What finally got your kids sleeping through the night and what age?

[JosieB68]

Sleep deprived mum here!
What age did your kids sleep through and was there something that changed that?

Controlled crying at about 9 months of age. It took about 3-4 days. It’s probably considered horribly cruel these days and I expect someone will come along and tell me I’ve psychologically scarred them for life.
It was an act of self preservation. They’re grownups now and we have a good relationship.

4 (years old), and going to school. Probably not what you wanted to hear!

Exactly the same for me! DD perfectly fine now (age 20) so no psychological scarring there 😀

Not letting them sleep in my bed beyond breastfeeding.

Under 3 months for both ours. Sleep training and sticking to a routine fairly slavishly in the early days. It's pretty hard at the beginning when we felt we couldn't be very flexible with plans, but it's paid back a zillion times over down the road.

Both were sleeping through by six months, from about three/four months just waking up once in the night. Bed at 7.30pm, up any time between 5.30-6am (son, who is still, at 21, an early riser), DD 7ish.
I think it was my strict bedtime routine from day one, the fact that they were fed real food from around five months, and that I woke them up if sleeping too much during the day, and a bit of luck they were good sleepers!

Thank you everyone. I’ve even forked out a couple hundred pound on a sleep ‘specialist’ didn’t work long term, worked for a week or two then any upset to the routine like illness or teething and we were right back to square one.
Im a total advocate for doing anything to get sleep 😂 including controlled crying, which I have also tried with no real success.

Apart from the occasional blip, mine both started reliably doing solid 12 hour stretches of sleep 7pm-7am or etc from 6-7 months. Seemed to coincide with giving them bits of solid food? Maybe? I dunno, long time ago.

Eldest was controlled crying, although was pretty straightforward to be fair, he didn't cry for more than 10 mins and was sorted within a couple nights. Youngest had no intentions of making it that easy, he didn't respond to it at all well when we tentatively tried it, so we didn't pursue it, for him it was stopping breastfeeding and switching to a dairy free formula (another reason we didn't pursue CC aggressively due to suspected CMPI). Both were 9 months old.

About 4ish. It was after a holiday when we’d all been in the same room and he’d slept all night no problems. Before bed we had a chat and told him our bedroom door and his were open so it was like sharing a room, like on holiday, and that if he woke up we were already there so he didn’t need to shout MUMMY like he usually did.

Somehow it worked…

Probably I was a wimp and could have put more oomph into leaving him to fall asleep by himself but he was quite a high energy and needy baby and I was so knackered that it was easier just to get into his little bed and sleep next to him than to tough it out and be awake more.

The replies on these types of threads are only ever snippets... It's impossible to answer these questions fully or helpfully. Every baby is different, every family set up is different. There's a world of difference as to whether a baby is breast or bottle fed in terms of how frequently they need to feed etc. It's so much easier said than it is to believe, but try to remember that the range of normal is pretty huge.

Eldest first slept through age 3. Youngest still wakes once a night age 6. Both are ND which obviously we didn't know until they were out of the baby years. I personally think controlled crying is heartless if done with a baby under 1, but I know how desperate lack of sleep can make you.

Mine was a godawful sleeper from the get go. Then all of a sudden at 15 months he started sleeping through for 12 hours. Its either my magic parenting or his body just decided to do it. I know which one I think it is😅😉

11 and 13 (years not months )

Both reliably (we thought) after they started school. DS1 is autistic and his terrible terrible sleeping is apparently an indicator. I still feel guilty that (aged 8) when he was being assessed, he told the lady that he was waking about six times a night and thought this was normal so hadn’t mentioned it to us.

DS2 slept much better but still woke occasionally (maybe once a week) until about 6.

4, 5 and 8 if you mean not waking up and wanting to come into my bed.

Our timeline:
1-7 weeks slept fine as long as held sat/stood up. Screamed if put down including pram, car, in my bed, while being breastfed..
7 weeks on, a living nightmare (worse than the above if you can imagine)
4 months - cry it out sleep trained, but as so young I went in to feed BEFORE he woke up twice a night, with the plan being to phase this out. Quickly decided we were all deliriously happy with our new sleep pattern and the only thing annoying me was having to wake up before him to avoid deciding whether/when to go in if he woke first and cried. So;
Having had a awake-to sleep baby, from 5/6 months I went in and fed back to sleep whenever he cried. This slowly morphed following some bad times (travel, illness etc), into more and more rocking/feeding/begging to sleep and more wakings, until at 8 months it felt a bit rubbish again. Debated more sleep training but this time didn't feel so desperate and then at 9 months it just resolved. He just slept through the night one night and then more or less from then on. This coincided with learning to walk but if anything that seemed to interfere with his sleep - it certainly meant he no longer ever went to sleep without rocking/singing for quite a while (not feeding as that didn't work). He is 13 months now and sleeps through mostly, and sometimes when put down awake, but when he does wake up he will NOT go back to sleep for 2 hours no matter what we do.
As someone else said, its probably not helpful as even this long post is a fraction of the story, and my baby will be different to yours! I know mine was unusual in that bed sharing and breastfeeding have rarely consoled him, which at least meant I didn't have to wean him off either (he weaned himself off boob through constant refusal)
It does give a glimmer of hope that sometimes you do nothing and something just clicks for them though!