When do breastfed babies sleep through the night?

[Ami100]

Hello all,

My son is 7.5 months old and I'm still breastfeeding. He has two or three small meals a day .

Currently he still wakes 3x a night for feeds. When will he start sleeping through? Would be lovely to get more sleep at night

Depends. My three slept through most nights by 9 - 11 months. Until they did, they didn't though, and I usually slept with them just to not really wake up. I got the ikea hemnes bed in their room and after the first wake up I'd just decamp there and lie with them until one of us fell asleep. My huge fatso middle child fed pretty much continuously, but I didn't really notice as I was asleep most of the time. I'd just wake up occasionally to find him sucking away beside me.

DS 10 weeks 7pm-5am
DD 4 weeks 6:30pm-4am-ish

Think it helps that DH slept with them for first half of night and would always try and settle them and only bring them through to me if he thought it was definitely hunger. If I did the first half of the night I'm pretty sure I'd pop them on at every slight grizzle.

I mean, even toddlers will 'wake in the night' for various reasons because they have had a nightmare, have a tooth coming through, are ill, etc. As parent of a young child sleep is always back and forth a bit (good periods, bad periods) unless you're very lucky or the kind of parent who just doesn't come into their room if they call for you in the night.

In terms of baby sleep and feeding - breastfeeding or bottle feeding, the big thing is sleep associations. If your baby still needs the breast (or bottle!) to get back to sleep, they will keep waking up for them! My ds didn't stop waking for a feeding until I night weaned him at 11 months. I could definitely have done that sooner. He was going to sleep independently at the start of the night but was definitely used to fed to sleep in the night if he woke up. Until you break those associations they will keep waking up!

DD was 6 weeks. All babies are different

My DD stopped as soon as I stopped BF her (9 months). We sleep trained her with a bottle of formula.

DS is currently 8 months old, possible dairy allergy so continuing to BF for now and is still waking roughly every 3-4hrs. It’s a royal PITA! He eats well during the day. He’s currently sharing our room but as soon as we move he will be sleep trained in his own room!!

2 years 4 months. up until then waking every 2 hours. now sleeps 19.00 to 05.00

My sleeping through the night definition = doesn't wake me up until morning!

Totally depends on the baby! DS1 about 5-6 months (7pm to 6am roughly), DS2 currently 3 months and sleeps roughly 9pm to 4am and then 4.30 to 7. But I have friends whose babies have slept through from 2 months and others who are 2 years old and still not doing it! I would say make sure your DC can fall asleep by themselves without needing to feed to sleep, as anecdotally from friends the babies that can’t do that are the ones that take much longer to sleep through!

Mine dropped to one night feed around 7 months then dropped that last feed quite quickly by 8 months. He was partly combi fed, but mostly breastfed.

However he still had some seriously disruptive sleep regressions so plenty of up and down with his sleep for some time after! But at least there were some solid nights in between to recover.

My daughter didn't sleep through until I night weaned her at 22-23 months. Prior to that she was still waking up every 3-4 hours- hence me deciding to wean!

@mangoandraspberries I fed to sleep religiously until 8 months when my little one decided to sleep through.

@Lolalollypop how did you get them to take bottle. My little one was on b fed expressed bottles when I went to work and so when I stopped b feeding at night it was straightforward. I stopped at 8.5 months and this is when he slept through. This time I've been b feeding and little one hasn't been having expressed bottles as I'm still on mat leave. Ideally I want to stop b feeding, but worried he won't take a bottle. Also, any tips on sleep training? How did/will you do it?

Ds1 after his first meal at almost 6momths.
Ds2 at his first night away from me at 2years.
Ds3 I don’t now yet but he turn 6months next week.

Ds1 15 months
ds2 3 months til 5 months, then not again til about 12 .months.

DS1 is an oddity, he is 14 now and has never had regulated sleep without heavy medication, so let's discount him. Ds2 was breastfed until 2.5; he was sleeping 5-6 hour stretches at a few months old. We co slept so even when I returned to work and he reverse cycled it wasn't particularly disruptive, I would half wake as he latched on and drowse back off with him feeding. Ds3 went 5-6 hours fairly reliably from about 10 months but at the age of almost 6 often wakes in the night still and comes in to our bed to go back to sleep.

I never really cared about 'sleeping through the night' so much as 'enabling me to have sufficient sleep that I don't want to die from tiredness'. Hence the co sleeping. They got milk, I got sleep, we were all a lot happier :)

Bottle fed baby 1st never slept - 17 now and still struggles!
EBF slept from around 4 months with occasional teeth related rough nights.
It really depends on the baby

I very smuggly mastered the 'dream feed' to assist with night sleeps.
Cluster feeding in the evening I.e more feeds close together layering the evening and then a feed while they are asleep around 11pm.

Bare in mind that sleep will disrupt during growth spurts.

@youdidask I'm trying to do similar with mine, it worked previously. Now he's not playing ball though. He's not feeding much before bed and so it ducks our night right up.

Can people elaborate on these gentle methods please. Who did you use @mrsmonkey14 can pm me if prefer? Thanks

I breastfed each of mine until around 9 - 10 months & they all slept through the night from around 8 months although youngest ds was a little earlier.

@Ohalrightthen 👋 hi again. How did you do that. Was your little one crying all night. I want to do similar, but he screams so much I give in in the end.

[quote Rubyroost]@Ohalrightthen 👋 hi again. How did you do that. Was your little one crying all night. I want to do similar, but he screams so much I give in in the end.[/quote]
Hail, friend!

SO basically I'd always tried to stick to what we called the "3 hour rule" - she could go 3 hours without boob in the day, so if she woke within 3 hours of a feed at night, my husband would go in and do his best to settle her instead, so she was used to it sometimes being Not Milk. We broke the feeding to sleep habit at about 6 months, gradually over about 3 weeks, with a little bit of controlled crying at the start. So she could self settle, she just didn't do it overnight. Then when we decided to night wean, i just basically did CC in the middle of the night. Took an hour, wasn't great, but she never got REALLY distressed and the next night she slept through

Nefelibata86 happy to share - I used a woman Called Judy who’s business is called babywinkz - not sure if I’m allowed to post the website but you’ll find her if you google. We did it via Skype consulting and got a 10 day plan. I just got to the point I needed someone to tell me exactly what to do as I couldn’t think straight!! It’s not rocket science, mainly was about dad doing first 3 nights of plan (as he has no boobs!) and settling baby without milk so as pp said they learn to settle to sleep without being fed to sleep. The first night I cried in the other room whilst DH comforted baby, and honestly she literally got it after the first night. We had tried that before but a bit half hearted and I would always just go and feed her.
A lot of my friends have used the same consultant and every one of them has had success with it so I’m happy to recommend her. It was gentle enough for me as she wasn’t left alone to cry but had a parent soothing her, just not with milk.
And ok I occasionally have to go into my girls now in the night, but it’s really really rare. Apart from illness (and even then they usually slept well), my girls continued to sleep well through teething etc etc. So I’m of the view that it can be a real benefit to get them sleeping well as babies.
Some friends have used her for sleep issues with toddlers as well, again with success. Dunno why it works but it does!
Wishing Everyone who may be struggling luck, and hope you find the solution that works for you and your baby.
(I miss having babies!!)

When you co-sleep
Even then, they are sneaky little buggers who learn to root and latch on themselves

I know! Don't come for me. But mine never did sleep through so I took my mattress to the floor and coslept with them so we got sleep. Did not roll on to them, was careful with bedding, they did use to self-latch - I was always aware of them/this but could often keep sleeping lightly. Worked for us, probably not others, but I was so shattered - as one MNetter said many moons ago - I would have tried to breastfeed the duvet at one point Co-sleeping and Self-soothing in situe with my boobs worked for mine.

My dd slept through from 4 months