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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Having a baby who sleeps through noise is just luck

170 replies

Hustssleeping · 02/01/2020 23:59

My friends new baby will only sleep in perfect silence. Which means a family tiptoeing around with white noise on when they want to whisper. It seems crazy but I remember doing the same with my first.
Is it just luck if your baby sleeps through any noise or is there a trick to it? She desperately wants to know as her DSS comes EOW and she feels bad asking him to be quiet- she knows its important it's his house too..
So
IABU there is a way of teaching babies to sleep through noise (if so- share the magic please!)
IANBU- it's just luck

OP posts:
PatricksRum · 03/01/2020 03:02

I feel like exposure pays a part and sleeping arrangements.

PatricksRum · 03/01/2020 03:03

Babies need to feed regularly and have no concept of day and night. So when people claim their baby 'sleeps through the night'  I feel so sorry for that baby as their needs are obviously being ignored.

One of the truest things I've read on mn. Also when parents write posts asking how to get their 3 week old dc to sleep through

99bb · 03/01/2020 05:22

DC1 - I made a point of making noise around, as I subscribed to that whole theory. Ended up having to be quiet as everything woke baby up. Typical waking every two hours to feed. I never believed that babies actually slept through the night. This went on EVERY night for well over a year. Still a terrible sleeper, although no amount of noise seems to wake them!

DC2 - little guzzler, cluster feeds all evening, has seemed to know the difference between day and night since day one, slept through (sometimes) after a few weeks, wakes up happy, has a little feed and is raring to go (and is thriving and thoroughly content so needs definitely being met) Daytime naps are much harder though, definitely likes it very quiet and calm to get off to sleep, which is hard with DC1 around.

In our case, this easy ride we’ve got (and massively appreciate) with DC2 is complete and utter dumb luck. We’ve done nothing to make it happen. I think the noise thing is the same.

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 03/01/2020 05:32

With noise... Luck. Neither of mine believed in sleep. DD1 would wake when we got within 100m of the front door when I used to pound the streets to get her to nap every afternoon for example. However the things she slept through when I got her to sleep...

  • the tank firing range, which was actually several miles away but made adults jump when it started up!
  • a brass band practicing next door
  • planes landing over the garden (moved next to an airfield when she was 4 months)
DD2 slept through spectating a military parade including bands and shouting, the airfield noise, massive thunderstorm

However their father (in the Army) did manage to sleep through a battle in a warzone....

Dipsydoodle · 03/01/2020 05:39

Babies need to feed regularly and have no concept of day and night. So when people claim their baby 'sleeps through the night' I feel so sorry for that baby as their needs are obviously being ignored.

This isn't necessarily true at all. My DD went through a phase of 'sleeping through' from about 8 weeks to 20 weeks or so. I certainly didn't ignore her! She just went to sleep and didn't wake up for about eight/nine hours 🤷🏻‍♀️ Some babies are just like that. There's a massive spectrum of 'normal'.

NellWilsonsWhiteHair · 03/01/2020 05:56

Total luck. Like others on this thread, I know a parent of twins where one slept through noise and the other didn’t. One of my DC did and the other didn’t (still wakes easily now at 7yo). Perhaps if you never give them a chance to try sleeping through noise you might inadvertently train them out of it, but definitely I don’t think you can train them in to it through exposure. You have to give up at some point when it’s not working and you’re just making them sleep deprived!

Bloody hard when you have older DC around though, and I bet that’s amplified by the complexities of blended families.

NellWilsonsWhiteHair · 03/01/2020 06:01

And yes 🙄 my DC2 had a brief phase of sleeping through in her early months. I was hippydippy earth mother, bf at every squeal, bedsharing through choice rather than desperation, blah blah, and DC1 woke every hour of every night til he was past his second birthday so my expectations were not too high, but she snuggled up in my arms and slept for 8 hours. Happy and alert by day, fed really well (quickly jumped from 25th to 91st centile) and basically thrived, just briefly slept brilliantly. I was super grateful - I’m sure it was part of why my recovery from that birth was so easy - but it was just luck and definitely not ignoring her needs.

Babynamechangerr · 03/01/2020 06:11

It's no coincidence that 2nd and 3rd etc children sleep better, as they have to sleep through more noise. DC1 was the worst sleeper as I used to tiptoe about, rely on white noise etc. Dc3 sleeps like a dream as they just go to sleep with family life going on around them.

IvinghoeBeacon · 03/01/2020 06:12

Luck - and also the type of noise. My son can sleep through the fire alarm (this is common), my sewing machine and us having showers after he has gone to bed, but not the loo flushing. I was told on here that the latter was because of us tiptoeing around him sleeping, but that’s clearly nonsense when other types of noise don’t disturb him

IvinghoeBeacon · 03/01/2020 06:17

I have never “tiptoed” around my son sleeping. He would only nap on me for the first few months of his life so obviously normal life went on around him. It doesn’t stop certain noises waking him up, so we keep those to a minimum as I would of particular noises disturbed my husband

IvinghoeBeacon · 03/01/2020 06:19

“ It's no coincidence that 2nd and 3rd etc children sleep better, as they have to sleep through more noise.”

What, all of them? I know loads of second/third children who are more wakeful than their eldest sibling. My mum’s fourth was the worst of us for a start

Babynamechangerr · 03/01/2020 06:36

Fair enough Ivinghoe, I should have said it's more common for subsequent children to be better sleepers. Obv some children will be light sleepers regardless of environment (as adults are) but I don't think it is just luck either.

mistermagpie · 03/01/2020 06:44

Luck.

My first could and still does sleep through anything. He's 4 now and I could go in and hoover his bedroom etc and he wouldn't stir. My second however can hear the grass grow, and if you so much as clear your throat two rooms away he wakes up.

My third is a bit better but she wants to be held all night while she sleeps so...

Babies are people and people are different. I'm a night owl and an incredibly light sleeper. My DH falls asleep at the drop of a hat and could sleep through an earthquake - babies are the same, there is no 'one size fits all' pattern to their sleep and no magic solution to get them to sleep when you want them to.

Timmythatyou · 03/01/2020 06:48

I don’t think it is entirely luck. You can get your LO used to house sounds And other background - don’t tip toe around their nap time. I don’t mean crashing about their room I mean the sound of the radio on in another room, people talking, taking them to a cafe etc when they’re asleep.
The babies I know who needed ‘silence’ to sleep were the ones who had almost absolute silence from the get go during nap times.
Good news is that as with everything with babies it does chance so hopefully won’t last forever.

sleepymummy2019 · 03/01/2020 06:48

It’s luck. Mine struggles to fall asleep and wakes a lot, but the only noise that’s ever woken her is her dad using an electric drill in the next room 🤣

concooktion · 03/01/2020 06:51

It's luck. I have one of each, still the same at 10 & 8.

QuietCrotchgoblins · 03/01/2020 06:53

I was one of those parents who was long to carry on as normal around my newborn as 'they need to adapt'. 6 months later I was on my knees with sleep deprivation as my child was the worst sleeper and woke at the drop of a pin 3 doors down. I didn't have a shower, wash the dishes or flush the tiolet after 7pm at night for many years for fear of waking her 😅 finally she is a good sleeper and it's hard to now wake her at night.

HakunaMatataa · 03/01/2020 06:55

My first slept through and still does sleep through anything. My 2nd wakes up if you breathe in the wrong direction, despite it being noisier this time round. I hovered around him sleeping when he was little, washing machine ect. Now he has to have white noise on to sleep and still wakes up at everything. Purely luck I'm guessing at this point.

IvinghoeBeacon · 03/01/2020 06:59

“ The babies I know who needed ‘silence’ to sleep were the ones who had almost absolute silence from the get go during nap times.”

This just doesn’t reflect my experience of those kinds of babies - it’s so much more varied than that

QuietCrotchgoblins · 03/01/2020 07:00

In summary pps absolutely right- if your child is a heavy sleeper then you can carry on making noise. You'd be daft to keep repeating the same behaviour of waking them with noise if they are light sleepers so you stop. We are all different as adults why do we expect children to all be the same?

Nuttyaboutnutella · 03/01/2020 07:03

My son would sleep through a herd of elephants stampeding over him as a young baby. He would fall asleep to the hoover sometimes. My house was the cleanest it's ever been Grin

My 7 month old wakes as a feather dropping Hmm I've only got to move a quarter of an inch in bed a fraction over a whisper and it disturbs her.

concooktion · 03/01/2020 07:05

The babies I know who needed ‘silence’ to sleep were the ones who had almost absolute silence from the get go during nap times.

Well, yes. Because the adults realised pretty quickly that if they made any sound their finally sleeping baby would wake up and start wailing at them.

userabcname · 03/01/2020 07:11

Luck! My two dc are sleep opposites. I've done nothing differently. Confirms my view that it's down to individuals rather than parenting.

GreenFieldsOfFrance · 03/01/2020 07:15

Luck. My first slept through from 10 weeks (obviously thought this was down to my amazing mothering skills...), second by 3 months and third not until she was almost 4 years old. Those were dark times!

Shedidnt · 03/01/2020 07:21

One of mine would sleep through a bomb. She was 5 days old when I had a screaming row with my mother in the kitchen who wanted to bring me and my baby out for lunch. I screamed so loud that I started seeing stars and almost fainted (I had had a c-section and was just home from hospital - I had a lot of blood loss). Dd slept blissfully through this madness! She was just a very chilled child. She was also one of the annoying babies who slept through the night from 6 weeks. I think you know from the first day they're born what sort of baby they'll be. She is still, as a teenager, extremely fond of her sleep. She has that rare ability to just fall asleep when she's tired lol.

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