to think it's not odd my baby wakes up at night?

[hereagainalways]

DS is 4 months old, EBF. He goes down for the night between 6 and 630 (early I know but he just can't stay awake past that) and is up for the day around 6am, sometimes 5.30. During the night he wakes (to feed) at approximately 10, 2 and 4. I have tried resettling him without feeding at the 2am feed (dummy, white noise etc) but he won't have it and it's just easier to feed him peacefully and have him go straight back to sleep tbh.

My NCT group look at me like this when I tell them how much he wakes up and say stuff like oh sorry you have such a dreadful sleeper. Their babies either sleep through or only wake up once apparently.

Don't get me wrong as I would love it if he slept through obviously but I really thought this was quite normal for babies??

Of course it's not odd! Exhausting and painful, but nothing to be concerned about. Some babies do sleep through the night from very early, even 6 hours in a row from 3 weeks old is bliss, some don't settle until they are toddlers.

It's always worth listening to people's advice and try what feels best for you, but ultimately, babies are all different, and parenting methods even more so.

Ds who was formula fed didn't sleep through until 14 months

You baby is completely normal

Or is that the babies are waking but they just don't hear them?

My son wouldn't sleep longer than 45 mins at a time till he was about 10 months. Everyone told me it was breastfeeding that was the problem but I switched to formula at 7.5 months due to serious biting issues and it didn't get any better. It only improved when we introduced a fairly rigid routine.

Forgot to add he is now 1 and sleeps 2 3/4 hours during the day and straight through from 7.00pm to 6.15 am.

I will admit, I was one of those crappy mums who used to gloat! I was only just 18 when I had my first babe, and he made motherhood seem like a piece of cake. He slept through from about 2 months, would wake for moments only to have a wee feed and then back asleep, I once went shopping for most of the day and he pretty much slept through it all, and people would say !Wow, what a great baby, you must be doing something right ect!...and its hard not to feel a little smug when you hear this constantly... I had my second son, he was the same, and I thought some Mums must just like to moan for the sake of it, motherhod, bloody doddle!
However....I then had my two daughters within a couple of years of each other...Jesus H Corbett!
What a difference! Didn;t matter how I fed them, when I fed them, they were screaming, they were awake, they wanted me me me me and my brain felt like it was melting most nights! I was finally getting my Karma from being such a smug cow with the first two lol. Thankfully now my youngest is 6, however, they still wake me up though the night as bith my girls sleepwalk and talk utter shite lol. I hear the tell tale creaky bed and the thud thud of feet and end up searching for them round the house!
Bloody women lol ;-) x

Am I allowed to buck the trend and say I don't think it's normal?
By 4 months I'd expect a baby either to be sleeping through or down to one feed a night. And if they're not I'd do something about it. Change the routine (day or night) let them cry a bit or whatever. My sleep is far far too important to me and I'm a horrible mother

It's all normal. Babies are a law unto themselves, so normal is a huge range.

DD1 woke every two hours to 4mo, then shifted to one wake up and is STILL doing that at 3.7 - although instead of boob she's just after company now.

DD2 has 'slept through' (I.e 10.30-6ish) since she was 7 weeks old.

I have done absolutely nothing different with the two of them. They're just different people! I'm dreading the 4mo sleep regression with DD2 though, as I'm really not used to properly broken sleep any more...

suzie I would never leave him to cry. He's far, far too young for that.

Suzie, you are allowed to buck the trend, but you'd be wrong. By five months, roughly half of babies will be sleeping for an eight hour stretch on some nights. Frequent might waking at that age are perfectly normal.
www.isisonline.org.uk/how_babies_sleep/normal_sleep_development/

There's no reason whatsoever for people to assume your NCT friends are lying through their teeth. It's perfectly normal for babies to be sleeping long stretches at 4 months, and quite reasonable for you to take your friends at their word. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people on MN who seem to think that because theirs didn't, anyone with a different experience must be making it up. It is they who are full of shit.

And your baby is also normal. Not odd at all. So YANBU. Yours is obviously a bit of a grazer, from what you're saying about shorter feeds. Lots are. Mine were FF, but I had one who was like, a couple of ounces here, a couple of ounces there, for the whole of the first year. Not at night, one feed tops after the first 8 weeks ish, but very much so during the day. Babies have a lot of variation in feeding and appetite preferences just as adults do.

I'd certainly be hoping for just the one wake a night at 4 months.

I was a Mrs routinely of Routinesville though.

Oh well, if it says it on the internet it must be true

We do have a routine.

Am I allowed to buck the trend and say I don't think it's normal?

Well, if you look into the research in infant sleep, it is totally normal in that a very large proportion of babies do it. By 5 months, about 50% of babies are managing up to 8 hours at a time. You don't think they should be doing it, but you seem to be projecting from your own experience of normal there rather than what's normal for babies as a whole.

Also, take it from me - parents of bad sleepers also value their sleep! It's just not always possible to "do something about" night waking.

ISIS online isn't just someone saying it on the Internet. That's agog holy respected academic research centre on infant sleep

this is my problem with nct groups - or at least was my problem with my group. get a competitive mum who's baby is perfect, who has the worst birth, who's mil is the most amazing support blah blah blah and it just makes you feel like shit. everyone shuts up about how things are really going because they'll just feel worse having to deal with the fake pity / oh just fix it like this / omg i don't know how you're still alive crap.

i had pnd with my first and my nct group just made it worse. what should have been a supportive, warm group was ruined by one mum who just made the rest of us feel awful.

"agog holy"? A highly!

Blame the sleep deprivation. Gosh, I really should try having a good bedtime routine

Glad we didn't ever join one of these 'groups' ....Read heaps of this kind of stuff on here.

Of course it's normal for a baby this age to wake up! Just as it us normal for them to sleep thriugh. They're all different. My DS was a pretty good sleeper from about 3 months, but even ince that was established there would still be periods when he would wake at night. Some of your NCT buddies may experience this too; just because they're sleeoing through the night now doesn't mean that will always he the case.

Oh my god, the typos!

Neither are odd - it does very much sound like a habit if he is waking at such set times though. I would probably try and stretch it out a bit but I am also very grumpy without sleep!

DS was a once a night waker from around 4 months until 7 months when I night weaned him. I thought it was habit because it was always the same time and it was. It was very easy to night wean him because he was ready but I waited until he was on 3 meals a day to try. I probably could have got away with it earlier tbh.

Very true mum, one of mine slept through quite early, stopped doing it as an older baby and didn't resume until well into toddlerhood.

Wow yes completely normal, bordering on being a good sleeper! My DD still wakes once or twice and shes 15 months old