10mo sleeps 8hrs a night (10hr total in 24hrs) and wakes at 5am - normal??

[MintGreenLife]

Everyone I talk to that has babies a similar age say they sleep 12+hrs overnight, around 14-16hrs in total in 24hrs, and wake up around 7am.

As the title says, mine sleeps 8hrs a night with a couple of wakeups, naps for a couple of hours in the day, and always wakes up around 5-5.30am.

A few things I’m worried about/struggling with…

• is he getting enough sleep?!
• the overnight sleep isn’t enough for me - after the wakeups and by the time I’ve gone to bed, I’m averaging about 6hrs of broken sleep and really struggling on this

I know it’s normal to be sleep deprived with a baby, but most people I know seem to manage a lot more sleep than I do! He’s EBF, so only I get up to him and feed him back to sleep at night.

Does anyone have any suggestions to encourage him to sleep slightly longer overnight?

My DD (18 months) has been the exact same as your DC.

She falls asleep anywhere between 7.30 and 9.

She used to wake at 5.10 everyday on the dot.
I just go with it. (Even though it's painful in the mornings I know) I just look at it as my DD will sleep and wake when she's ready. She's not tired and cranky in the day and she's on track developmentally. Us adults all have different needs for sleep and so do children.

Basically, some need less and some need more. I wouldn't worry about it.

She now only has one nap at midday for an hour and that has helped, we've always been lead by her naps and she dropped it herself and now she will wake anytime between 6&7.30

Thanks for your reply @NC1010 ☺️

I have been reading up on high and low sleep needs, seems he has low sleep needs, and I have high 😂 I’ve recently been trying to reduce his daytime sleep a bit as we were ending up having a 2-3hr battle at bedtime as he just wasn’t ready to go to sleep after sleeping too much in the day, which has helped with the bedtime battles, but not the length of overnight sleep so far. I’ll see how things go, but will maybe consider trying dropping to one nap a day a little earlier than usual. He has all his naps in the pram, so I very much have to lead here, otherwise he just wouldn’t sleep in the day. He’s a very happy baby, so must just not need a lot of sleep!

You're doing a fab job :)
DD was my first and I was so worried about her not getting enough sleep. She was a total night owl for the first 4 months but it's just sort of slotted into place. Maybe try and reduce a nap but he'll be getting all the sleep he needs (us mums could do with a bit more though!)

Mine has never had that much sleep in 2 years. The longest sleep he has is 9hrs ie 9pm-6am, and that’s with wake ups still.

At 10 months I think he was still waking every 90mins to feed, and was up at 5am after 9pm bedtime.

Naps have always been few and far in between. I’m actually sitting in 2 year olds room now try to get him to nap as he’s been up since 5.30am, but an hour later he’s still wandering around reading books to himself.

Despite hardly any sleep mine seems to be thriving and achieving all milestones, so I doubt your 10 month old will be affected by 10hr overnight sleeps.

Mines 11 months now but a few months back I decided I couldn't cope with the frequent wake ups (sometimes 30mins between feeds), so my DH took over for 2 weeks at night time. When my DS realised I wasn't going to be feeding him at night any more, he settled much better and can drop back off once he stirs.

I'd say he's around the 10 hour mark at night plus maybe a 2 hour nap. At least I can function now though!

He was unsettled for maybe 3-4 nights total but it was only really the first night my husband had to go in often. He didn't rush to go in either in case DS did drop back off. Otherwise it was a quick cuddle and back to bed.

@NC1010 thanks so much for your kind words ☺️

@Caspianberg he doesn’t sleep 10hrs overnight, that would be amazing! He sleeps on average 8hrs a night, he sleeps 10hrs in total in a 24hr period.

@LifeBeginsNow that’s amazing, did he really settle down with just a cuddle? We’re not too bad with wakeups now, but when he was 5 months he started waking every 30-60 mins and it would often take 5+ attempts to get him back in his cot, it got so bad in the end he was only sleeping an hour in his cot at the start of the night, and then we had to sleep in shifts while the other one let him sleep on them. After 3 months of this I couldn’t carry on like that, so w started putting him down awake and sitting by his side while he went to sleep, but more often than not it involved crying and after a couple of weeks I couldn’t hack it anymore and I went back to feeding to sleep and putting down asleep. Would your DH just pick him up, settle him with a cuddle and put him back down?

Yes that's exactly it (I know I was in disbelief too after all those months feeding, rocking, swaying him to sleep)! When I took back over, I had to learn not to rush in when he did wake. He's better at being left as if I go in, it seems to rile him up more. I only need to go in if he's poorly generally and even then I just give a dose of calpol and a cuddle.

I'm not going to lie, we do get some tears to start at the night or naptime but he's getting really good at settling. Sometimes he lifts his head as I leave the room after the last feed and just puts it back down again.

As horrible as those odd cries are, it's so much better for us all (including him) to get some decent rest. Plus you can tell it's more of a tiredness winge and he just needs to ride it out.

I have a low sleep needs baby, it took me a long time to accept that he was actually low sleep needs....for months I clung on to overtired like a drowning man. Solidarity! 💐