What constitutes sleeping through the night?

[SleepingThroughNight]

Just that really… what would you consider to be “sleeping through the night”? How many hours would your child need to have slept to say they’ve slept through? Interested to know your thoughts!

For me it's at least a 10 hour stretch.
Eg 7pm-5am.

Also staying asleep, sometimes popping a dummy back in but no feeds/changes etc.

Lots of people say their babies 'sleep through' from a young age, however some people think 5/6 hour stretches constitutes that.

I classed it as me getting a normal-ish night sleep. I.e 11-ish to at least 5.00

Over 6 hours is sleeping through according to some books but I would say at least a 9 hour stretch.
when you get to a 12 hour stretch it’s a miracle

10pm-6am I’d be happy with. But I’d be wanting 8pm-6am when a bit older.

I think it what feels normal, bedtime 7.40, last feed 10.30/11 before bed then up 7-8 am.

The traditional 10-12 hours for me, with no wake ups.

To me sleep through means not disturbing my sleep.

So not waking up until about 5:30am earliest (we get up around 6am anyway. I’d maybe ignore a wake up at 10pm but only if baby was very quick to settle

It’d say that it’s the point at which you realise you’ve stopped thinking about ‘sleeping through’ and you are all just happily going to bed and waking up at times that seem reasonable to you. 🤣

I’d say at a minimum sleeping through is sleeping when I want to sleep. So something like a solid 8 hours between 10pm and 6am. No feeds, no dummy replaces, no stirrings and it’s very consistent so unless baby is unwell it’s every single night. But the gold standard is when they get to a 12 hours!

For me it's sleeping the same amount of hours I usually do. So 6.5-8h would be good.

When you wake up fresh🤣

I was saying sleeping through when my son done last feed at 11 and then woke at 6.

By these timings of 10/12 hours, my kids never slept through the night til they were 13 years old. 😂

I was happy with a last feed at midnight and sleep til 7am. Both kids never ever slept more than 9 hours overnight until teen years.

I’d class sleeping through as no wakes or resettles between going to bed and getting up at a reasonable time in the morning (post 6am), so 7-7ish for both my kids.

Before they were doing that they did 7-7 with a dream feed at 11ish - I wouldn’t class that as sleeping through.

Officially I think it's 5-6 hours. We aren't biologically designed to sleep really long stretches, which is why babies don't.

Bed time to morning i guess
DD at 6 weeks did 11pm-7am! Was tiny so would wake her to feed. would strip her down to a nappy and she wouldn't wake. Now she is awake 3 times a night though 😫

DS didn't sleep through until age 5 (OSA) so it feels fair that DD was once a good sleeper 😂

At what age did they sleep 12hours through? 💔 😭

Depends on age. Put baby down to sleep at 7.30-8pm, sleepy feed at 11 then up at 6am is sleeping through from 3 to 6 months. After that sleeping through is 7.30-8pm to 6am. Never had either child sleep for longer ever. 10 hours seems plenty if they also have a nap in the day.

I counted mine as sleeping through when he didn't wake for night feeds, so last bottle at 10pm and then didn't hear from him until 6am for the next bottle. For us that was 11 weeks old! I always found it a bit weird when people would say 'oh yeah, so and so sleeps through l, they only wake for a feed at 2 and 4..' Erm, so they aren't sleeping through the night then....

An unbroken stretch of 6 hours. That's what I need to feel human! Although I suppose that if that stretch happens between say 9pm-3am I probably wouldn't call it 'sleeping through' to other people as I still have to get up in the night to feed, but secretly I'd be very pleased with that

I believe 11 to 5 is considered the official definition but I can’t remember who came up with it.

@Feckingfeck DD1 started sleeping through when she was 2 but never for 12 hours. More like 11. DD2 did briefly at just after 2 but at nearly 3 she still doesn’t sleep through the night.

I don’t think mine ever slept 12 hours. Don’t think I have come to that.
Last feed at 10 up at 6 when they were babies. Toddlers and pre school probably 8 ish to 7 ish.

It kind of depends in what context you're asking doesn't it?

I know some research studies use 5 hours as the marker which just (must have been a man, with a wife/nanny)

But to me, it means you put them to bed at whatever time their bedtime is, whether that's 7pm or 11pm, and they don't call out for you until morning so until a time that you would not bother trying to get them back to sleep, you'd just get up. So anything after 5:30 (preferably 6) really. But I'd also probably class it as sleeping through if they wander through at 5am and climb into bed with you, so that's a bit of a grey area.

Neither of my eldest have done this until they were around 2.5 years old and my youngest has never done it yet, he is 8 months old.

But I would say that I was getting sleep myself much much earlier than this because I would co-sleep with them and after a certain point they kind of latch themselves on/I would latch them on in my sleep and I would not feel as though I had been disturbed.

From about 18 months (ish? I think?) my DD has reliably gone in her cot between 8 and 8:30pm and I don’t hear from her again until 8am. She’s not asleep all that time though, she chats to herself when she first goes down/when she wakes up/sometimes in the night, but I think that’s a normal human sleep pattern. I would never consider 5 hours a sleep through no matter what hours they were.

As a baby I'd have said 11pm-6am constituted sleeping through the night.

I think it can be relative to an extent. When a new born moves from 2 to 3 to 4 hour feeds and then drops their middle of the night feed the first time, it feels like they have slept thorough because you have had 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. (Unless you wake up to check on them ).

More realistically I would say around 8 - 10 hours if still napping during the day and 12 hours for a toddler who has stopped napping.