Am I doing something wrong with my baby?

[allenginesgo]

Just wanted some honest opinions here.

I have a 9 week old. She is ebf.
In my Nct group people are saying that their babies if similar ages are sleeping through or at least doing 6-8 hour stretches between feeds.

Mine is still waking for a feed 2 hourly which is basically what she's been doing since she was born, it's never got any longer.

I don't mind as I know baby's need regular feeding but I can't help wonder if other babies are going so much longer, am I missing something? Should I be trying to encourage her to go longer or something?!

I have 3 kids.
dc1 was sleeping 6 hours at night by 5 weeks.
He was also feeding 4 hours on the dot, and drank so much milk it wasn't funny, I was about 2 bra sizes bigger before and after a feed. He also ate both sides empty in 10-15 minutes.
I had a gentle routine and he slotted right in and was a text book baby.
He was so easy. And boy was I so bloody smug.

dc 2 took 45 minutes to feed, paused and then drank for another 30. Slept and then 40 minutes later started again.
Overnight she went 2 hours between feeds... mostly, but on a bad night she woke every hour. She did sometimes do 3-4 hours in the evening, but bugger me we couldn't get her to move that to after midnight.
She was like that for 6 months, it nearly killed me. And remember I knew all about how to get a newborn into a routine and get them sleeping at night and eating in the day.... bollocks. I was lucky with dc1.

dc3 was somewhere in between. By then I just went with whatever and was grateful for any time I got 4 hours together.

Some babies wake a lot. Anything goes in the first 3 months!

My twins had some time in SCBU. The nurses told me confidently that there was of course the advantage that they'd get the babies into a great routine that we'd just have to maintain once we got home.

You should have seen the bags under the eyes of the nurses..... one of mine gave them absolute hell every night as he would ONLY sleep while cuddled. They were experts.... some babies just DON'T do long stretches at night.
(On, he still often wakes once at night for a wee now he's 3, but he's otherwisefine sleep-wise. They all get there in theend)

You aren't doing anything wrong at all but at the same time, it doesn't automatically mean that they are lying either like some pp's are saying. Babies are all different.

Mine was sleeping 7-7 by 8 weeks and never went through the 4 month sleep regression that I was constantly warned about either. He was formula fed from birth though.

I'm expecting twins this time and fully expecting hellions who won't sleep through until they are 10.

They are all different, but it's a bit statistically unlikely - there are normally 6-9 couples ish in an NCT group, so 5/6 or 8/9 all sleeping through at that age? And NCT tends to have higher breastfeeding rates, so it won't be that they are all FF. (But even with FF babies I think most of them are still having night feeds at 9 weeks).

1 or 2 babies out of 6/8 yes I could well believe that, it's not like it's totally unheard of. Maybe 3 - unlikely but not quite so unlikely. The majority of them? That's either an extremely unusual cluster, or more likely the mothers are feeling inadequate/competitive/they're defining it differently. All of these things are really common as reported in this thread. Not just an assumption that they are lying. But that emotions and feelings are complicated postpartum.

My NCT group no only one slept through!! Mine was up every 2 hours for months. It's normally x

My 2.5 year old still can't sleep through the night without waking up
My 4 month old starting sleeping through the night from 6 weeks
Same crib, same parents, same pyjamas even!

Babies do what they want.

Not my experience! I think I sometimes got 3 hours at that age, but certainly not more. I found things got better at around three months - at that point I'd generally have three reasonably predictable wakings, where I just needed to feed baby and she'd go back to sleep.

My ebf baby didn't sleep thru until 2

The phrase liar liar pants on fire springs to mind!!!
Yes some babies do sleep in long stretches from very young but definitely not common and not everyone of them!

DS1 woke every 45 mins from birth to 4.5 months (had to gentle sleep train at that point I was dangerous) slept 6 hour blocks from around 8 months.
DS2 was 2 hours til 4 months then 3 hours did well til 7 months then had multiple waking til 12 months. Has slept through from about 13 months.

My Ebf 14 month old still wakes every 2 hours 😀

You also need to be mindful that what people say and what they mean are entirely different. For some of my NCT group, 'sleeping through' meant a feed at midnight before mum went to bed and then a feed at 5 in the morning. It's still a bloody good stretch for a baby but is not my definition of sleeping through.

DS1 got there as he turned 1, ds2 a lot younger - but he demanded a ridiculous amount of sleep and was horrid without it. He was hard work!

Depends on your baby's weight too. Big babies can take on more milk and so can go longer between feeds.