Babies sleeping through the night

[coffeeforone]

I truly believe that how many weeks/months/years it takes for a baby to start sleeping through the night is out of the parents' control, every baby is different and they will sleep through in their own time. Night wakings can't be controlled, aside from making sure baby has enough milk/stimulation in the day and hoping for the best it's basically the luck of the draw!

DH however thinks that, medical reasons aside, almost all babies are able to sleep though the night after the newborn stage, and they if they don't, it's because of something the parents are doing/not doing (though of course he is unable to pinpoint these magic actions/inactions).

Who do you think is BU?

Mainly luck though I do believe bottle fed babies sleep through the night earlier than breastfed (not all)

@WiddlinDiddlin - My fitness tracker shows I'm a terrible sleeper even if I don't go to toilet in the night or remember waking up.

I think it's a bit of both. I had an OK sleeper and an awful sleeper. I did the same things with both in terms of where they slept, how I settled them etc. The awful sleeper was just habit - waking up as she needed the comfort of feeding to sleep. However we sleep trained both (not CIO) and both was relatively painless and slept through the next night and from then on (until they were in a big bed and realised they could run riot anyway ha) so it is possible to modify their behaviour

My best friend has twins, they’re treated exactly the same, one sleeps, the other doesn’t. Therefore, in my opinion, 99% of the time, it is the baby, not the parents.

The majority of babies will sleep through after four months with a solid routine and sleep training. Not everyone wants to sleep train and that is fine and their choice. If no sleep training then it is luck whether your baby will sleep through at 6 weeks or 6 years.
I used to work as a nanny for wealthy families who employed maternity nurses and I never had a baby who wasn’t sleeping through at 4 months.

I semi disagree/agree? I think a lot is down to luck and individual child’s personality but I do think there are things which encourage good sleep from the early days and others which don’t. However it’s such a subjective subject, your own experiences of your own babies are all you can really go on so I don’t think there’s any easy answers.

^ this is basically what I was going to say. Good 'sleep hygiene' is important for adults and children alike but everyone's different.

Before I was actually a parent I decided I was going to be quite strict when it came to sleep. There would be no co-sleeping, no responding to just any little whimper, baby would have a good routine from day one. Yes there would be odd wake ups but I wouldn’t stand for any nonsense and there was always controlled crying if things got really bad.

Then I met DD.

In all my pre-planning it had never occurred to me that the baby just might not want to sleep. Or actually seem to need anywhere near the amount of sleep that the books say she should have. I also hadn’t counted on the instinct to respond straight away to every cry in the early days, although you do learn to recognise which cries you can probably ignore in DD’s case for approximately a minute until full on screaming ensues

We’ve tried everything with her, and all for reasonable amounts of time to give them the chance to work. All the most ‘gentle’ tips. Gradual retreat. Controlled crying (one night, went on for hours with no progress, never again). Earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes. Less napping, more napping. At 20 months she still resists going to sleep, typically wakes twice (usually straight back to sleep, occasionally wide awake and wanting to play for an hour or so) and is an early riser. She’s happy, healthy, developing normally in all areas and is extrmely advanced in her speech. So not suffering for the ‘lack’ of sleep. When she does have one of her prolonged wake ups and wants to get up we’ve never given in to her and got up. The light stays off, there’s little interaction other than to soothe her, so it’s not a learned behaviour.

So OP, YANBU. There are definitely babies who sleep through early. In my opinion the majority of these babies are just naturally good sleepers. There are some of those babies who will be good sleepers because the routine their parents have used suits them well and who might not have slept so well in different circumstances.

Then there are the babies who don’t sleep well. Of these, yes there will be some where the parents will have had some impact on this and maybe could have more success if they did things differently. Though they are probably trying their best and doing what fits in best with the family like most of us. The rest have parents like myself and DH, full of the best intentions and having done some research, but that are still nowhere near sleeping through. It’s just the way they are, and probably genetic - despite good sleep hygiene I’m yet to sleep through at the age of 32.

My perfect parenting plan has well and truly disappeared and I’m now doing what gets us the most sleep and feels right for me and DD, ie not stressing about what we should be doing according to the books and achieving the magical sleep through, but responding with cuddles and soothing when DD wakes. Sleep training has its place for many families but it absolutely makes no difference to DD, and I’m confident she won’t want to share a bed with me and her dad at 16. Anyone who thinks DD’s ‘poor’ sleep (in the eyes of our society) is down to me and DH is welcome to take her for a week. They won’t get anywhere but we’ll have a few nights out and late mornings

My ff baby didn’t sleep through until she was 3.5. My one that was ebf slept through quite a bit from 3 months. Of course, he now has a cold and is getting his molars and is generally miserable and awake every hour, but he’s generally a pretty good sleeper. We did the exact same with both of them - co sleeping, feeding to sleep, no sleep training, etc. They’re just different.

My sense is the people in our lives though who seem to have these very hardline views about how babies should sleep usually aren’t the ones getting up and doing the nights. It’s easy to be all preachy when you’re one step removed from sleep deprivation!

Dd slept through from 2 weeks. She was breast fed and we had quite a strict routine basically because I didnt have a clue so followed a tick list. It worked. She was still in nappies at five and a half because she slept so soundly. Even now at 11 she will sleep through anything.

There at things that help sleep but I think you either have a sleeper or a waker.

There seems to be such an obsession with sleeping through. DD wakes up twice a night, has some milk, back to sleep. Takes around 20 minutes and we stay in bed. She goes down around 9-10pm and we often stay in bed until around 8.30-9am.

I meant to add I’m absolutley fine with this routine and we have no desire to train her out of waking up. I prefer it as I know she’s breathing.

@Onlyfoolsnmothers

You're right about that.

expectingscience.com/2014/09/09/lets-face-it-formula-fed-babies-sleep-better-from-their-parents-perspective/

I'm unpopularly with your husband.

Omg I'm so glad to read this and all the replies. I has tour exact outlook. Babies will sleep if they want to sleep and there not much you can do about it, every other annoying ass person tried to tell me otherwise when asking the question "does she sleep well"
She sleeps not too bad at night 1 or 2 wake ups, only one is for a bottle though. During the day she will not nap for more than an hour and it takes an hour for me to get her to sleep.
I was just about to pay for a stupid "sleep training" programme that everyone on Facebook says works.
But you know what, fuck it. I'm not. As much as I wish my DD would sleep better in the day, I don't think k can do muxh more than what I've already tried.

I thought that it was down to the parents behaviour, until I had my third. I’ve had two sleep through the night from 3 months and this one still wakes for milk. I’ve tried giving her less milk in the night and offering more in the day, but she has as much as she wants and then stops (fair enough) and then wakes up hungry.

I’m sure I could just leave her to cry for a few nights and it might break the cycle, but I’m not going to do that as it’s not my thing so I’ll never know.

Thanks for all the replies. I'm pleased a lot of people agree with me.

The discussion with DH came about as we have spent a lot of time over Christmas and new year with various friends with young children, and he has been a bit judgemental about the parents of the toddlers who aren't great sleepers, openly trying to give advice about what they should be doing, which I don't think is helpful (they have probably already tried everything they are willing to do). It hasn't helped my argument that we haven't come across any real life sibling examples of a sleeper/non-sleeper. All the sets of siblings we know happen to sleep (or not) in the same way. Mostly coincidences I say, including with our 2 DS who both happen to be good sleepers from the early months.

Like most things a combination of nature/nature. Dd was/is an amazing sleeper. Slept through (11-5) by 8 weeks. Did 14 hours at night at 15 months. Now age 12 regularly puts herself to bed at 7:30-8pm

Oh op, I bet your husband made himself unpopular over the holidays.

Sorry should have said Ds generally just needs less sleep. But I did make sure he went 8-6 most of the time.

Does your husband come from a large multi-generational extended family where they have openly talked about sleeping patterns and he's helped out over the years with the babies, toddlers and young children at night?

This!

My uncle is like your husband. I also get lots of 'advice' which is really just judgement. I spend most of my time actively trying to avoid him when I go see family. It's not helpful or wanted in most cases. It doesn't matter what he thinks unless someone asks he shouldn't try to 'help' them

Out of curiosity @3wildones, how many were exclusively breast fed?

ReaganSomerset
None. Only only had breast milk and pumped in the day so had breast milk from a bottle at night. Most were bottle or mix fed.

Yep, luck of the draw.

My DD now 12 years old slept through 8-8 from 4 weeks and before that only waked once a night for a feed (newborn-4 weeks)

Loved telling my mum friends that......

However, my DS, different kettle of fish, did not sleep through until he went into a single bed (didn't bother with cot/junior bed) at 20 months. He slept perfectly from this point on.

DS is now 13, so only 12 months older than DD. So whilst my newborn DD slept like an angel my DS kept me up!

Both sleep for England now.

Excellent post KTCluck.

Some babies/ children are more pliable than others. These can sometimes respond to 'sleep training'.

It's fairly amusing that sleep training is only a thing in the west though.