When did sleep become reliable?

[Biscuitsandteaplease]

After a spectacularly bad night with my DS, I am trying to look forward to when times might be easier.. when on average did your DC's sleep reliably through the night or a good stretch at least?

Mine has been fairly reliable on the whole but he's only 4.5m so am aware it's by no means indicative of anything & we are in regression territory

I would say it was around 16 months that sleep started becoming reliable, by reliable I mean we would sleep through around 6 our 7 nights and with the night he did wake it would be an easy settle then back to bed. What made that difference for us was weaning him off night milk, so long way off you I guess. But you are right, it is all a phase.

Prior that though, DS would wake twice a night for milk. I'd say it was from about 7 months (tbh DS' sleep got worse at 6 months with food regression, think solids unsettled him) that we had a solid night time routine with milk. DH would do 1st feed and I'd do the 2nd feed with it only ever lasting 5-10 minutes at a time.

Around 21 months.

She went through phases of only waking once of twice from the age of 1 but never slept through until 21 months. She is 2 and a half and sleeps through about 50% of the time. But the wake ups are just for a wee/drink/cuddle so I can share the wake ups with DH and it's only for 2 mins, so much more manageable than getting up to breastfeed for 30+ minutes each time

It's so variable OP. I have three DC, and one was pretty good by 3 months and very good by 7 months. Another wasn't really reliable until 3 years!

10 months when we sleep trained - controlled crying

My dd barely slept between 4 and 16 months old. I still think it was dh trying to make dd go to bed too early though - she's always slept better if she's in bed around 8.30pm.

She started to sleep really well when I stopped breastfeeding at 18.5 months old, had a minor regression when she had a huge developmental leap around 2.5 years but is generally good.

She's nearly 3 now and has just started playing independently in her room for a while if we're still asleep when she wakes up 🎉

One at 7 weeks and one at 9 weeks but both bottle fed.

About 18 months for us I think was when he was more likely to sleep through than not. No sleep training or anything he just started doing it.

DD1 was fairly reliable from 11 months. She was an early (6am) riser though. She had an awful phase aged 7 years (this summer) where she was lying awake for hours, and wanting to come in bed with me. That lasted a few weeks but came seemingly from nowhere.
DD2 was reliably awful until she started reception. She coslept with us to maximise sleep. I am grateful to her for inspiring a superking bed purchase though!
DD3 was reliable from 18 months ish, but need us to sit in while she fell asleep. She sometimes gets in bed with her sister now (nearly 4) as they share a room.
DS1 wakes for 3 feeds at 10 months which I think is fine as he goes back to sleep straight after and is so sunny and cheerful in the day.

So basically, every child is different! For us, lack of sleep has always been manageable but I prioritise having a few adult only hours downstairs when DC are in bed.

10 months. I read at 9.5 there's a big mental leap. My son now sleeps like a log for 13hrs at night! Little legend but my god was it hard during those 10 months!

About 17 months. He slept through at 6 weeks but then suffered with the 4- and 8- month sleep regressions and then had the worst sleep from 10-16 months. I have never been so tired.

Mine are nearly two and nearly three. They still are pretty unreliable...

With ds1 he was VERY old so I won't terrify your with his story. Dd reliably slept through from about 6 months. She's been a dream. Ds2 was about 3 or 4.

The eldest who we didn’t sleep train still isn’t a good sleeper at 26. The others 9.5 months after sleep training for 3/4 nights.

DS1 was reliable from birth - reliably shit at sleeping.
He still, aged 10 years, doesn't sleep through, I dont think. The big difference now is he doesn't need to wake the rest of the house, and will just lie in bed talking to himself....... I guess this started about 3.5 years old. His volume control has got better with time!
His younger brother, on the other hand, slept through from about 9 months, and was only up once a night for quite a long time before that.

Thank you for taking the time to reply! It varies massively doesn't it, I wonder if how they are fed changes anything? DS is formula fed.
I take my hat off to everyone who manages to function long term on serious lack of sleep, it's my biggest fear but so is sleep training

@PenelopeFlintstone did your DC's suffer with regressions/teething or anything like that? Or just from 7 and 9 weeks they were ok?

@humbleworded your DS sounds like dream now! Everything is so much easier with sleep..

My son was a nightmare from 4-8 months (sleep regression hit hard!) then got better gradually. By 13 months when I stopped bf he was waking once a night. By about 18 months he was sleeping through more often than not, though tbh if he wakes at 3/4 am we just take him into bed with us. Haven’t sleep trained.

7 months but I sleep fed at around 11 pm from around 5 months to get a longer stretch to 5-6 pm

3 years!

My little one is 2.5 and her sleep is currently shit and very unreliable... SOS

I had never heard of sleep regressions till I joined mumsnet. Mine are 17 and 15 now - maybe that’s why.
Teething - mine didn’t really suffer much apart from getting diarrhoea. Now they say teething and diarrhoea aren’t even linked. Strange.
I freaked out a bit when DD wasnt sleeping through by 8 weeks as among my friends it was between 6 and 8 weeks, but then she did at 9.
I should add that sleep through for her meant waking up at 5 but my husband works on the land and that’s what time he got up anyway. It was still a solid sleep in my book. That might not count as sleeping through for you. He’d give her a bottle and I’d get up at 7 when he was leaving home.

2.5 years and I’m still waiting.. To be fair, from 10-14 months she slept like a dream. Then we hit a run of illnesses & we’ve never recovered! Now she’s in a bed, she just wanders into our bed & goes back to sleep most of the time! But some nights it takes over an hour to get her back to sleep 😴

DS is 21 months and has slept through approximately 4 times. So he's been very reliable but it's reliably shit.

Can take hours that settle too.

DD - 10 months
DS - 3.5 (that was just sleeping through the night, he was still up at 5am)

at around 8 weeks 👍

then it totally went to pot around 10 months when I went back to work and he couldn't nap at nursery 😵

became semi-reliable again around age 5 🤦‍♀️ Mostly coslept in those years so we all got some sleep.

By 9 months it was a reliable twice a night (sorry)