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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think if you make no noise when baby is asleep when babies, you end up with very light sleepers?

53 replies

RocketInMyPocket · 03/02/2015 13:24

Just that really, I've noticed that all those I know who insisted on keeping quiet when baby was asleep, all the kids are now very light sleepers, and all the ones who carried on as normal, the kids are heavy sleepers.
Is there anyone with kids who don't fit this?

OP posts:
Original poster
RocketInMyPocket · 03/02/2015 14:00

Not at all GotToBe Hmm
That's why I asked if people's kids didn't 'fit' this

OP posts:
SuperGlue · 03/02/2015 14:01

This is very interesting to me as we have a physically noisy house, wooden floors and the stairs in the kitchen so noise travels upstairs. DD was the lightest sleeper imaginable as a baby, she literally woke at the drop of a hat so I got into the habit of keeping quiet when she did sleep.
It got so restrictive that we ended up playing the radio in the bedroom tuned into a classical music station to create background noise so I could make a cup of tea etc without waking her.

She became a good sleeper when she started school and rarely woke for a couple of years but of course habit of being quite at night was ingrained in me and dh and I had lots of hissing arguments about it late at night as he dared to make a sound!

Now she is 9 and seems to be working her way back to being a ridiculously light sleeper. She wakes pretty much every night as we go to bed, not matter what time it is. She goes for a wee and then back to sleep. I ma finding it VERY annoying as it means 'time' with dh is off the cards as I am imagining her lying awake next door listening to us! I need her to go back to deep sleeping but don't know what to do...

She also wakes in the morning the second anyone as much as yawns, particularly at the weekends when we really don't need to be getting up early.

stargirl1701 · 03/02/2015 14:02

No. Some babies sleep, some don't.

Skatingfastonthinice · 03/02/2015 14:02

I was lucky, had two children that slept long and deeply from the age of 4 weeks. Didn't keep the house particularly quiet whilst they were asleep, but we aren't noisy people anyway.
Just luck IMO.

SleepRefugee · 03/02/2015 14:03

Oh yeah, in theory our daughter should also eat anything and everything as we did BLW and exposed her to all sorts of foods.
Still turned out fussy as hell...

(She's a fluent reader at just turned 4 though - but that's certainly nowt to do with anything we did or didn't do.)

CarlaVeloso · 03/02/2015 14:08

Rubbish.

And I don't believe your opening post. How many people took part in this exhaustive survey? You and your mate? Ooh, that's research.

DuchessDisaster · 03/02/2015 14:08

Really hard to say. My parents, who are now in their 80s, never pussyfooted around. My siblings and I can sleep through thunderstorms, but maybe we were going to be like that anyway?
I don't think my siblings reduced noise levels when their children were babies, as far as I know they were all good sleepers (and still are).

newnamefor15 · 03/02/2015 14:14

I think it's just luck.

We were young parents and poor baby/child got dragged around everywhere with us in evenings, to friends houses, camping, noisy stuff. He was a 'good sleeper' and could sleep through anything. But I think we were more lucky that he slept despite disturbance, rather than he learned to sleep well because he was used to disturbance. He was just born a heavy sleeper. He even used to snore as a tiny baby.

It's not always good. He had real problems with bed wetting as he just couldn't wake up. In the end when he was about 9 or so, the doctor gave him a week's worth of tablets that stop you going into the deep part of sleep, makes you stay at the light early stage. Then he registered the full bladder and learned to wake up for it, re-trained his brain if you like, and that solved the problem.

Original poster
RocketInMyPocket · 03/02/2015 14:18

Carla, yes just me and my mate. THIS is my research!! Wink

OP posts:
Millionprammiles · 03/02/2015 14:35

Yes of course you can train your baby to sleep more heavily. Oh look there's a pig next to that aeroplane.

RubbishRobotFromTheDawnOfTime · 03/02/2015 14:41

No it's bollocks. DS wakes DD up just about every day with his booming voice. Surely she should be used to it after nine months...

And DH's alarm wakes us up every morning. That's been years, and I still don't sleep through it.

GoogleyEyes · 03/02/2015 14:41

YABU It's the other way around - babies train parents to do what they need.

One of mine needed silence and the other needed background noise to sleep - I adapted to their needs, not the other way around. I admit I tried to make them sleep in conditions that didn't suit them, but I learned fairly quickly that they wouldn't / couldn't.

Osmiornica · 03/02/2015 14:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BathtimeFunkster · 03/02/2015 14:59

It's the other way around - babies train parents to do what they need.

Yes, I think you're right.

When I read one of those "my friend/SIL/cousin runs around doing XYZ and as a result her baby is ABC" I always wonder why they think the parents know nothing about their own child.

MrsTerryPratchett · 03/02/2015 15:03

DD slept horribly and we tiptoed around.

Now at 4, she sleeps like a log. I made smoothies this morning with my industrial blender and frozen lumps and she slept right through it.

museumum · 03/02/2015 15:08

Other way round surely - if your child is a light sleeper and easily disturbed then you gradually get quieter and quieter as you NEED them to sleep.
If your baby is a heavy sleeper you get more and more relaxed and noisy around them.

Honestly, I think most parents overestimate their influence on their child, assuming a generally loving home, they come with personalities and preferences already in-built IMO :)

UsuallyLurking1 · 03/02/2015 15:29

Nah, I thought that with ours after DW insisted we spent 12 months acting like we were burgling the place keeping quiet for DD1 and I was convinced DD1 was waking because she was a light sleeper.

So when DS arrived I actively made noise.

He's almost 18m now and is a light sleeper who even seems to react to a tiny change in light into his room let alone sound, whilst you could have a firework display in DDs room and she wouldn't wake

So - based on my extensive survey of 2 children..... It doesn't matter!

Minisoksmakehardwork · 03/02/2015 16:34

It's pure luck. By that reasoning, Dts should sleep through the apocalypse. Dtd sleeps on a fecking feather. The slightest thing and she's awake.

Echocave · 03/02/2015 17:11

I think that's completely wrong OP. Children are all different and some sleep through an earthquake and some don't sleep well or habitually wake in the night even if you've made the same amount of noise when they were babies.
Personally I think that even for good sleepers the advice about 'oh keep them in their basket whilst you watch tv etc' is absolute bollocks. Yes babies and some toddlers can sleep with or may like white noise but general clattering about etc I suspect disturbs most babies and young children

ItMustBeBedtimeSurely · 03/02/2015 17:14

Nope. Dd2 was an incredibly light sleeper, so I tiptoed around. Believe me, I would have avoided if if it could, I'm not stupid.

She's a heavy sleeper now.

EhricLovesTheBhrothers · 03/02/2015 17:15

DH grew up in the loudest house in the world (actually pretty average for his country but loud to our ears)
2 bed flat with a family of 8 in it, nobody keeps their voice down, people get up through the night to pray, and every one of them can stick a blanket over their head and sleep through anything. Now he doesn't wake up if a phone is ringing next to his ear or a fire alarm is going off (true fact)

Sallystyle · 03/02/2015 17:23

I never tiptoesd around my babies and would often hoover when they were sleeping in their baskets etc.

By the time the third was born they were all so used to noise that they slept badly when there wasn't any.

Mine are not light sleepers but if it has anything to do with me not tiptoeing around them as babies I cannot say.

I went to visit my friend the day after she had her baby and she disabled the door bell and the TV was turned right down and we had to whisper. The child grew up not being able to sleep through noise and the mum didn't do it because the baby wouldn't sleep if there was noise because she started off that way before she even knew what kind of sleeper the baby was. However, it could just be a coincidence.

I have found though that in larger families like mine children often seem to sleep better with noise if that is what they are used to.

geekymommy · 03/02/2015 17:29

If that were the case, you'd expect to see a birth order effect, especially where there's less than 5 years separation between the kids. You can tell a child under 5 to be quiet because the baby's sleeping, but they might not actually do it. You'd expect first borns to be lighter sleepers than their younger siblings. If there is such an effect, it's subtle.

fortifiedwithtea · 03/02/2015 17:48

Our DC back up the 'research' Wink PFB DD1 was a nightmare to settle. We read to her sing to her, turned off the light and edged nearer the door. Seriously, crept quietly out the bedroom door.

Four years later we had DD2. She was put in her cot, light out and heard no more from her until morning. Bliss.

It was the same with feeding DD1 fussy and still is. DD2 given food and troughed away, we called her a goat Smile

HotSquashedBun · 03/02/2015 19:49

What bollocks op. I think it's far more likely people make no noise because their child is a light sleeper. You can't really make someone a light or a heavy sleeper. They are who they are.
DS1 always had pretty much silence when he slept because during his naps there was only me and him in the house and in the evening me and DH aren't very noisy people. He's a deep sleeper and always slept well.
DS2 was always surrounded by more noise as ds1 was a toddler when he was born. He was a terrible sleeper as a baby and still hasn't slept through at nearly 3 yrs old. He wakes up just by hearing us go up and down the stairs and we aren't noisy. I haven't made him a light sleeper, he's been like this from birth just as ds1 happens to be a good sleeper. It's just the way they are.
Having a good sleeper is purely down to luck in my opinion!

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