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?

I think with most of the main issues that parents tear their hair out over kids naturally place somewhere on a spectrum from 'good' to 'difficult' that runs parallel to another spectrum of 'parenting effort'.

So for sleep: you might have a naturally good sleeper at one end who will have the odd cranky night but will be sleeping through early and often. Sleep training might look like it's a genius solution with these babies but they'd have probably been just as easy without it.

At the far other end you have the one who are just going to be awake a lot - possibly until they are toddlers and beyond. All the clever techniques and constant effort in the world are not going to change much.

And between these two extremes you have a range of easy, less easy, a bit harder. I think with these you've got more chance of persisting with controlled crying etc and getting it to work.

Same with issues like picky eating etc.

If you're lucky you get at least one 'easier' trait to help you cope. No sleep but she eats anything or picky eater but 10 solid hours of sleep a night.

You can instantly see the poor exhausted parents who have picky eating, no sleeping, no napping, stubborn and adventurous little tykes!

If that's you - don't worry it does get better eventually!

I hate to make new mums feel inadequate but I really dont think its luck. All babies are different but with my first I went everytime he cried let him set his own routine and hoped for the best. He was terrible woke through the night and really early every day so I let him sleep with me then had a horrible time when I had to insist he slept in his own bed when he started school. With my next DS I was determined to try and set a good sleep routine. Tried hard to make sure I stuck to certain times and to give him the right amount of formula so he was full up plus a relaxing bed time routine. Had him sleeping 11 till 6 when he was 4 months and 7 till 7 by 8 months. When I had my DD 4.5 yrs later it crossed my mind that it could have just been luck with him. But I did th exact same routine again and she is a stubborn child but her sleep has followed exactly the same pattern. Now I must say my first child has SEN so that could have affected him however my opinion is its not luck. It takes work but its not cruel and it pays so much sleep deprivation is a killer.

You dh is BU. It happens when it happens, unless extinction techniques are used.

Strict routines do not work as well with breastfed babies as with formula fed babies. If my ds doesn't want to feed then he just doesn't feed. Nothing I do will change that. But in the same breath it's been a godsend this week when he has had a stinker of a cold. Co sleep, let him feed when he wakes up etc has definitely helped him when he's obv been feeling crap.

agree with your husband.
Those who are saying - well one of my children slept and other didn't and I did the same thing with them - are saying it all, really.
They are doing the same thing. Not providing the child with individual support. Every baby is different, important thing is to figure our what works for a specific baby. Not use same method all over.
I find it one of the most important things a parent / carer can do is to teach a baby/child how to sleep.
That includes fully and EBF babies.
And I looked after many of them ( including years of working as a maternity/night nanny)

@swlondonnanny

I disagree. I think sleep is developmental and can't be taught. My DD sleeps very well and it's nothing to do with anything I did!

She was a bad sleeper as a newborn, then got better with co-sleeping, but suddenly learned to self-settle aged five months and has been fine since. We moved her to her own room at six months and she's still fine now. If she is ill, she doesn't sleep as well, but that's it. And that's true of me as an adult too.

I’m a great believer in sleep training and routines. Obviously some babies are naturally more inclined to sleep through more quickly and easily than others, but there is a lot that can be done by parents to encourage it.

ReaganSomerset
If it’s completely developmental then why did I never look after a child over four months who didn’t sleep through. They all had maternity nannies who used a mixture of routines and sleep training.

Sleeping through at four months doesn't translate into sleeping well throughout childhood. I've got a few mum friends whose perfect sleepers suddenly started waking every hour or so when they got to four months and hit the sleep regression. Sleep is developmental. If there was a one-size-fits-all-no-controlled-crying (as I presume you only used gentle methods at four months) method, it would be used everywhere.

WiddlinDiddlin

Exactly.

I remember people saying 'she'll sleep through soon' and thinking 'really?' Because I never have. I don't have to get up to wee but I do wake up and fidget, turn over, etc.

She did eventually 'sleep through' at around two, or rather, she learned to go back to sleep on her own, I often hear her wake up and have a little winge and then go quiet again.

ReaganSomerset
I didn’t do the sleep training as I was a daily nanny rather than maternity nurse. Some babies just needed routine. Some were left to cry for varying amounts of time.
As I said previously I know not everyone wants to sleep train, especially if in involves leaving little ones to cry, but in my (considerable) experience it does work.

It also may be emotionally damaging to those under 6 months and as such is no longer advised for this age group. Seems a high price to pay.

Reminds me of that old NSPCC advert. 'Miles is a quiet baby. He has learned that nobody will come, whether he cries or not.'
Baby may not have slept through, just knew not to bother crying. Sleep is developmental.

Pure luck. Mine slept for six hours at four weeks. I can take absolutely no credit for it.

DS has only just started this week at 19m old. He seems to be able to join his sleep cycles now.

I think that’s a bit extreme! I probably wouldn’t leave a child to cio but it rarely comes to this in my experience. And I’ve never known a child to be left to cry alone for long periods. Most of us don’t sleep through we just settle ourselves back without waking up the whole house ime babies learn to do the same.

Reagan I don't know what to say.
Maybe teaching is not right word in this context (English not my first/second language so sometimes I pick the wrong word)
What I meant was that whatever you call it - teaching /development/pixy dust - encouraging
good sleep is one of the most important things in babies/everyones life.
There are plentiful of methods/babywisperers magic/sleep fairy tricks etc (again whatever you want to call it) which help and encourage a baby to sleep. Whether it is a combination of knowledge of newborn /baby/toddler sleep patterns and needs and their natural development and practical experience and ability of spotting any potential issues which could influence their sleep or just a natural ability to recognise the clues the baby is giving me babies tend to sleep at the end of my booking/job and carry on sleeping.
And No there is not one method which fits all babies. That is the point I was trying to make.
Treating babies as individuals and meeting their individual needs is what works.
I am not talking about babies with major medical issues though
And I am not advocating any particular method and definitely not letting the newborn cry 'to teach them to self settle'

DS1 slept through at nearly 6 YEARS old.

DS2 wakes for milk, he's 31 months.

What does your DH think of my parenting? to be fair, DS1 has suspected ASD, is that my fault, too?

I agree with your DH. Sorry.

It’s easy to get obsessed with babies sleeping through the night but it’s common and totally normal for kids to wake up. DS1 is nearly 4, didn’t sleep through consistently until he was 1, slept really well from then until he was 2.5 and we moved house, slept in our beds most nights til he was 3, then slept well til he was 3.5, and he’s been sleeping pretty well lately. DS2 slept through consistently from 3-9 months, now he’s 10 months and not sleeping well.

Both were / are breastfed. I was more relaxed with DS2 and he fitted into DS1’s bedtime routine, in the early days he set his own.

I think a lot of it is the child, some kids are just better at it than others in the same way that some are better at football or tennis or ballet. However I do think there are some things you can do to help. With some babies those things will click instantly but some will still take ages to learn (as, for example, some kids would with learning tennis - if you had tried to teach both me and Andy Murray a skill at the same age in exactly the same way using exactly the same techniques, he might pick it up straight away whereas I might still be struggling with it years later).

Considering what I've seen among my group of mum friends (who I know closely enough to be able to comment on!) I'd agree more with your husband tbh. Some of us did sleep training ourselves, others got to the end of their ropes and hired "sleep consultants" to set out plans, but at 1.5 years those of us who did something have broadly good sleepers, despite sleep being variable in the early months. Those who didn't sleep train (usually because they feel it's cruel to do so) have babies up 2+ times a night to eat. (And one who is up at night to eat solid food, which is a whole other thing.)

Up until six months I wouldn't do anything other than enforce a suitable routine (day/night, bath, bottle/feed, story, swaddle, whatever else), but from there I saw that DD's feeds were increasing at times when she could not possibly have been hungry - as in, drank 7oz at 10pm, crying at 10.20 - and from there I started going in to shush her/replace dummy instead. When she was a bit older I'd leave it a bit before going in - sometimes she'd settle.

It's still anecdotal, of course, and I don't go round imparting my wisdom unless asked, but that's how it seems to me.

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

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA

Seriously though, are all adult humans the exact same? Do they all get hungry at the exact same time? Do they all fall asleep at the exact same.time? Just as every adult is different, so of course are babies. Luck may make them sleep through at first, but growth and development can change all that as the years go by. Unless of course you're one of the super rare ones whose child slept perfectly through forever up until they left home.

Yes, babies do learn to do the same. At a time when they are developmentally ready to. Without subjecting it to the stress of being left to cry. It's not extreme to say that taking a tiny baby that's only very recently left its mother's body and leaving it alone in a cot to cry will cause profound stress and, potentially, emotional damage. At that age, a baby is acting on instinct. Its instinct is to cry upon separation from its mother and to get distressed. It may be hungry, or have a stomach ache. It may be angry. It may be scared. It cannot regulate its emotions, ignore these feelings and go back to sleep. It cannot rationalise like an adult can upon waking, or amuse itself. It won't be able to link its sleep cycles or self soothe until it is developmentally ready to do so, which will occur at different times for different babies. Sleep is developmental. Some parenting approaches will make it harder to form good sleep habits, yes, by not offering babies the chance to use these skills once they are developmentally able to do so. But sleep is developmental.

I wasn't a stickler for routine when DD was a newborn. I fed her when she was hungry, not in a schedule, changed her when she needed it, let her sleep whenever/however long she wanted, and cuddled her when she or I wanted to. She is nearly 1 and has slept through since 13 weeks old. I have had maybe 2 or 3 nights in that time where she has woken in the night, due to teething, but she goes back to sleep on her own. My friend has a DD similar age to mine and swears she parented her child the same way I did, yet her baby still doesn't sleep through the night. I think it's just down to the baby, and the way they are. You could do everything completely text book and as you are supposed to, but still doesn't mean everything will be perfect!

Oh no, he's basically done that thing where you attribute some factor of luck to your own excellent parenting

Don't have a DC3 unless you really, really, really want to win this argument!

If there was a foolproof method to get babies to sleep through the night there would not be hundreds of £££ in the baby sleep industry, because it would have been passed down by word of mouth and everyone would know it. You only have to look at the sheer variety of options claiming to be the wonder fix to know that none of them actually work universally. Some of them will help some babies some of the time.