If you didn’t sleep train, when did your baby/toddler sleep +2 hrs?

[lubellabee]

My baby is 11 months and very happy. He is not massively keen on food - I have to spend about 45 mins at lunch and dinner to tempt him with various foods! But he loves milk and feeds through the night still. He is waking every 2 hours minimum and I cuddle him or feed him back to sleep. I’ve started bringing him into our bed which helps a huge amount and can mean 3 feeds instead of lots more wakes! My question is, if you have been through this and haven’t used controlled crying (because this isn’t an option for us), I wanted to know when did your baby grow out of this? Does the 1 or 2 hour phase last forever or do toddlers sleep better? I thought nearing the 1 year mark we would have made more progress! (He feeds to sleep and we cuddle a lot during the day, he is super happy and very active and loves playing, but loves being with me so expect we have separation anxiety). Thank you - hoping for some positive replies to make the nights feel less long (although I do enjoy the cuddles) if I know it will end soon!

It varies so much OP. I have three DC, one of them slept through 12 hours by 3 months (no sleep training), another was 3 years before he reliably slept through.

Dd1 was about 18 months, coincided with stopping bfing. Dd2 started doing 4 hour stretches at 21 weeks when I put her in her own room. My conclusion - they do it when they're ready and not much you can do to influence it imo.

My DS is 10 months and he has just started sleeping a solid 6 hours after I put him down and then wakes once or twice after that to bf. I started noticing him sleeping longer after I would give him meat at night. I think the protein really helps him sleep longer, but it could be a coincidence.

So the thing is that even if he wasn’t eating a lot he should be able to get his milk intake in during the day. I would keep a food and milk diary and try and feeding him v v regularly in the day time and cut out the night time milk. So between say 10-4 he doesn’t get milk. And then either extend to 6/7 am or go from 8 pm to 4 am. I suspect if you do that then he will start eating in the day and eventually sleeping better.
You can cuddle, hold but don’t offer milk. You can offer sips of water. I don’t think your child will starve. And it might reawaken his daytime hunger cues.
Now it might not mean better sleep immediately but over time once you have stopped the night feeding he will be able to settle himself back to sleep.

1st - great sleeper at night and pretty gokd during the day.

2nd - crap at night and crap during the day. Literally would never nap in cot during day. And then would be up half the night

Thank you so much for all replies so far, this is so reassuring xxxx

My dd slept in 1 hour max stints till she turned 1, I had to night wean due to HG and she then did a few 4-6 hour stints but it only lasted a couple of weeks. Shes 16mo now and it's not great tbh. She'll do longer than 2 hours but it's so varied, bedtime can now take up to 3 hours (was never a big issue before) and it's v hard to settle her, can take anything between 10min and 2.5 hours, I'm happy to feed again but it doesn't work... it seems to wake her even more. So it's got better and worse I'd say! I do wonder if I hadn't had to night wean if it would've been easier now but we'll never know.

My eldest 6 months my youngest 18 months! Now aged 17 & 15 and both sleep very well

I co slept and bf on demand so don’t know if that made a difference.

Oldest slept through at maybe 5 years old. Middle.ine about 2.5. Youngest about 2.5.

My youngest wouldn't sleep longer than about an hour in the evenings until she was last 1. She's now 20 months and it's hit and miss. Some nights she'll sleep 7-1 before waking for a feed but other nights like tonight she's been up three times since 7! I try not to feed her for the first few wake ups until we give in and co-sleep. Not feeding doesn't seem to make a difference it just gives my boobs a break :)

Hard as it is at the time, I could never do controlled crying.

I just wanted to cuddle them. Maybe bi's too soft but its how both DH and I wanted to do it.

Dd was a dream, DS tougher - but I don't regret it and we got through it. He's still a crap sleeper at 5, but he just comes into our bed and cuddles in to me. And Nurofen / Cocodomol sorts out my occasional pains due to the way I end up lying.

I just wanted to say sleep training in my view is very different from controlled crying. I starting sleep training my DS at 4 months and from then he woke once a night until 8 months when he then slept through. If you would like to wake less you might want to try some sleep training techniques. If you're happy as you are, don't worry about what anyone else is doing.

DS is 19 months and randomly sleeps 13 hours stretches or wakes every 3 hours.
Absolutely no rhyme or reason as to why. Eats incredibly well during the day, runs miles and miles and isn't given milk through the night.
I truly believe they sleep through when they're ready, and personally, I couldn't ever leave him to cry

Basically from my (limited) experience, DS didn’t sleep through until about 3 and then it was only a couple of nights a week. Going onto cows milk and not breastfeeding from 19 months made no difference.

DD slept through from 5 weeks from 8.00 in the evening until 8.00 in the morning (I just woke her for a twilight feed at 11.00).

I didn’t do anything different with either baby, one was just a wakeful baby and the other a good sleeper.

Sorry OP that’s not very helpful, but I tried everything to get DS to sleep, and nothing worked. I think they eventually just grow out of it. I don’t think there are many teenagers waking every few hours.

I think it’s probably an element of luck.
I’ve got a 10 week old DS who generally sleeps 10pm-8am with just one wake up for a feed around 4am ish, I think I’m just really lucky and live in fear of the 4 month sleep regression.

My daughter is 16 months old and from 8 weeks would wake around 10 times a night when she was 1 year old it went down to 5 then over the last few months she has been sleeping through with the odd night waking. I still take a bottle of milk to bed just incase she needs it but have found she will find her bottle and feed herself with it so I don't even need to wake up. We had help from the health visitor to try different things and nothing helped she just done it in her own time plus she has a 2 hour nap in the day and has always gone to bed between 7 and 8..

Ds slept through from 3 months

DS from 15 months when teething paused - in the space of a month he went from being dire with multiple wake ups and then not settling to sleeping through. DD much longer for sleeping through (age 2.5 ish), but it went down to two and then one wake up after which she settled easily from about 9 months it wasn't a problem anymore (we'd bring her into the bed with us from first wake up). We did have a go at trying to cut down feeds but she still woke up and it took longer to settle her so after about a month we have up and went back to feeding her because then she was asleep after 5 minutes.

DS2 aged 10 months we are making no attempts to sleep train, he's cosleeping with us and I have no idea how often he wakes, it's only a problem if he then doesn't settle.