I wouldn't criticise anybody for using CC to ensure that they can earn a living/operate heavy machinery/smile occasionally during the day.

However, sometimes the line of least resistance, musical beds, also works. You only get a few years where you get to snuggle in with a small child smelling of sleep.

Surely it's not one thing or another, always? Mine slept a good 10 hours from very early on, with no effort whatsoever from me. But sometimes they didn't, when i'd either feed them or take them into my bed, sometimes not, it depended on the specific situation. Sometimes my 'good sleepers' would have a cold or a growth spurt or be teething, at which point they stopped sleeping through. Once it was over they went beck to it

It's not some definitive thing that's static and un changing. So sometimes they 'slept through' sometimes they were 'bad sleepers' sometimes I 'co/slept'. I'm sure lots of is do a bit of each

I don't co sleep.

With the "5-6 hour" rule, DD first slept through at 4 days old. For about 3 days.

She's 3 now, sometimes she wakes in the night, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she can roll over and go straight back to sleep, other times she can't. I was the same before I was pregnant, as is DH. Sometimes we wake to use the toilet, sometimes for a drink.

Yes, some babies will not disturb their parents at night from a fairly young age, but when it's talked about as 'normal' and new mums are told that all babies are capable of sleeping all night at 4 months old (as I was, by a HV) it can make them feel like they aren't doing a good enough job. Luckily, I knew enough people who had babies and toddlers that didn't sleep through, and knew that was also on the big scale of normal-ness, but other mums in our group genuinely worried about the fact that their tiny 4 month old was waking in the night.

I was thinking about this thread last night in the middle of the night when one of our 2 amazing sleep through the night babies was up again aged 5 having growing pains. She has them probably at least once or twice a month. When she was a teeny baby even bf in the very early weeks she slept really well. I used to feed a dream feed and while she would not sleep immediately she would not wake again for maybe 5 hours once she did. The other great sleeper from about 3 years on woke more than once a week with tummy pains for 2 years which after years of investigation turned out to be intolerance to cows milk. She would be up for hours with them in crippling pain. Both slept 'through' from 2 ish months with absolutely no prompting from us. The other thing about the older ones was as you would expect with ff babies they were sick a hell of a lot more than their bf brother who in 2.5 years (bf still) has never been sick enough to consider a doctor. These meant nights pacing the floor with sick children. It just made me realise that it is the whole picture you need to compare not just the early sleepers.

I have older children, and I did the whole She Who Must Not Be Named routine, albeit with a massive pinch of salt.

It did not, and still does not seem remotely controversial to me. To me, it seems guidance at how to allow your baby to do what it wanted to do naturally.

Was v surprised when I came on here years later how there was no expectation from some people at the ability of babies to sleep.

Co-sleeping seemed to me something we all do at some point to get through the hard times, not a philosophy for life

I also agree with Teacups post on page 1

Oh and I don't know how many times I've had to point out that Controlled Crying and Crying it Out are different things

I slept thru from 6 weeks old (rice in the bottle helped).
I don't sleep-thru now. I haven't for many yrs.
I'm not sure I'd expect a baby to master the sleeping-thru skill; not sure why that would be "normal".
Friend was proud of how her babies slept thru from 3-4 months (controlled crying & solids seemed to help). She mentioned twinges of guilt when her 6m old baby awoke & stayed quite hysterical for a while due to November fireworks. But she didn't want to go in & break the routine, iyswim.

I know she did what she had to, to keep sane, but I couldn't have done the same.

Isn't it great we're not all the same?

Neither of my girls slept through the night as babies. DD1 woke through the night loads of times until she was 2. DD2 wasn't so bad but even now she is 7 she still wakes up every night at least once.

I still have both girls in my bed at night.

I'm not sure why mine never slept but we all get through these issues in our own way and co-sleeping was the best option for us. Both me and DH are happy to have the girls with us and we all slepp fine together

anothernumber I was also thinking about this thread in the wee small hours (up trying to comfort 12mo DS3, who has tonsillitis for the third time in his little life ). Of course you need to consider the whole picture. My Ds2 was a brilliant sleeper as a baby, but now at 4yo is very prone to night terrors due to an overactive imagination, bless him. DS1 never did the night terrors but had chronic separation anxiety at 1yo, which DS2 never did.

Different children, different issues. But I still maintain that parents can influence how well their babies sleep. Not guarantee them sleeping through. But influence it. In the same way that they can influence how well they eat, even if a lot is also dependent on the nature of that child.

The thing is, there is a world of difference in what babies will do, at different ages, and of course it is great that posters come on to reassure parents that not all babies sleep through at certain ages etc etc. Where it becomes unhelpful, IMO, is say when a parent posts in desperation because their 8mo is waking hourly through the night and has to breastfeed back to sleep, asking for tips on how to help, and is told over and over 'oh that's normal, just co sleep!'. And when it is implied that any sleep training is wrong, and cruel, etc etc. I always feel so sorry for the poor posters in these scenarios but know there is no point trying to post any alternative suggestions because the 'oh it's normal' crew will shoot you down in flames and say that all sleep training is evil.

And in that scenario - the thing is that an 8mo who can generally settle themselves to sleep, can also resettle themselves when they stir in the night, but perhaps wakes a couple of times in the night for a feed = absolutely normal and will sleep through when good and ready to drop those feeds.

An 8mo who can only fall asleep with a breast/dummy in their mouth, or when rocked/cuddled to sleep, who then wakes up hourly through the night = would probably sleep better if parents tried some different techniques. Might not sleep through, sure. But would almost certainly wake less.

Not, however, according to the MN 'it's all luck' crew.