So babies sleeping through the night isn't a myth!

[onedayimightforget]

I've just met someone at a baby group whose baby has slept through the night since two months and can settle himself to sleep without someone in the room. I thought these people didn't really exist.

^

*first

Yes, 53rd is right.

DS1 and DS2 were sleeping through at 12 and 10 weeks respectively, 7-7 with a dream feed at 10.30. We were lucky. But I know loads of people whose children didn't sleep through for months.

I remember thinking one of the women in my NCT group coped amazingly well with sleepless nights as she never seemed to complain. Her DH then let on that she'd felt too guilty to tell us that her DS had slept through from about six weeks.

DS1, on the other hand was a nighmare sleeer until he turned two, and now has nightmares. DS2 has only just started sleeping through about once a week, and he is fourteen months.

No not a myth! I was beginning to think it was only me, I didn't think I'd be saying this on MN. All three of mine slept through the night from 6 weeks - although I have to say they were bottle fed and the last feed was heading towards 11-12 pm. I am a night bird so I hadn't gone to bed yet which helped! I guess if we were all tucked up at 10pm every night I would have been saying something different.

Once asleep they didn't wake up until I woke them. HV told me to leave them till they woke themselves but I didn't do that as I thought it wasn't right to leave them that long without feeding.

Dark, quiet bedrooms and no dangly toys over the cot helped.

They carried on being sleepy heads all through childhood - are we the only parents that had to to wake children on Christmas morning?

I was fortunate enough to have a dd who slept through from quite early and I can honestly say it was bugger all to do with me and did not reflect my ability as a parent at all.

All babies and indeed parents are different and whilst my dd slept through from an early age - she's also pooped on the hall carpet next to the potty, its swings and round about op

Sorry it really does happen 4 babies and all sleeping through by 6-7 weeks old and all only ever woke once a night for a feed previous to that

My last dd was doing 8pm-4am feed then waking at 8am from birth

I personally think routine and bottle feeding make a huge difference

I agree Nicpem definitely swings and roundabouts! Babies were easy for me so no smugness from me - mine waited till teenage years to strike (well one of them did )

No NotAngel, we had to wake them on Christmas morning too. It was quite deflating actually, everything ready, but no excited children!
Reading through responses, the common thread with babies who sleep seems to be putting them down in the cot frequently, awake and leaving them to settle.
I know we don't talk about making a rod for your own back nowadays, but really, that's exactly what you are doing if you allow a one-day old baby to dictate that they don't like their moses basket!
We seem so reluctant to allow babies to cry now, every whimper seems to merit intervention from a parent meaning babies never learn to settle themselves.
I've lost count of how many times I have read on here posts from parents desparate for their child to sleep, yet whenever a method is suggested to them, come back and say 'oh no, I don't want baby to be upset and cry'.
Being a parent involves some hard decisions as a child grows into adulthood - and allowing a newborn baby to dictate its own terms means you have fallen at the first hurdle!
I am aware that I sound very harsh, but I honestly think the parenting methods encouraged nowadays are far too far the other way, and seem to encourage greater dependence on the parents, who are expected to surrender themselves completely to the baby.

the common thread with babies who sleep seems to be putting them down in the cot frequently, awake and leaving them to settle.

No - the common thread is having babies who can be put down awake and will then settle, maybe after 'a whimper'. Rather than, e.g., screaming themselves into a hysterical vomit-covered mess.

Yup, bird has it correct.

Good sleepers are largely born (not saying you can't assist or gently change patterns but the bulk of it is how they are.)

Correlation... causation ...

Ha, I remember speaking to someone at a babt group about sleep when our babies were about 3 months old. She couldn't understand why I didn't just pop the baby in the cot at 7.30 and give her a few minutes to fall asleep. And I couldn't understand wtf she was talking about, because babies surely don't do that! But hers really did. We just had very different babies. It was like we were speaking two different languages, our experiences were so far apart.

53 in that case you just have to persevere. Really.
One of my babies was like this, it took three nights of letting them cry for a couple of minutes, going in and reassuring them, putting them back down on a constant loop before they got the message. :-D
My three are all very different, but getting them to settle through the night was an absolute top priority for me, and I was very willing to let short-time pain be sacrificed for long-term gain.

If your baby settled with three nights of PUPD then no, your baby was not like mine.

Honestly, this is why people get snappy with those who think bad sleep is the result of parenting. What worked for your baby does not work for everyone's baby, or everyone would already be doing that. I guarantee you, people with non-sleeping babies already know all about PUPD - and CC, and shush-pat, and Good Bedtime Routines, and "put them down drowsy but awake."

I had a fine, straightforward time with breastfeeding. I wouldn't dream of telling people who struggled with BF that they just weren't being firm enough and if they did what I did they'd have it sorted within days.

Three nights? Hahaha... yeah we tried controlled crying. For a week. He screAmed solidly all night. Didn't stop when we went in to calm him. Didn't stop when we tried to soothe him.
Then he got up 4:00am and was ready for the day.

Really, some kids just don't sleep,

Ana and 53, I do know that some babies just don't sleep and you have my sympathy, honestly.
What I was commenting on was babies you COULD sleep, but are not being helped by their parents to do so.
It's so easy to lay down bad sleeping habits, and I think that bed sharing, feeding to sleep, cuddling to sleep, napping on mum etc etc are bad sleeping habits that should be avoided if at all possible.
Now, I recognise that it is not always possible, but often on MN parents seem to be reluctant to even try to get baby to break bad habits, then regret this a couple of years down the line when they have a toddler leading the whole family a merry dance every night.
I remember reading on MN fairly recently one mum's blow-by-blow account of a night spent with her co-sleeping newborn daughter.
He partner was pushed out of bed and onto the sofa to allow this to happen.
The whole night was a series of avoidable wakenings - mum gets up to open window, baby wakes up; mum gets up to go to the loo, baby wakes. Of course, if baby was not there in the first place, mum would probably sleep better anyway and not need to get up to open the window in the first place!
It seems so daft and obviously disturbing to me, but as I think I have said, I am old school and believe baby should fit in with the family not the other way round.

But how do you know they're not co-sleeping because they get more sleep that way? We certainly were. I mean, as a general rule people don't cause themselves massive sleep deprivation just for the hell of it.

But this is what I meant by people seeing things only from their own perspectives. If your baby just whimpered and fussed a bit, of course it seems bizarre to you that people won't let their baby cry for a minute. But if their baby goes from 0 to screaming its head off, they're not facing the same situation you were. That's not about modern parenting vs old-fashioned parenting - that's just about different types of babies.

Our DD has slept through since about 4 weeks, she has always gone to bed about 8pm and got up at about 7.30am - now 3 1/2. I think it's just the luck of the draw.

53, I get what you are saying honestly I do.
But I don't think you get what I am saying.
I am not talking about parents who will do anything for a bit of sleep - I am talking about parents who don't exhaust other avenues and go straight into co-sleeping/sling napping/feeding to sleep without even establishing if baby would settle better any other way. That's fine if you don't mind a lack of sleep - but you can't expect the baby to flick a switch suddenly and become a marvellous sleeper, because the foundations were not laid when it was too young to know what was going on.
How many parents-to-be buy co-sleeping cots and Sleepyheads before baby is even born? As I said, that's fine, as long as they realise that their baby will probably not sleep very well because of constant disturbances.

I co-sleep because it's the best way for everyone in the house to get enough sleep. With having an older DD as well its not possible to sleep when the baby sleeps in the day to make up for lost sleep at night. And as I said, we didn't get to set the foundations in the early days as that was all done by the NICU nurses. By the time both of ours came home they had a certain expectation that you can be held and cuddled to sleep as that's what we were encouraged to do, and yeah, suddenly being able to cuddle our baby whenever we wanted to after 2 months of adhering to the hospital schedule meant I just wanted to hold them. I know that caused problems in itself but I will never regret that.

Yes, and I'm saying you don't know what those parents have done or tried. So it's not fair to criticise them for making rods for their own backs, purely because their child doesn't sleep at an age where yours did.

How many parents-to-be buy co-sleeping cots and Sleepyheads before baby is even born?

Co-sleeping cots and Sleepyheads don't create bad sleepers. I would recommend co-sleeping cots to just about anyone - ours saved my sanity during the 4-month sleep regression!

I'm not sure why you think they're such bad ideas? Sleepyheads get a lot of clingy Velcro babies to settle without being held (not mine, sadly). Co-sleeping cots again have the baby sleeping in its own space, rather than attached to a parent. I don't know why you think they'd cause more disturbance - I know for me, it was much more disturbing to my sleep to have to get out of bed and cross the room every time the baby woke, than just roll over to shush/cuddle/feed.

We were massively smug when DD slept through from 8 weeks.... until we had DS who woke every two hours for the first 14 months and still isn't that reliable (I was up four times with him the other night and he's 3 now). Babies are like people: some like and need lots of sleep and some don't.

My delightful dd sleep from 10pm until 7am at a couple of months old, had a feed at 7am and would then sleep til about midday!

It last until about 10 months then she turned in a spawn of the devil and woke up every hour at least!!!

It's not always sunshine and roses for ever more xx

They all sleep when they're teenagers though, right? RIGHT? =

Dc1 slept through from 6 weeks. Dc2 was Demon Child. Dc3 is five weeks old, so we shall see...