Can bf babies sleep through the night?

[aamia]

Just wondering. My dad keeps asking if DS is sleeping through, as I was by 6 weeks, but I was ff....

[feekerry]

Mine does. She is 6.5 months and sleeps from 7pm till 7am then i bring her into bed with me to feed and we normally fall back asleep till 8.30am ish! Its amazing. She is totally ebf. Never had a bottle, not even of ebm. And do you know I'm so proud i ignored all the doubters and did it our way. I.e everyone said i shouldn't feed her to sleep, don't co sleep, let her cry for few mins before you go to her etc, don't feed her in night as she'll wake for it etc. Well I'm proud to say I've always fed her to sleep, never left her to grizzle, not even for a second, always let her use me as a dummy and i now have a baby who sleeps amazingly well. Ha. Up yours all those doubters!!!!!

[Oblomov]

Ds1 slept through, 7pm-6 am @ 13 wks. Ds2 was a nightmare. Why one and not the other? No idea.

[AmandinePoulain]

Both of mine were/are ebf. Dd1 slept through from 8 weeks, but then hit the 4 month sleep regression and didn't sleep through again until 6 months. Now at 4 she loves her sleep but is an early riser, always up by 7:30 at the latest, never mind what time she goes to bed. Dd2 is 11 weeks old, she mostly feeds at 7, sometimes again at 9-10ish, then goes through until any time between 5 and 7:30. I know that I'm very lucky .

[Tigresswoods]

Yes! DS did at 8 weeks. Until he was about 15w when he did the classic 4m sleep regression thing.

It IS. Possible but probably fairly unusual.

[Impatientwino]

I have a 14wo DS identical to Elpha...

[Longdistance]

Dd2 started sleeping through from 7 til 7 at 9wks. It was a complete shocker as dd1 was, and still is a rubbish sleeper.
It was great when she slept 13 hours one night. Dd2 still has 2 sleeps in the day, and sleeps though. I guess I got lucky with this one!

[Hyperballad]

Snap Elpha and Impatient! Oh apart from I don't get the 7-10.30pm bit! I get a 9.30pm till 10.30pm!

Last night I carried him up to his Moses basket fast asleep at just gone 9, he was totally out. Took the monitor downstairs while I cleaned the kitchen. 20 mins later I hear him stirring and grumbling so I go back up to do a bit of rocking and tucking to find a baby not only wide awake but actually smiling and laughing and kicking and punching when he saw me!
It took 2 hours after that of feeding, awake, feeding awake, before eventually feeding asleep!

[shandybass]

Yes my three ebf Dds have slept through from about 10 weeks. My dd3 has now started waking once or twice a night since 4 months now though, which I doesn't impress me much. The other two only had phases where they woke, but I can't complain and would say that bf and ff fed babies can sleep through.

[McKayz]

Yes they can. DD is 19 weeks old and has been sleeping through for about a month.

DS2 was FF and didn't sleep through until 11 months. I think it depends on the baby really.

[Teds77]

My twins are 14 weeks. DTB has slept through since 11 weeks (8pm-7am ish) but DTD is usually up once around 3/4am or sometimes twice. She is a little smaller than him but she's easily bigger than he was at 11 weeks now! Both ebf exactly the same milk on exactly the same three hour schedule during the day, both decent feeders and both have days of napping well and badly, both do same activities etc. This carefully controlled sleep experiment allows me to claim it's just pot luck whether you get good sleepers or not .

[monkeypuzzeltree]

I envy some of you and I sympathise with the rest of you! But very glad to hear I'm not alone and others get fed up of those that ask if your 17 week old is sleeping thru and suggest unhelpfully that maybe they are not "getting enough in" during the day - I feed him every 2 hours for goodness sake where is he meant to store it!!! I was quite happy with 11-4!

[IShallCallYouSquishy]

Yep, my DD did from 9 weeks. 7:30/8 until 7 with a dream feed.
We then hit 4 month sleep regression but back to sleeping through again now

[abigboydidit]

Yes - with a few blips due to teething etc - he slept from 730pm to 7am or so from about 12 weeks.

[abigboydidit]

Sorry - I should have added that DS rarely looked for milk during the day when there was lots to see and do but would have happily woken hourly through the night for milk. I made a concerted effort to offer more day feeds (think it averaged out about 5-6 day feeds) and as if by magic...ZzzzZZzzzzZZZzz [hsmile]

[midori1999]

Yes, they can. However, it is normal for babies to wake at night and a lot of people mis-remember things, class sleeping through differently or even lie. (yes, they do!)

This might help you.

By the time babies are 3 months old some (but not all) begin to start settling (sleeping through a night-time feed for a stretch of up to 5 hours). By the time they are 5 months old half of them may have started to sleep for an eight-hour stretch on some nights. Generally, though, babies do not sleep all night-every night until they are close to a year old. One study investigating infant sleep duration found that 27% of babies had not regularly slept from 10pm to 6am by the age of 1 year. 13% of babies had not regularly slept through for 5 hours or more by the age of 1 year

From here where there is lots of other info about normal sleep behaviour in infants.

[LST]

DS slept through from 6 weeks but he was ff. when I bf (albeit only the first 10 days) he woke every 4 hours on the dot.

[BreeVanDerTramp]

Both DS didn't sleep through till after 1 year. DD has slept from 11 till 6 since the first night in hospital, she waking around 3am now at 16 weeks.

[crochetcircle]

Yes, they can.

Both my dd's were/are exclusively bf, and slept through from 6-7 weeks.by which I mean 9-11 hours straight per night.. They are both quite big, not sure if that's relevant... 98th and 91st centile.

[BillysBeastlyBogeyman]

My friend ebf her dd who slept at least 12 hours from 4 weeks

My mixed fed dd still has a bottle in the night and she is 17 months! I could put 3 roast dinners a day down that kid and she would still need a little something to get through the night.

[HappyAsASandboy]

My breastfed DS sleeps through from 7pm to 6am now that he's two years old

His twin sister still doesn't - she feeds two or three times between those hours (I think for comfort rather than nutrition).

That didn't really help, did it?!

[Jellybellyrbest]

My EBF DD3 AMAZED me at 8 wo when she slept 7/8 hrs straight at night. Self-settled with her thumb. Sometimes she slept till 08:30!! (DD1 & 2 were both night wakers & are generally up well before 7). Sadly, at 5mths this all went pear shaped & both daytime & night-time sleeps are unpredictable. She no longer sucks her wee thumb either... Have just had her downstairs for the past hour....sob.

[frantic51]

Another one with big babies (8lb 13ozs, 10lbs 10ozs and 12lbs 3ozs) all exclusively bf, all slept 6-7 hours from around 2-3 weeks.

[nemno]

Yes. My 2 ebf babies slept through early. One seemed able to take huge amounts at one go and slept for 7 hrs a night from before I left hospital. My boobs were often engorged though :( . The other one needed a 3am feed for just a very few weeks.