Do any babies really sleep through at 6-8 weeks?

[Pyjamaramadrama]

Aibu to kind of not believe that babies sleep through the night so early? Ok of course I believe it, but how on earth?

My first slept through, I mean properly 7-7 at 6 months old. I'd have thought that was quite good and lucky. My second still doesn't sleep through at 8 months, although he dropped night feeds at 6 months, he wakes lots for comfort though.

Loads of people I know and posters on here say that their babies slept through much earlier, by say 3 months, some as early as 6 weeks!

Mil tells me my dh was a 'terrible sleeper', but in his baby record book it says he first sleep through at 2 months old, how can that be terrible?

What I'm wondering is, when people say slept through, do they mean something else, such as going straight back to sleep after night feeds, or do they mean with a dream feed at midnight? When I imagine sleeping through I think of once they will fairly reliably do 7,8,9pm-6-7am, without any night feeds.

If yours did what is your secret?

The techniques in book I cited upthread are based on the principle that human beings have a 'core night' of (IIRC) about 6 hours that babies are only physically capable of managing without food once they're about 6 weeks old. The idea is that if left without interference (night lights, anxious parents fussing, etc), a 6wo baby will sleep that core night naturally at some point. The trick is to recognise that that is what has happened on the first night your baby does it (i.e. not a one-off), and to realise that that means they no longer need feeding during that time slot. Then you just stretch your expectations by 10-15 minutes either side of that core night over the coming weeks, in line with your baby's metabolic development.

In that sense it is 'sleep training' for parents but emphatically not for the baby, who is just following a natural trajectory. There was another book that was popular at the time, by somebody-or-other Ferber, which advocated training your baby by letting them cry and cry and cry til they get the message no one's coming. DP and I tried it for one night and we all ended up in tears, not just the baby. I'd forgotten that until I read that phrase by a pp.

Having a baby who sleeps needn't be all 'down to luck', although if you're lucky enough not to fuck up the wonder of the core night by accident, then you might think so. For the rest of us, I really, really recommend the book. I lent it to lots of people who all had success with it too, so I don't think it's down to genes either, although Family Lupo do love our sleep, it's true. It's all just common sense really, but that's a quality in short supply when your brain is fried from exhaustion.

Definitely entirely luck.

No 'fussing parents or night lights' here, MrsLupo, just two boys not genetically designed to sleep for longer stretches than two hours until they were well over a year old, and I did everything 'right' with both of them, especially DS2 after the horror that was DS1 - routine from days old, calm, quiet, dark nights, loading up on feeds during the day and avoidance at night unless the rafters were shaking from screaming. Nothing even close to a six hour stretch, or even a one-off four hour stretch, until they were 14 months or so. To this day, neither of them has ever done the fabled '7-7'. 9.5 hours or 10 hours max with maybe one wake up is what they do at 19mo and 3.5yo respectively, so they just don't need as much sleep as others, or need more support to do so.

I worked with a sleep consultant with both of them - she said healthy babies fall into three categories 1) those who are natural sleepers 2) those who aren't natural sleepers but respond to sleep training strategies (gentle or otherwise) and 3) those who don't sleep and do not respond to sleep training strategies under any circumstances.

I scored two in category three. Yawn.

Oh, and both of mine were/are huge - 9lb 2oz and 9lb 6.5oz respectively at birth so size related to ability to sleep is utter guff.

It's all just luck!

DS1 slept 8pm - 6am from 8 weeks.

DS2 woke at 2.30 am every night till he was about 18 months old.

DS3 sometimes slept through, sometimes woke once, sometimes woke multiple times until he was well over 3 YEARS old.

There are principles that do work for some babies, but it's complete luck whether or not you get a baby who will respond as you wish to sleep training. So if your baby slept through the night, you might have been doing something right, it you just as easily might have got lucky and be doing nothing right (while being insufferably smug about it!).

Thinking you know how to crack a baby because your first baby sleeps well and you used the methods in a book, and extrapolating that to thinking that you could crack everyone else's babies too, is a rookie misunderstanding of how babies work.

Both my babies were sleeping 6 hour stretches as newborns. They both slept really well and I was really smug. Then at around 12 weeks for each of them, it all went to shit. They both come into our bed sometimes, I'm not arsed really. So just because they sleep well as babies, doesn't mean it will continue!

I notice people tend only to talk about sleeping through as small babies. No-one really mentions it after that. I've found at toddler groups that if I mention that my 2 year old still wakes up at night (he goes straight back to sleep once he's with me, so I can cope with it!) more and more people start to 'admit' that their toddlers are frequent wakers.

My youngest did from
Birth 6lb5 born 37wk.
Did Gina ford
Ebf until 1yr.
Slept 7- dream feed at 1030- 8 from birth

Son was similar, he was about 2wk

Neither ever ever fed between 11-5am ever. Amazing really

Our da slept through at 7 weeks. No secrets to share just think we got really really lucky

Mine was sleeping through at 7 weeks but then stopped again at 16 weeks.

My baby boy slept through from 6 weeks and now his 6 months and still a great sleeper.

I just hope we'll be as lucky with my current pregnancy

No! My DS didn't sleep through, by which I mean pretty much 7-7 reguarly without needing us to go in to him, until about 15 months. Among my antenatal group not one of ours slept through with any regularity until about 9 months. I have heard many stories otherwise and indeed my own DS did manage it a few times but was definitely more a freak unpredictable occurrence.

But since he discovered sleeping through he has been amazing! So fron 18 months he will sleep 7pm - 8am really well. Goes down to sleep so quickly - quick story, drop him in his cot and walk out the bedroom not hear from him again until morning. So maybe took a bit longer to sleep through to start than some but I'm appreciating how easy he is now.