Have babies never slept??

[kentgirl1]

Did parents raising babies in like the 1950s have the same issues with babies not sleeping? Or have our lifestyles changed which has led to a increase in babies not sleeping well??

Think they just more lickly to have shut the door and left them to it night.

There are lots of factors.

One being that babies slept on their fronts. Sleeping on their front leads to much deeper sleep than sleeping on back. Anything that leads babies to sleep unnaturally deeply is now actively discouraged due to the SIDS risk.

Another is the pushing of formula milk. It meant no dealing with growth spurts etc because with formula there is always an excess of milk avaliable. Also much easier you feed to a routine.

I think babies have always been like this. They don't 'not sleep', they just don't sleep like adults. However, back in the day, probably centuries ago, when people lived with extended family all round there were more people to give mums a break, and less of a strict routine with work etc and people coped better.

I also found if you accept the sleep with be crap and don't fight it it's way easier to cope with. I tried instilling routines repeatedly with my eldest. After failing a lot I gave up. It was much better!!

I've often wondered this myself OP!

My children are tummy sleepers and they're shit at sleeping!! Maybe they didn't get the memo about sleeping really deeply?

I'm the oldest of 5 children and my parents didn't have the sleep issues my children have had. I don't understand what the problem is because my 1st 2 slept fairly well but these 2nd 2 are nightmare sleepers. Even my 2.6 year old doesn't always sleep through!

As PP said in the 50s babies were pretty much left to it. They were also mostly (in the U.K. and western countries) put in their own room from day one so any whimpering etc was probably not heard. My grandmother told me to leave my newborn to cry when she was 2 weeks old as it’s ‘good for their lungs’ so it’s just about know more = do better.

My in laws said they were - during the day - put in the pram and left at the bottom of the garden the idea was they should be seen and not heard, this didn’t happen to my parents, my grandparents were a little less cruel!

I was told girls are supposed to be left to cry it out from day 1. That probably solves about half your problems.

Boys are not supposed to be left to cry as it can give them a hernia in their bits, so you're supposed to cuddle and BF them

Omg MySockIsWetAgain that’s terrible!

My baby has never not slept.

He went 9pm to 7.30am in hospital

And 12 hours from about 4 weeks old.

He now goes about 14 hours, so 8pm to 10am usually.

I did think he was an amazing wonder baby but actually, quite a few mums have experienced the same. Luck of the draw, I think

MySockIsWetAgain who told you that?! That's awful.

This is a question that I've been pondering for a while, as my parents always seem a bit surprised at how much my baby wakes

I reckon people blank it out forget just how gruelling it really is especially when that phase of their lives is over.

That’s what I think, they did have it bad, but as time goes on they forget it, and it just doesn’t seem so terrible in hindsight. Even me with a 5 month old baby, I look back at the first few weeks and think was it actually that bad? Yes it was, I can remember how unhappy I felt about no sleep, I just can’t really remember what was happening. I think it’s just rose tinted glasses

Agree with everything PP have said, and I think we hear more about sleep issues now - social media, mumsnet etc. Loads of people out there looking for sleep support / advice, so broken sleep seems more common.

I wonder whether the pressure for babies to sleep and rise in sleep training is due to women needing to work more now.

I often wonder about this too.

I do think it's luck of the draw though with sleepers, first child still doesn't sleep through (5years old, multiple night terrors every night). Second child had been doing long stints from about 8 weeks and sleeps through at 1. Haven't done anything different with either of them.

My mum put us in our own room from day 1 and insists all 3 of us just slept through from the start (in the 80s). I think she’s got selective memory.

My eldest didn’t sleep through until age 2.5. My 11 month old wakes up every 90 minutes.

Older people have a very selective memory and tend to look back with rose tinted specs!

I do it already and I'm only 50 with late teen kids😂

Back pre industrial revolution even adults didn’t sleep through. Pepys mentions first and second sleeps in his diaries - people went to bed early evening, woke around midnight for an hour or two, then back to bed.

Couple that with living in close proximity to family and there would always have been someone around to hold a baby.

I doubt babies have ever slept differently although they vary a lot. What’s changed is societal patterns and expectations

And yes, in the recent past there was a lot of bottle feeding every four hours and leave the lean in the garden while they cry.

Probably CO slept. It makes sense.

zzzzz. The word unnaturally was describing the sleep, not the position of the baby. For clarity, I meant a deeper sleep than they would otherwise normally sleep.

Researches into SIDS call this "arousal" or "arousal responsiveness", it means sleeping more deeply and bring less easy to rouse.

Feel free to read around the research if you wish, but yes baby sleeping on front is shown through research to sleep more deeply, wake less easily.

Here is a summary of some information from the <a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.lullabytrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Overview-of-SIDS-mechanisms.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiT1pHksf7ZAhUSPsAKHShbATQQFjADegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw2xtR6k6rGordIrQ-MaYv2s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lullaby Trust. The raw research papers would give more information if you are interested.

Presumably if babies sleep more deeply on their stomachs and we no longer put them down that way then it is likely that “modern” babies sleep less deeply.

That's right.

It's the scientific reasearch behind the Back To Sleep campaign (headed by Ann Diamond in the early 1990s, you may remember it?). Sleeping on baby's back increases their arousal, meaning they sleep less deeply and wake more easily..... So die of SIDS less often :-|

This is thought to be a major factor in the cause of SIDS.

Anything that leads babies to sleep more deeply than they would otherwise is actively discouraged due to the SIDS risk. Please read the link I gave in my last post for more information.