When did your newborn start sleeping longer?

[lillyg23]

From other peoples experiences, when did your newborn start doing longer than 2-3 hour stints in the night?

Getting extremely exhausted over here 😅

From birth, but woke once a night till a couple of months old

My first started sleeping for 3 hr stints at 18 months old and then more than that at 2 and a half 😬
My 2nd is 4 months old and will wake up every hour if in his cot but will sleep for 2-3 hours if we co sleep
I think this is actually more common than the babies that apparently sleep solidly from 5 weeks old !
Hopefully yours will be a better sleeper than mine but it really is best not to put high expectations on sleep with babies and also not to compare

My 4 month old is currently waking every 40mins

I'm broken

All i can say is try to avoid reading posts of people gloating about how well their baby sleeps, or 'should I be worried that my 6 week old is sleeping through the night?!" It's much more normal for multiple wake ups, and those posts really irk me.

I'm currently up feeding my 9 week old who's sleep has only improved this week - so far tonight we have slept 4 hours, then had a feed, then slept just under 2 hours. This is a huge improvement on last week.

What age is your baby, and what kind of sleep are you getting?

What i will also say though if you think something is wrong, you need to advocate for your baby and yourself. I had people telling me that I had unrealistic expectations of sleep so I just got on with it, even though he was up every 50mins. It got to 8 weeks old and turns out he has a suspected milk allergy - I've cut out dairy and in less than a week his sleep is much better (there were obvs more symptoms than just poor sleep). Not saying there is anything wrong with your baby but you know your baby best, so if you are concerned give your HV a call.

mine was a terrible sleeper and still refuses daytime naps at 3 months but out of the blue he stayed asleep overnight for 5 hours at about 9/10 weeks, then 6 or 7 and at 12 does 8 most of the time with occasional 5 or 6 but so far not back to waking every hour 🤞 it could change suddenly and if you are like us you will waste the first few nights precious sleep by being unable to sleep for worry that something is wrong with the sleeping baby!

I have no clear recollection of the early months and DD's sleep as I was so sleep starved. I just remember that at 8 months I started co-sleeping and since then DD slept better and once she stopped breastfeeding she started sleeping through (about 15-16 months).

All a bit of a blur, she woke every 2 hrs for ages then we co slept and she'd do 3-4 hour stints til 7 months or so. At 13 months she was still waking about 3-4 times a night and we did sleep training.

Ds woke 4-5 times a night as a newborn, co slept from the get go, sleep trained at 9 months.

I think you do get used to the sleep deprivation a bit, it's like adjusting to a hot country!

Thank you. She's still super young, only 6 weeks. But the nights are pretty relentless, once she wakes she's impossible to get back down for literally hours! Then it's suddenly morning. It's very tough!

About 30 months 😬

@lillyg23 have you tried swaddling, and warming her sheet before putting her back down? This really helped us in the early days.

Another vote for swaddling, and a dummy.

I remember 12 weeks being a turning point for this. There'll always be regressions and bad patches though, nothing is linear I'm afraid

I have 2 girls - one year apart in age.

Both started off waking every 2 hours from birth, until around 2 to 2.5 months... Took me half hour to get to sleep each time, (after changing nappy, breastfeeding them for 20 minutes or so...,) so I got very little sleep!

Then they went to 3 hours between wakes by 3-4 months, then 4-5 hours sleep (by 4-5 months.) Then by 6 to 7 months they were sleeping from 8pm to 6am, so 10 hours!

Still got up at 6am to 6.30am til they were about 4! 😴 Didn't start sleeping past that til they were at school.

Um, only from age 2 (years not months) did my son start sleeping for more than 2-3hrs in a row. It broke me and I kept getting told that it was "normal" instead of being given actual help. If you are suffering please do talk to your HV, GP etc and don't let them fob you off.

This is long, but can show you the winding road that sleep can take.

First baby. Longer stretches at 3 weeks so by the time she was 7 weeks she'd sleep from 11-6.
So smug, we had a baby that slept through. Go us... Then she hit 4m and it all went to pot. She settled on waking about twice a night until a year. From there she's had periods where she's slept through, and periods where she's up twice a night. It's currently about 50-50. She's 7.

Second baby: 2-3 hour stretches turned into the occasional 4-5 week stretch by 6w. It slowly got worse again so by 6m it was hourly wake ups. That lasted until she was 18m, then maybe 2 wake ups a night. She suddenly slept through at 2. Stopped again at 2.5. She's now 4.5 and usually wakes once a night, though sometimes more, and it can be for several hours. She's on medication to help her sleep.

It's a marathon not a sprint basically. Whilst we have unusually bad sleepers, I think most people find it up and down for the first few years. There are periods of better sleep and worse sleep. I know people whose babies solidly slept well from a few weeks, but most wake at night for at least the first year, probably two.

Try to nap in the day if you can - you'll kick yourself for not doing so when you're back at work and it will help. Your body will also start to become accustomed to very little sleep which helps you cope. Oh, and share the nights with you partner. Yes he needs to be safe to work, but you need to be safe to look after baby, so try to share the nights as equally as you can to both get some blocks.

My youngest woke hourly for 11 months, it was indescribably hard.

1st baby slept in 2-3 hour stretches until 4 months when he started stirring every 40 mins until we replaced his dummy. And still feeding every 2-3 hours. Did sleep training at 6 months and he started sleeping much longer stretches.

2nd baby is currently 4 weeks and sleeping in 2-3 hour stretches. And sometimes is awake for 2 hours in between sleeps.

DC slept through from late evening until 6am twice before her 6 week check up. It continued. When she was 2-3 she used to wake at about 3am and want to chat after she'd got over a bad dream. That was a killer!

I had to wake mine up to feed in the beginning. Then they started waking naturally but we always got a minimum x2 4 hour stretches. There’s a huge range of normal when it comes to baby sleep so I don’t think there’s an answer for when your baby specifically will start doing longer stretches. Later on you can consider sleep training but this early it’s just luck of the draw.

I would say somewhere around 6 weeks they started stretching out a bit longer. Doing 2-3 hour stretches of sleep rather than 2-3 hours between feeds. Then 3-4hrs. Big improvement then again between 8-12 weeks. At 12 weeks we were down to 1 wake up/feed and started offering the dodie first instead of straight to feed. You hardly notice the progress when you're in it when you're so tired but it'll come!

i would say at about 6 years - we started getting longer gaps.

9 months for us, but with the help of a sleep counsellor (who literally saved us 🤣)
It's tough, but 6 weeks is very young. Unfortunately if you have a baby that doesn't sleep in long stints it's unlikely to change for a while yet, or without the help of sleep training of some sort at a later date.
Feel your pain though OP, there's nothing worse than sleep deprivation.

6 months for me as that's when they went in their own rooms and were starting on solids.
I currently have a 10 day old and she wakes 5 or 6 times a night.. I don't actually look at the time as it would make me anxious. I just feed her and put her back in her moses basket next to the bed. I don't really expect to be sleeping any longer than a few hours at a time until she starts on solids tbh...

From about 11.5 months. He woke every 20-40 mins until 7 months when he went into his own room then woke every few hours, I honestly felt like a new woman at that point 😅now he sleeps through unless poorly. I know mums whose babies slept through from 2 months, and some who have 2 year olds still waking 2-3 times a night. It is very very tough so you have my sympathies 😴

Every 2-3hours sounds dreamy