To think there's nothing unusual about my six month old not sleeping through

[5minutestobed]

I'm fed up of people asking when I'm going to do CIO/CC because my six month old doesn't sleep through. AIBU to think it's totally normal for a six month old to wake in the night and still have night feeds etc?
Several friends with similar age babies keep talking about how they will have to sleep train soon as there is no way they can carry on with waking in the night. Surely most people don't have a baby and think it will sleep through so soon?
I realise some people are lucky and have babies who sleep through from early on but I doubt that most babies sleep through by six months?

[cathf]

I rest my case.

[LBOCS2]

DD1 definitely wasn't sleeping through at 6mo. She's 4 this month and still gets up once a night.

DD2 slept through (11pm-5.45/6am) from about 10 weeks. Until she was about 17 weeks, the sleep regression hit and she was waking up every 90 minutes, all night, every night, unless she was plugged in to me - in which case she slept fine but I still didn't!

She's 6.5mo now and has just moved into her own bedroom. It's hit and miss but we've had a couple of nights recently where she's done 8.30-4.45am, then 5am-7.30. Technically that's sleeping through (even though it involves me getting up in the night!) so I'm really really hoping that this is her moving towards a better sleep pattern again. Because the weeks of 90 minute wake ups nearly killed me and my immune system has really taken a bashing through lack of sleep and I'm fed up of being ill!

[MrsMook]

Definitely normal to not sleep through, and a great bonus if they do.

I ended up going cold turkey on DS2's night feeds at 18m as by that point I had become fed up. He began sleeping better after that, although at 3 he will still stir and ask.for a visitor or come visiting. His one feed in the night had been quite tolerable after the DS1 experience!

DS1 started off ok gradually building up the length between feeds to about 6 hours by about 4-5 months. Then it all went downhill with leaps/ growth spurts/ teething. It also turned out that he had CMPA so frequent feeds helped him temporarily sooth his digestive system. He settled much better when he went dairy free, but still didn't sleep though reliably for a while.

Apparently, traditionally people did have more fragmented sleep before electric lighting, with going to bed earlier. Monastic routines involved night prayer sessions between rounds of sleep. Plus siestas in warmer climates. Formal working since industrial society has formalised sleep patterns and made a baby "sleeping through" much more desirable.

[AnnaT45]

Cathf if you're that good come round! You're prob right now the focus is on breastfeeding and preventing SIDS rather than sleeping through. My MIL is staggered at how much my three month old feeds. She said they only really BF for a bit but gave up as were told to only feed every four hours which is never going to work with BF.

I don't think either view is wrong. We should all do what works for us. Unless you really want to sleep! Then you may need to have a crack

[Smartleatherbag]

Totally normal. Yanbu.

[karigan]

Yanbu. My DD only started sleeping for than 2-3 hour stretches at 16 months. At 6 months she would sleep for 1.5/2 hour stretches then wake up for 2-3 hours. Nothing I tried worked at all- I tried every single thing suggested by parenting websites, my DH, my MIL, HV and GP and nothing worked. Then one day (nothing had changed! At all!) She went to bed and slept for 7 hours and eventually stretched that to 10 hours at about 20 months and has been the same since.

It's what's consistently put me off thinking about another baby. What if this one sleeps the same? I worked 45 hours a week from when she was 10 months and I felt like I was slowly being driven mad with sleep deprivation.

[TigerLily666]

FWIW - I think the concept of sleeping through is a bit of a nonsense really, and outdated. Gina Ford (and the like) have a lot to answer for.

[Ohdearducks]

My DD is nearly 6 months and wakes at 12am and 4am for feeds sometimes 2am as well, yanbu. Most babies do not sleep through at 6 months.

[YokoUhOh]

DS1 is four years old next week and has slept through the grand total of...once.

He gets up at 5am every day. He would still be breastfeeding had I not forced the issue. He's amazing but doesn't need much sleep!

DS2 is only 5 months but it's already looking like he's a better sleeper.

[MLGs]

my ds did but my dd didn't. Barely slept through aged 5.

ds slept really well and still does at 2.7. But it annoys me when people act like he is somehow a "better" child because of it.

[cathf]

Nonsense and outdated tiger lily??????
If you are happy being a sleepless martyr, fine. I preferred to sleep.

[JasperDamerel]

The ISIS (infant sleep research, not Islamic State) website has lots of useful information about baby sleep.
Apparently 50% of babies sleep from 10pm -6am most nights by the time they are 5 months old. So it's perfectly normal for a 6 month old to sleep through. But as 27% of babies still aren't sleeping through at 12 months, it's also perfectly normal for a 6 month old not to sleep through.

[Writerwannabe83]

"Sleeping through" means different things to different people.

My friend loved telling me about her baby who "slept through" from 8pm-6am and only waking for one feed at 02.30am. I'm not sure how a baby waking up for a feed in the early hours of the morning can be described as being one who "sleeps through"

In my eyes "sleeping through" would be a baby who sleeps for a period of at least 8 hours straight throughout the without waking for a feed.

My DS is 2.5 years and still doesn't sleep through reliably. Maybe 1 or 2 nights a week he will go 8-6 but generally he's up at least once.

No way on this Earth was he sleeping through at 6 months

[Mermaid36]

I honestly couldn't care less about a full nights sleep. I knew I'd signed up for hard work and less/broken sleep when I found out we were having twins.

I believe that I'm doing the best I can for them by breastfeeding and sharing a room with them in response to safer sleeping guidance. I'd happily bedsheets, but they are ex-prem and on oxygen, so we can't do that.
I don't think babies are designed to be away from their parents as much as society makes out. Why wouldn't you cuddle and comfort your baby when they are upset, or feed them when they are hungry even if it's 3am?

[SpecialStains]

Define sleeping through.

The scientific paper that first discussed sleeping through defines it as something like 5 consecutive hours between midnight and 8am.

Different people have different ideas of sleeping through. As long as you and baby are happy, I wouldn't worry.

[Sunnie1984]

I think 6 months is too early for sleep training.

I formula fed both of mine.

DD slept through from 9 weeks. She didn't really like being cuddled and preferred to be put in her cot while sleepy and drifted off to sleep with her dummy (later swapped for her thumb). She liked her sleep and ate like a horse during the day.

DS was a much more cuddly baby, was on the 100th venture for height and was easily distracted while feeding in the day. He continued to wake for a feed until well over a year, save a fluke 12 hour sleep at 9 months. Even after he stopped feeding he needed a cuddle and resettling once a night until about 18 months.

It's very baby specific and it's pretty unusual for 6 month olds to consistently sleep through (by that I mean 12 hours!).

[LePetitPont]

Definitely not being unreasonable! The Isis sleep site mentioned by a pp has some really interesting evidence and recent research on what constitutes normal infant sleep. Waking at night protects babies from SIDs for example. Essentially the assertion (by the likes of Gina Ford) that babies should be sleep NN through by 12 weeks is a myth and it is a developmental milestone in much the same way as first steps, first words etc. All babies are different. Also interestingly, recent research found there was no difference in infant sleep between bf and ff babies by that age. Despite loads of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, my nct group included!

My LO is 25 months. He didn't sleep longer than 4 hours in a stretch til he turned 1, the randomly had a week of sleeping 7-6 or so at 21 months. Then the back molars kicked in... we are only just getting more reliable spells of sleep but with crazily early starts. I think I prefer the night wakes! He is still bf but we are doing some gentle night weaning. Unfortunately this isn't a magic bullet, he's just more accepting of a cuddle.

Pregnant with #2 and hoping this one is more of a fan of sleep! However, there is a lot to be said about accepting the way they are and not fighting against it with sleep training or being taken in by behaviourists working on limited developmental / psychological evidence bases.

[TigerLily666]

No martyr here. Just feel v strongly that babies/toddlers/children do things in their own time and in their own way, including sleeping. I remember speaking to a (very sensible) paediatrician at one point who basically said 'whatever gets you through it' when I confessed DC still had bottle as part of bedtime routine at age 2!

[Gardenbirdy]

They're all different - at 6 months teething can start which can throw a previously good sleeper right off. Mine slept through regularly at 10 months and is now a pretty good sleeper, so it was worth the wait! But I have other friends who did CC to save their marriage / sanity and another who paid a sleep consultant for advice.
Babies are all different, we are all different, trust your instinct and do whatever works for you. It's hard!

[HyacinthFuckit]

Normal to be sleeping through at that age, normal not to be. And of course, it's perfectly possible for them to sleep through whilst still in the same room as parents, without any CIO etc. For some of them it's just what they do.

But if you think about it, there's huge variation in what's normal for adult sleeping patterns too. So it's not that surprising that babies aren't one size fits all either.

[TriJo]

My 7 month old is breastfed - he slept through from 3 to 6 months but it all went to hell at that stage. He's generally waking up twice at night these days, once between midnight and 2 and once around 4.

[MrsNuckyThompson]

It is entirely normal at that age. I think LOTS of people lie about this. DS was about 9 months when he dropped his final night feed. He's a reliable sleeper now aged 3.5.

[JasperDamerel]

I was a terrible sleeper as a baby, and DD has followed my own sleep pattern. I suspect that light sleepers are less likely to have babies who sleep through, because they wake more often themselves and so respond more quickly to their baby's waking.

I do remember astonishing a friend when DD was a couple of months old. We went over to watch a film at her house, with DD asleep in a pram in the next room. Being an exhausted new parent, I fell asleep on the sofa half way through the film. Suddenly I sat up, wide awake and looked towards DD, who had been silently sleeping. A couple of seconds later she woke up and started crying for me. Somehow, in my sleep, in a noisy room, I had detected a change in DDs movement or breathing pattern that meant she was about to wake up, and woken up in order to feed her.

Both of mine were toddlers before they slept through, but they had very different sleeping habits, and those general personality related sleep traits have continued into childhood. So DD has a head full of thoughts and finds it hard to get to sleep, whereas DS goes to sleep easily but doesn't like being alone, and is a natural early riser.

[cathf]

I get that some babies refuse to sleep through.
I get that all babies are different
I get that bf babies MAY be more difficult to settle than FF ones.
What I don't get is the airy attitude that it's perfectly fine to be waking up 2 or 3 times a night and not to seem to have any desire to do something about it.
It is as if admitting that it is not ideal somehow marks you out as an awful mother, as you are not surrendering yourself completely to your baby's whims.
What about mum's needs and the rest of the family? Baby seems to trump everyone else, rather than fit in as far as possible.

[noeffingidea]

I personally agree with you, cathf. But it's up to the individual, isn't it.
I'm not sure it's outdated, either. I think a lot of people still get their ideas about parenting from their parents (usually mums) rather than parenting sites and advice from health visitors, etc. For example, with weaning, everyone I know still starts their babies on solids at 3-4 months.
Personally I'm happy that my babies slept through (at least the hours I wanted them to) and if I was having another baby now I would do exactly the same things I did 28 years ago with my first baby, at least regarding sleep.