When did your baby start sleeping longer stretches at night?

[Isabellamt]

just looking for other people’s experiences. When did your babies start sleeping better at night? Not necessarily straight through, but when did they start sleeping multiple decent stretches (4 hours +) consistently? My daughter is 12 weeks and every night is different, but we are lucky if we get one 3 hour stretch at the moment. She’s mostly awake every 1.5 hours or even less on really bad nights…

I am not sure you want to hear my answer 😭
Frequent waking at 12 weeks are entirely normal and to be expected
Are you breast or bottle feeding? If breast feeding I found feeding laying down was helpful
you can try a split feed before bed and a dream feed to see if that helps
otherwise it is a case of hanging on in there

early on mine did some longer stretches but all went to pot after 4 months! I think she then started doing longer stretches once she was about 12 months, and slept through at 18 months once we night weaned. Side lying breastfeeding and cosleeping got me so much more sleep. Baby doesn't sleep doesn't 'improve' in a linear way though!

Mine was sleeping through the night at around 8-12 weeks up to 14 hours! That all changed with the 4 month sleep regression though where he'd wake 5 or 6 times a night. By 6 months he started having longer stretches again.

I'd expect nothing until you're past the 4 month sleep regression. She might have hit it early if she's already waking a lot, my son had it early too. It will improve after that though.

Both of mine started doing longer stretches more consistently around 10 months. First starting sleeping through around 17 months. Second is 13 months and still waking 1-2 times a night but I have a feeling she’ll not sleep through until I night wean her
But at 12 weeks none of mine ever done a 3 hour stretch so hopefully that means you’ll get their quicker 😅

Well mine both slept ‘through’ quite reliably by about 5 months. That meant settle about 7/7:30pm, then wake for a dream feed before I went to bed about 10:30pm, then resettle by 11pm and would then sleep through until 4-5am, which gradually got longer and longer until they were waking at 6:30am which was when I needed to get them up for nursery and the commute anyway. DC1 was needing to be woken up most mornings by about 10 months and DC2 was a couple of months older before she needed waking. They both had 1 or 2 noticeably worse nights a week. But on the whole they were champion sleepers, they napped like clockwork in the day too. I was extremely lucky. They didn’t do sleep regressions!

I’d say about 1.5 years

Our first block of 5 hours was about a year in. 8 months was probably the worst time.

4 years (sorry!)

With my second I think she settled down around 12 weeks and then went haywire again for a few months at 5 months old. I remember posting on Mumsnet so exhausted looking for answers myself.
6 months (eldest) and 10 months(youngest) both breastfed, they started sleeping 6-8 hours minimum.
The problem is every baby is different so it’s hard to predict what yours will do. I completely understand how hard it is when you are in the thick of it though I hope you get some longer stretches soon x

Toddler years here too! I was so jealous of all the mums that babies napped long during the day and also slept for good stretches at night cos my son certainly didn’t 🙈

Same here. Baby slept 8pm-6am for about 3/4 weeks when he was 2/3 months old and then the 4 month sleep regression happened.

Hes still waking 3/4 times a night now at 6 months old for a feed however we’re now co sleeping so I can feed on my side and it’s a lot less hassle than getting him out of the next to me, feeding and re settling multiple times a night.

First DC started going through from around 8pm to 6am, at around 6 months old. (Was going 8pm to around 4pm at 4-5 months old.)

Second DC not too different, just went to bed an hour or so later.

4 years! Was constantly knackered until then!

Maybe 15-16 months for my first. Unfortunately still hasn’t happened for my second

My kids started sleeping a bit better (only a bit) at age 2 😭 My 4-year-old still wakes once in the night, every night.

Our DD nearly 2, and wakes only 3 or 4 times a night now. At the worst it was every 30 mins, when she was about 8 months old!

They are all so different. It will get better eventually, but it might be simple improvements or a bumpy road!

4 hours or more - hmm about 18 months to 2 years.

At some point age 2.

Hate to break it to you OP but you’re about to hit the 4 month sleep regression so it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

I would say when they got about 8 months…. but it wasn’t reliably happening every night until they were about 1 year old.

My first woke every 3 hours from birth to 4. My second does 4 or 5 hours once a night, and then 3 hours or so. She's 16 months.

My daughter was about 8 weeks when we started consistently getting longer stretches of 3-4 hours overnight, around 10 weeks she started doing about 7-8 hours and from 12 weeks she was managing 11-12 hours. We did a dream feed at whatever time I went to bed - no idea if that actually helped or not, but as it wasn't doing any harm we just carried on with it! She hit the 4 month sleep regression just before turning 4 months, which for her meant settling down fine but then waking up at random times, then waking at around 5am and pretty much refusing to go back to sleep at all (this is also when we abandoned dream feeding as nothing at all helped with the sleep regression!) - for us it was a mercifully short regression, maybe 10 days or so of unsettled sleep, then back to sleeping through.

Not sure whether all these experiences are actually telling you anything though, other than that every baby is different!

Worth adding, for us the improved sleep coincided with when we switched to combination feeding - I think once we started supplementing breastfeeds with formula it was helping her to be more full at bedtime and so she was able to sleep for longer without needing another feed.

DD1 - 17 months when I finally cracked and sleep trained. I was hallucinating I was so tired.

DD2 - 6 weeks. I'm not religious but did thank all the gods I could think of.

7 (years)

First: 6 weeks to 4 months. Then went to pot.. there were stints of sleeping through at about 1y, and 2.5-3. She finally mostly sleeps through at the age of 9! But we also can't get her to sleep until 11pm.

Second: did 2-3 hours from birth, this slowly declined, and then she will hourly from 6-18m. Then from 18 months to 2y about 2 or 3 wake ups. Brief stint of sleeping through at 2, and now at the age of 7 it's about 50/50. Some of this is due to medical issues though.