Honestly when did your baby start sleeping through the night?

[Hope54321]

When did your baby start sleeping through the night?

@Onceuponatime1818

I wonder if this BFing on demand has caused such terrible sleepers. Getting used to just feeding whenever and this happens throughout the night.

I don't think so. Anecdotally, my DS was breastfed through the night until nightweaned at two and a half, then slept through, about 11 hours. He was a good sleeper when he was breastfeeding at night too, we coslept and he went straight back to sleep. My sibling was a bottle baby from three months and was a terrible sleeper past school age.

DC1 - 2 days shy of third birthday (now 4)
DC2 - what is sleep 😴 (26m)

I haven’t had an unbroken night sleep in 6 years.

8 months.

DD: 14 months after sleep training, then a regression at 18mo after a long cold, but fine once that was over. She's 7 now and only wakes for a reason (e.g bad dream) or if she's unwell. She loves her bed.

DS: 8ish months after sleep training. We were going to wait a bit longer but he was waking DD and she was exhausted at school, so we just did it. Now he's nearly 3 and sleeps like a champ, also loves his bed. He only wakes for a reason, too, although he can't explain as well as DD yet.

Before sleep training they were both horrendous sleepers, day and night, waking every 30-45 minutes. I was almost hallucinating and had to do something.

@CoodleMoodle
Can I ask what you did? Send me a message if you'd prefer.
My DD is getting worse and worse and with working full time and another to look after DH and I are both really struggling. We need to try something but haven't found anything that works yet

Dd1 - still waiting shes nearly 6 years old
Ds2 ds3 twins - 12 weeks

@Onceuponatime1818

I wonder if this BFing on demand has caused such terrible sleepers. Getting used to just feeding whenever and this happens throughout the night.

Mine slept through from birth BF. Very very lucky. Gained weight in first week too! Them, not me

It's all down to luck

DD was 7... so, they all do, eventually

Both mine didn't until they started school. I'm a bit when people say '8 weeks' - the odd night perhaps but I think that's a tad unrealistic.

@stillcrazyafterall Why are you ''? Do you think your experience is reflective to most or even close to most people? It isn't

Mine slept through from birth - Gained weight. Was told to let him because he was a good birth weight and wasn't jaundice. Never had a sleep regression

My sisters baby didn't sleep a full 8 hour stretch until 2.5 years!

DFriend baby is 3 months now, slept through from 6 weeks. She's very well rested

It's luck of the draw

DS 8-5 @ 10 weeks (breast fed)
Dd 11-6 @ 12 weeks (mix fed)

Both reliably 7/8-6/7 by 6 months.

DC1: 9 months
DC2: sleeps through 4 or 5 nights a week, she's 7. We just let her snuggle in with us!
DC3: 2 yo - ish
DC4: sleeps through a couple of nights a week, wakes for a feed the other nights aged 27 months

I guess the main question is, does it matter to you?

@cyantist

We did controlled crying. It's not a pleasant experience but it worked very, very quickly. DD it was about 3 nights of crying, 3 nights of whinging, then she started chatting herself to sleep. DS was similar, maybe even quicker. The change was immediate, however. They were so much happier and so were we!

This is what we did:

Put in cot, say goodnight, leave the room. If they're crying, go back in after 1min, reassure (without picking them up!), leave again. Then wait for 2mins, and so on. We agreed that 10mins was the limit, and if we got to that point we'd repeat 10mins, but it never happened - never made it past 7mins because they were always asleep by then. Some people do 2min increments, some people do 5. But we did 1min and it seemed to work.

We also took turns to do it, so they got used to DH putting them down as well. That was really important because prior to that it had to be me or they wouldn't fall asleep. Mine were both FF, which probably helped.

It doesn't work for everyone but it's worth a try. We were on our knees, didn't feel safe driving, etc. The DC were miserable because they weren't getting enough sleep, and nobody was enjoying life! CC changed all of that.

Best of luck

DS: about 11.30pm to 5.30am almost from birth
The problems started when we wanted him to go to bed at 8pm. He does not need more than 6/7 hours which we realised when he was about 2.5 and went with the flow. He's 26 now! Still the same.

DD: when she was about 4 - always up three times a night until she was at least 2.5. She needed more sleep but now is often awake from 2am to 5am. She's 23.

@CoodleMoodle
Thanks so much for the info. I always said I'd never leave my baby to cry, but what you did is very different to the cry it out method which a lot of people think of when you mention sleep training. At the moment DD is crying so much anyway (with us there trying to console her) that I think we could cope with a little bit more crying because it can't be good for her surviving on 4 hours sleep a night! But we haven't had any success with what we've done so far.
So one question. If they're crying after a minute and you go in and reassure them, do you reassure them until they stop crying? Or do you just reassure them and leave even if they're still crying?
If we go in when she is crying and try to reassure her, she won't stop crying until we pick her up. She just gets more and more hysterical and screams louder. If we go in and try to reassure her without picking up, then leave again, she gets more and more hysterical because we've left so we have to go in and end up picking her up. So neither option is working well for us at the moment but at least I want to know what I should be doing from someone who has had success!

5 and a half. Years, not months.

Thought he had died the first time he slept until morning.

When she started school! She's now 18 and keeps me up all night worrying when she'll get in from nights out!

DD1 4 weeks
DS2 6 weeks

Both had dream feed about 10pm. But they never woke up - just had bottle & went back down.

DS had to be encouraged into routine but then took to it really well. DD naturally did routine.

7 months with a dream feed, 8 months without.

All 4 were about 16-20 months. Not totally reliably but vast majority of nights.
I didn’t want them to sleep through before 1 as it would have caused me problems with breastfeeding and working.
I can honestly say I didn’t mind at all breastfeeding/cosleeping waking up for the first year, as 99% they didn’t cry, just fed back to sleep. It was the few weeks after stopping that were hard.
In retrospect I don’t know why I stopped breastfeeding at 1 year.

Anyway the answer is between 16 and 20 months

I speak to Mums of 8 week olds on a weekly basis and interpretation of “sleeping through the night” can mean not including breastfeeding like me/ or bottle feeding and sleeping from 11:30pm to 5am “most” nights - this to me sounds like a 5 hour stretch, not a whole night!

9 months, was absolutely dreadful until then but it's a like a switch flipped one night and they've been a perfect sleeper ever since.

7 months, so earlier but not as good. Disturbs more easily, and definitely an earlier riser!

Can't complain overall!

@cyantist

Hmm, that's a tricky one. With mine, they were angry - cross that I wasn't rocking them for an hour in the way they'd become accustomed to! Neither of them got hysterical, they just shouted.

With DD we probably did shush her until she calmed down, but I admit with DS we probably shushed him for a bit and then went outside. There was more of a time pressure with him because the CC was keeping his sister awake. (It feels like a distant memory now, which at the time felt impossible!) A lot of it is down to not giving up with it, and that's the hardest thing when it's your baby crying, of course.

And yes, the thought of them surviving on 4 hours of sleep was what pushed us into doing it! It's not good for you, and it can't be good for them. Sometimes it is what it is and you have to deal with it, but if there's a way to help everyone feel better then you should definitely try it. If not CC, then something else. There's other sleep training methods that your DD may respond better to, if CC really doesn't work. I think it depends on their age as well, which is probably why it worked quicker with DS (who was 8m) than DD (14m).

Down to one wake up most nights by 2. Never experienced the fabled 7-7 nights sleep.

@CoodleMoodle - what do you do for any wake ups after bedtime? I.e. baby wakes up at midnight, do you feed or resettle with CC?

@Helenahandbasket1

We didn't feed DD if she woke, she was 14mo and didn't need it. If she woke up we'd go in, check she was okay (not stuck or cold or nappy leakage), reassure her and leave. Maybe offer some water? Usually she'd go straight back to sleep, but I think a couple of times we did CC at 3am. Only for a couple of minutes, though.

I don't remember feeding DS either, tbh. Although I don't think he woke up in the night for a long time after CC, except when he was unwell. And again, we went in, checked him, patted or shushed him, and then left. It usually worked (still does)! I think we had to do CC in the night a couple of times with him, and DD managed to sleep through it!

DS is a huge eater so I was never really worried about him being hungry. It was harder with DD because she's fussy about food, but she was quite a bit older when we did CC with her, so didn't need milk in the night. Both of mine were FF so it might be different if you're trying to night wean a BF baby!