Will he ever sleep through the night?

[Pea2019]

Hi
I have a 13 week old baby who has wanted feeding every 3hrs pretty much since he was 3 weeks old. A couple of weeks ago he started sleeping 7-12pm and then 3hrly after that. The last couple of nights he has stopped doing the longer sleep and is now every 2-3hrs! The lack of sleep is really getting to me and my partner and i feel dizzy with it during the day. Before feeding of a night we try to soothe him back to sleep or see if he is hot/cold or needs a nappy change but 9/10 we will end up feeding him and he falls asleep on the breast/bottle!

I’ve tried upping his milk intake throughout the day to try to get him to sleep longer at night but its not working.

I do love him but i do have thoughts on a daily basis wishing i still had my life before him (i know that sounds awful),

Any advice?

@puds11 @user1493413286 i can’t sleep during the day as he will only nap on me. I’ve been trying to put him down again the last couple of days but he wakes after 10 mins. Sleeps on me for hours though so i leave him on me usually.

Hmm I think your mum friends might be lying! I’d be worried if they were sleeping through the night at that age. I have the same with napping, my 7 month old has only just started napping in her cot and will only do 20-30 mins. She also still wakes every two hours in the night for food so I can appreciate how tiring it is.

Have you tried him in a baby rocker? Maybe have a look at a post natal doula if you don’t have any family near by.

Your friends who’s babies supposedly sleep through the night are the exception, not the rule. It is also advised that you don’t try any kind of sleep training until the baby is 6 months.

Yes, but not soon. Mine slept through the night from 3.5 and 2. Years, that is. But it gets so much easier and you really will manage. I was back to work at 11 months with both of them, getting up at 5:30am, 6 hours daily of commuting and travel, and doing fine. It gets easier and your body will adjust.

Your friends are lying. Or at least some of them. What you're experiencing is completely normal.

They’re probably not lying, OP. My kids and my friends were all the same; all sleeping through at between 6 and 8 weeks. However, one of them got a ‘surprise’ baby years later snd three years on and he still is a bad sleeper. Sorry to say you might be unlucky! (On MN hardly any babies sleep through but thats not my experience in real life.)

*friends’ kids

Mines 7 weeks and does a 4-5 stretch at first then every 90 mins - 2 hours throughout the remainder of the night.

Other people lie about the sleep as they see it as a competition.

Hungry baby milk, early weaning sleep training etc won't work so don't bother.

Do you not find you're used to it now? I've been doing KIT days at work and honestly see the sleep pattern as life now so function quite well, even at work.

I think people are being a bit harsh on the OP. Lots of sites have different definitions of what sleeping through the night means with some classing a 6 hour stretch as this. I have a similar age baby and a number of my NCT friends have babies this age who sleep 9pm ish to 7am with only 1 feed in the night. We have not yet hit the 4 month sleep regression though!

Mine sleeps 7pm to 6am and wakes for a feed after anything between 4 and 7 hours. He is then does another 2 to 3 hour stretch to 3 to 4 am ish and then wakes hourly. I breastfeed on demand and he is fed to sleep.

As his main stretch is early in the night I go to bed by 8.30pm to get a decent block of sleep.

The main things I find that affect his initial block of sleep are total nap time (he will sleep longer at night if he naps less than 2.5 hours total) and exercise during the day - the only times I have got 7 hour stretches are when we have gone swimming!

He also naps on me during the day in a carrier so I sympathise there, really fed up with people telling me to sleep when he sleeps.

Yes of course he will sleep through the night at some point. I would not expect it any time soon though tbh.

Its hard but this sounds like normal behaviour at 13 weeks. Personally i'd stop watching the clock and just get up feed him and both get back to sleep.

Goodness me.

Oh this is totally normal for a 13 week old! Baby is still sooo tiny. I have a 10 month old who started sleeping (mostly) through the night at 8 months

One thing I found that helped during the day was putting my baby in the pram and I brought a Rock It (but from Argos or second hand on Facebook sites) it rocks for 1/2 an hour and sends them off. The other thing to do is a swing chair, don't get a baby rocker there's been a massive recall as there have been loads of death (have a look on google)

It rough, it the worst thing about parenting. I'm over a year in and my baby would wake every 45 mins after a couple of hours of sleep at night, every night and mine is ebf as she never took to a bottle.

Have you got anyone who can have baby during the day for a couple of hours so you can sleep?

Most of my new mum friends "embellished" on the amount their baby slept. Remember the are many leaps and regressions coming up too.

Download the wonder weeks app too which helps with this.

Don't expect much from your baby, they still don't know what day and night is, they just want to be held for safety and comfort. It tough but you will get through it!

In my NCT group, yes a fair few babies were sleeping 8+ hour stretches then, including mine. And then four months hit and every single one of them stopped Now DD is about to turn one she is just about sleeping through again but not consistently, and the other NCT babies have good and bad nights too.

Ditto the others, 13 weeks is too young to sleep through. He will gradually go longer and longer though, with set backs for teeth, illness etc..

After the first few months where you feel like you're dying, it becomes your new normal and you adapt. Mine is 12 months and still wakes 2-3 times (on a good night with no illness or teething). I cant imagine him sleeping through the night, but he is now managing a few 6 or 7 hours stints more often.

Pea2019 your friends babies probably don't sleep "through" without waking - look at
crazydiamond222 's post. People say "my baby sleeps 7pm to 6am meaning thats the span of time during which the baby mainly sleeps ^except" during feeds. So the baby sleeps 4 hours, then feeds for half an hour, then sleeps 3 hours, then feeds for half an hour, then sleeps another 3 hours (if the baby is an excellent sleeper).

It’s quite possible that some of your friends at least are just meaning something different by ‘sleeping through’ as others have said. You do hear people say things like “he sleeps through now, just 2 feeds overnight”.

Or they’re lucky. Or they’re lucky for now but their babies won’t keep sleeping that way, baby sleep does tend to go up and down. Or sometimes people do lie because they feel like their baby’s sleep is a reflection of how good they are as a parent, which it really isn’t.

It's completely normal, exhausting but normal. Your best bet is to try to catch up so go to bed early or co sleep for naps if he won't sleep by himself.

I had a unicorn baby - slept through from 6 weeks but then we hit every sleep regression and some. He only really slept through from 17 months and two lots of sleep training.

Rarely ever comment but you've had some pretty snarky comments here. You are exhausted and what you're feeling is normal, your babies behaviour is also normal.

For what it's worth my baby 'slept through' (7-10, feed, 10:30-4 feed then 4:30 - 7) from birth to 13 weeks, then dropped the 4am feed and the 10pm one went at 18 weeks.

Was sleeping 12 hours from 18 weeks to 8 months (teeth) and we regularly get patches of poor sleep with teething but on the whole it's good.

Some babies do, some babies don't. Have faith and hope for the best but be positive because it will get better.

I've got a 3 year old who has never slept through

Mine was over 12 months before they slept through the night and even then, they were up for the day at 5am!

I think they started going 7-7 at about 18 months.

I don't blame you for wanting your old life back, that is perfectly normal!

Some nasty comments on here. Asif some of you are boasting about coping with the lack of sleep “don’t you feel you are used to it now” way to make the poster feel shit. I have an 8 month old and I’m still not used to it I feel like a walking zombie ! Op I missed my old life so much at your stage it’s the sleep deprivation making you feel that way it’s hideous. My baby is going through a rough patch at the mo and up every few hours I’m suspecting teeth & comfort feeding. He had quite a while where he was just about sleeping through though 8pm-5-6am. I also remember at 12 weeks he hit a stage of one feed a night and sleeping in till 10am!
You will probably find you have bad and good phases due to illness and teeth. Just go to bed really early, it is so tough but our babies are worth it ! X

I laughed when I saw this was about a 13 week old... then saw your reply and felt bad as when I was a new mum I had no idea what to expect either. I'm sorry for yh4 snarky replies you've had. I wish my NCT course had talked more about sleep and napping - I knew nothing! I was one of the lucky few whose baby did sleep through for the first time at 4 weeks old... But that's apparently very very rare. None of my other NCT pals' babies were sleeping through until many months had passed and actually even then only one or two were. I have some friends with 2 and almost 3 year olds that still wake in the night... the almost 2 year old is waking 6 times a night still and it's killing my friend! The 3 year old is waking once. Maybe get a book on baby sleep - that taught me so much about napping... I was literally clueless and didn't realise how much they were supposed to nap during the day!! And expect less. It's rubbish for many months but it does get better.