Sleeping through at 4 months, is it a myth?

[pertweez]

I have a 4 month old boy who is breast fed and doing really well, but recently his sleep has gotten a bit irratic, he can sleep 5-6 hours at night but stirs a lot on and off through the night.

If I feed him at 7 he goes till 1.30am, if I introduce an 10 or 11pm dreamfeed he wakes at the same time and will not settle and takes a full feed at the same time?

During the day he naps well in the morning (2hrs) but in the afternoon or if unswaddled, will only go 30 mins?

Tried forcing him into routine with upsetting results, so really just want some tips or ideas?

Not a myth, but certainly not biologically normal either. Babies don't sleep well in a cot because they're expecting to sleep next to one of their parents and for your body to help them stay asleep until they're old enough to learn to do it themselves - naturally this doesn't happen for another 2 or 3 years yet I'm afraid! So either give in and enjoy the warm cuddly sleep for a while, or accept you'll either have to let him cry or wake right up properly repeatedly in the night . Having said that, try the No Cry Sleep Solution for other ways of getting him sleeping alone that, hopefully, don't involve crying (for you or him!).

In my case, yes!

Neither of them slept through until they were over a year old (and even then it wasn't every night)

not a myth - just pure pot luck as to whehter you get one of them or not.

Some babies (my DS1) don't sleep well in a cot or next to you in bed.

Some babies (my DS2) scare the living cr*p out of you at 3 weeks (bearing in mind the previous baby NEVER slept for 6 months day or night) by sleeping through at 3 weeks old

Some babies (DS3) sleep well in blocks from earlyish, but not all the way through and then suddenly sleep all the way through later

Some babies (aka the DD of someone in my postnatal group when I had DS1 - the total non-sleeper) are exclusively breastfed and sleep through from 3 days old - and I'm talking 10hrs !

Every baby is different. Mine slept from about 10.30pm - 6am at 12 weeks and then sleeping about 12 hours from 17/18 weeks.

agree not a myth, just depends on the baby. My first was a nightmare, the second was a good sleeper. I think the thing i did differently with them was with the second, try to settle him without feeding for a good ten mins or so first. BUT he was a very different baby and just so much more settled anyway, and i thinkthat is the real secret, that some babies can just do it, and some find it really hard!!

It depends on the baby.

DS slept through from 7pm until 7am with a dream feed at 10pm from about 12 weeks. He was breastfed.

DD did not sleep through reliably until she was about 2.5. Also breastfed.

I subscribe to the 'pot luck' theory, too.

DS didn't sleep through the night until the age of 2.5 yrs old. At 4 mths he was still waking twice a night minimum.

DD is exactly 4 mths old and has been sleeping 7-7 for nearly a month now (was sleeping 5-6 hour stretches from birth).

Nothing I did or didn't do.

Dreamfeeds never worked for us, either, btw.

DS1 slept through from 14 wks

Ds2 - now 20 wks - feeds 3 hourly day and night, so is WAAAAAY off sleeping through.

He too still needs to be swaddled or he's even worse, so I still do this.

I'm just going with the flow for now. I don't go back to work till he's 9 1/2 months old so I hope [optimistic emoticon] it will have sorted itself out by them.

IME a lot of babies start sleeping through when they start on a good amount of solids at 7-8 months usually, and I'm hoping this will happen with him.

Not sure what I'll do if it doesn't though

It can happen, but is definitely not the norm or something you should even try to aim for or expect.

My son was not fond of routine either, in the end I found I got more sleep by just hauling him into bed with us whenever he woke and letting him co-sleep - on the boob if he wanted to. I found stressing about how much sleep I wasn't getting made things worse, so I lowered my expectations, and as I said, co-slept. Helped a lot.

I HATED reading books or mags etc that said

'if your baby weighs X amount then they are capable of sleeping for X amount of hours'

very helpful thanks

pure pot luck

DD slept through the night 10:30pm - 7am from 2 weeks old which was when she came out of SCBU - I think they had just got her in a good routine.

Now is a different story though, I was smug for months, didn't see what the fuss was about when it came to having a newborn - easy peasy . Oh how karma bit me in the arse. DD now goes down at 7pm but often wakes several times and half the week ends up in our bed in the early hours!

It can all change, very quickly in my experience!

DD slept through at 3-4 months. At around 5-6 months she started waking 4-5 times a night. 7-8 months was up and down, 9-12 months she was up 4-5 times a night again (teething) then 12-15 months settled into a routine and started sleeping through. As others have said, it's pot luck and even if your baby does sleep through at 4 months, it certainly doesn't mean that they always will!

Totally pot luck!

Dd1 was 6 weeks old
Dd2 was 3 weeks old
Dd3 (although having a brief period of sleeping through at around 9 months) still doesn't sleep through the night at 20 months

All babies are different. My dd, now 8, slept through from 6 weeks and we never had any sleep problems.

We only had one child, so I don't have anything to compare it to in-house, as it were, but I know from my sisters kids that all kids are different.

If we believed everything we heard on the grapevine (or everything we read on mumsnet) we'd be expecting our dcs to sleep through from 2 weeks, be walking at 10 months, talking fluently in Russian at 18 months and reading the daily mail quality broadsheet of the house at 3 years!

It's hard, but try not to compare your own dc with others. He or she will be unique and will present you with problems no matter how 'good' they are!

DS has been sleeping blocks of 6 hours from 5 weeks (now 10 weeks) and goes to bed at the same time as DH and I - usually around 10pm. I am aiming to start a proper routine at 3 months (with an earlier bedtime), but do wonder if an earlier bedtime means the comeback of a night feed, so if I put DS to bed at 2100, will he be up at 3am for a feed?

DD slept through from 3 months. I know of other babies who have slept through from 6 weeks. My dd was breast fed but I did express due to difficulties early on and just got into the habit. DD had a prodigious appetite - could drink 350ml of breast milk a night so don't know if this helped.

It's just luck I think - all children are different. Both my breastfed DDs slept approx 12 hrs a night from 8 weeks ish. I guess I was lucky - I didn't really do anything (except make sure they fed lots in the day).

My ds has slept through from 13 weeks, dts starting sleeping through at 11 weeks, however we moved house when they were almost 2 and since then they wake once most nights, and they are 5 years now.

sounds like you're doing quite well anyway! I'd leave him to find his own pattern, since you're already getting a 5-6 hour sleep out of it.

My DS is 15mo and still only rarely sleeps through - it is very dependent on:
daytime naps
last feed (size thereof)
temperature
luck

Have just got him into a grobag and it has improved things - in fact last night I actually had to wake him at 1am for a feed as one boob was going mad with milk (I don't express well) and it was going to leak all over the bed. He barely woke up for it and went straight back down after.

Normally DS will have one in-the-night feed and hopefully go straight back to sleep - at some point I will steel myself to stop the in-the-night feed. Occasionally he goes right through and then I worry about him!