to think that some babies just don't sleep well, and that's ok?

[MissBootyBass]

My son is 8 months old. We follow a routine. Bath, story, song, bed. Same every night. He struggles to get to sleep but we usually get there within 30 minutes. He had never, ever slept through the whole night. He wakes at least twice every night, even if it is just to chat.

I talk to all my friends who have had babies and most of them say it's normal for their babies to sleep right through.

What's the norm here?

I think waking twice a night at 8 months sounds amazing! And also very normal. My 2nd baby was what I would call a good sleeper (compared to my first) and definitely woke 1-2 times a night at 8 months ( and we were bed sharing or it would have been more than that!). I’ve never met anyone whose baby slept through at 8 months. I suspect your friends may have quite a creative approach to the truth!

Your friends are lying.

Ahem. Sorry, I can't prove that, but I think an 8 month old waking a couple of times in the night is quite normal.

I also think people have different definitions of 'sleeps through'. 8pm to 8am - yes, wonderful, miracle baby. Goes down at 8, wakes for a feed at midnight, sleeps through to 5.30? That's also lovely, but not quite the same thing! And yet I've seen both described as 'sleeping through'.

30 minutes is a normal, perfectly ok amount of time for a baby to take to get to sleep. DD is a bad sleeper. She's 2, and until she was over 1 she never napped longer than 20/30 minutes, and she rarely sleeps more than 8 hours in a 24 hour period (I am aware of this because I just filled in her 30 month health visitor questionnaire, which asks). I've asked loads of people for help and they keep saying this. It's ok for a baby to be slow to go to sleep. It's ok if they wake up. They will get there. I'm clinging to this, so I hope it is of use to you too!

My eldest son didn't sleep through the night until he was 8 years old, his brother slept through from 6 weeks.
They are all different and we just have to go with the flow,

Perfectly fine!
But i guess if he is merely waking up for a chat sometimes... you should try and break that habit. So you can sleep. Sleep is so good haha

I'm my group of parent friends with similar aged babies there is a big rsnge of good and bad sleepers. Waking twice a night isnt terrible but not brilliant either. My 8 month old sometimes sleeps through the night but sometimes doesn't. Others have been sleeping through every night for months, others waking many times a night. Depends what you can cope with really. It's being realistic to expect babies to wake a little still at this age but if it's making someone struggle to cope then it's not ok

My 8 month old had a brief stint of only waking once at about 6 months but before and since then it's been 2-3 times between 8 and 7. Currently usually 1ish, 3.30ish and 6ish. He has a bottle at 7.30pm and breastfeeds for the other wakeups - I have tried replacing them with formula and it makes zero difference to how long he sleeps. So, I dunno. He'll stop eventually but I am a bit disappointed that I didn't get one of those "one feed at midnight" babies! 8 months without a single night of unbroken sleep sucks.

And no offence DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou hit if your baby has woken 8 times by 10pm, maybe he/she wasn’t tired at bedtime?

No offence? Are you 14?

No offence but LOL at your helpful comment. Not tired enough.
As if I couldn't figure out a little detail like that myself. Patronise a sleep deprived parent. Niiiiiice

You are correct. My eldest didn't sleep through until he was 14 months. My youngest was 2.5 YEARS. They're individuals, not robots. Some need milk or comfort in the middle of the night. It will end eventually!

“Babies aren’t meant to sleep well, if you get a good one count it as a bonus”

That was the single best piece of advice I was given by my Great-granny. And she had 15 of them so she knew what she was on about.

I have 5 biological children and they all slept different as babies. I have one that has always slept 10/11 hours a night from. She would dreamfeed when tiny. It was great because her twin was very firmly of the belief that sleep was for the weak. Even now at 16 she only sleeps 6 hours max.

DS2 is 9 and wakes at 5.15am. Usually he falls asleep between 11.30pm and midnight. The only time his wake up changes is when the clocks change. When we went abroad for a year for DH’s work trying to adjust him to the 6 hour time difference almost broke me. In the end the kids and I came back after 7 months. As a baby he didn’t sleep longer than 2.5 hours until he was 9 months old - when I realised he’d been asleep for 4 hours I was almost sick panicking and ended up waking him

They’ve all been parented/fed in the same way. Well, except ds as over the years I’ve tried every sleep technique there is. If you get a sleeping model then it’s pure luck.

OP your baby sounds like an OK sleeper. Not amazing, not terrible. And that's OK if it's working for you.

People with babies that are actually bad sleepers, who are unable to get more than snippets of broken sleep themselves for months or years, are likely not OK. It's terrible for your physical and mental health.

I'm god you're ok and getting enough sleep to feel good about things, but I don't think it's right to hand wave the significant impact a lack of real sleep can have on new parents.

Sorry but an 8 month only waking twice a night is sleeping very well indeed.

Deffo!

Try every 45 mins which I've had on occasions with both children

Number one was every 2 hours for what felt like ages; probably till 18 mo. He was low birth weight though and I do think it added additional challenges. Number two is completely random; and can do phases of every 15-30 mins for a couple of hours in the night which is torture or pretty much wake only once, with stints of 4-5 hours and some cluster feeding either end of the night.

I don't think babies are naturally supposed to sleep through the night. My 4yo didn't until she was two. My 1 yo has slept through the last two night, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself after dd1 was such a bad sleeper. There's nothing wrong with them waking and wanting to be close to you. Shows a good bond

I don't think there's any normal when it comes to babies sleeping. What sounds like a bad sleeper to one person might sound like a great sleeper to another.
What's worse is when you think your first baby is a bad sleeper, then you have another baby who takes bad sleeper to a whole new level

@NeurotrashWarrior but according to @ShinyForrid your kids aren't tired enough

This stuff drives me bonkers. By 6 months 78% of babies are not waking at night (as definined by the biggest prospective longditudinal study ever done). So although it is not uncommon by definition most 8 month olds are sleeping all night and not waking. Yes some babies or children find getting to sleep and staying asleep more difficult than others but it is not typical and most dcs can sleep through by 6 months.

I think there is an element of luck and also good sleep habits. The biggest thing among my friends seems to be breaking sleep associations early and letting them get to sleep themselves. That can be so hard if you feed to sleep. With my first, I broke the feed to sleep by accident as she got teeth early and they needed brushing. It was later when friends with crap sleepers went to sleep trainers that I realised we’d done it accidentally. With my second, I tried to do the drowsy to sleep thing from early on. I spent a few weeks swearing about sleep consultants saying it was all bollocks but then it started working.

Both of mine have done a solid 10-12 hours from 12 weeks. I think there is an element of genetics, luck but also routine. Both of them were very fixed on routine and I can set a watch by my second. The downside to that is we don’t have much flexibility and we’ve always been quite rigid about naps and bedtime which wouldn’t necessarily work for other families.

Some babies are definitely worse sleepers than others, just like with adults. Some adults need less sleep (my DH for instance!) than others. DD doesn’t actually need a lot of sleep - even as a newborn she was just so...awake! She would never fall asleep out and about in the pram, or even the car, but she does sleep well in her cot at night - that has been really, really important to my MH (and my job, which would be dangerous to others if I was very tired). From a few weeks old I was so strict with a routine, and encouraging independent sleep. This really helped us, but obviously isn’t for all babies or parents.

Personally I wouldn’t be engaging in any sort of chat or fun with a baby overnight. Night is for sleeping!

They can do if you are prepared to sleep train them. But sleep training isn’t for everyone. I’ve had some truly awful sleepers in my time as a nanny and I sleep trained them. Didn’t take long and now their perfectly fine.

It's never long on the sleep threads before someone accuses parents of sleeping through babies of being liars though...

I have twins. Both terrible sleepers until 10 months and then like a switch one of them started sleeping through. He’s a brilliant sleeper 7-7 every night consistently. Other twin is a completely different story even though they have exactly the same routine, sleep conditions, diet, daytime activities etc. so yes I absolutely think it’s down to the child.

Totally agree.

Your post is the secret to a happy life really.

Once you stop fighting it, everything is so much easier I could cope much better with the sleep deprivation!!

I have 2 dc and my first slept like a dream. My second is 26 months and has only just started to sleep through, this week! It's been bloody hard and he is still a nightmare to get to sleep initially, but thankfully this week once he's down he's staying down! They are all different, it's a pain in the bum but completely normal.

Apparently, I was that type of baby. Always awake by 4 or 5am and just wanted to chatter or play. As I got older, I'd want to read for as long as possible and then wake up early and do the same and, now, 45 years later, I still wake up by 5am, no matter what time I go to bed. I think it's just how some babies, and then adults, are!

Our DS is a mixed bag. Weeks of sleeping through followed by weeks of wake ups. Has been this way since he was tiny. Keeps you on your toes!

I have a 10mo who did a 6 hour stint once, and a couple of 5 hour ones. My toddler wakes in the night at least twice, too. Baby is still breastfeeding but is quite a chunk, I'm hoping one day it'll just click! As parents we're both a bit shattered