Breastfed under-six-months baby that sleeps through without sleep training - DOES IT EXIST?

[morningpaper]

I was discussing this with a friend this morning.

Although we have a few friends that claim their baby 'slept through' at this age they were also the type who kept the doors shut between them and the baby and didn't worry too much about crying. Which I am here classifying as sleep training!

So for non-trained babies, does anyone HAVE a breastfed baby under six months (or even under nine months) who SLEEPS THROUGH?

Or is this an impossible dream!

If so, what do you think your secrets of success are? Or just plain luck?

DS slept from 7pm, got woken for a feed about 11pm then slept till 7am. Plus slept well in the day too. We loosely followed the GF routine.

DD refused to even vaguely entertain GF. Sleeps 3 x half hour in the day and still wakes approx 11pm, 3am, 6am (on a good night) at 5.5 months.

My Mum reckons girls are worse for sleeping. No idea if it's true but I'm sure some do sleep well even when tiny but they are the lucky few.

I breastfed mine to sleep and DS1 slept all night (12 hours) from 9 weeks. DS was the oldest to sleep through and he was 8 months. Never did sleep traing - just went with the flow. Some of it is pure luck

Ds2 and dd1 both slept 6+ hours at around 5mths. Dd2 slept 8hrs on one occasion when she was 3mths but didn't repeat the event for almost 2.5yrs!

DSs didn't at all, DD slept from about 10pm until 7 am from the age of 4 weeks until 4 months and then didn't sleep through again until she was 18 months old (the same age as the DSs when they started sleeping through)

I don't know whether it was me or them tbh, I'm just glad it's over....

Mine selpt through from about 8 weeks old but is now waking a lot (she is 4 months old). We're scratching our heads as we did nothing to encourage the sleeping through and are doing nothing different now. Keep meaning to try the baby whisperer technique but I'm too tired.....

dd was breastfed exclusively till about 5 months (and then continued till 17 months). She was an angel and slept through the night from 8 weeks.
We didn't sleep train although she did have a routine from birth as she had to fit in with routines for bed we already had in place for ds (who was 2½ at the time).

dd slept throught 7-7 at 4 months, i cluster fed in the early evening and got her day time sleeps sorted as soon as possible. i never left her to cry.

all my 3 did - from about 4 months. I think it depends on the child though - mine were all good sleepers, and had a feeding frenzy in the early evening.

DS slept from 10PM to 7AM at 9 weeks and "7 to 7" at 15 weeks.
DD slept from 10PM to 7AM at 6 weeks and "6 to 7" at 12 weeks.

Both were exclusively BF for at least 5 or 6 months.

I know others who had BF babies who had 10PM to 7AM at 9 weeks.

This thread is making me so .

Mine cluster fed all evening AND all night AND all day for the first 18 months. [baggy-eyed-smiley-here]

nope 5.5 months, still not sleeping through, going to get tough 9with myself!) and do sleep training soon

DS is 9 months - has slept through twice, both times before 4 months old. However, he started teething at 4.5 months and has just cut his 8th tooth. Every one a bloody nightmare that took weeks

The latest advice over here (Vancouver) is that BF babies may still need 1 or 2 BFs a night until they are one year

I'm still BFing BTW.

My personal feeling is that sleep training is a bit silly until a child has the cognitive ability to understand what's going on. I'm trying to introduce the concept of a skooshy toy as a lovey, and I try to get DH to soothe DS as often as possible during the night, to try to reduce the dependance on the boob as a soother. But that's about as far as I'm prepared to go until he's well over a year old.

This is just me - not a critiscism of other parents who sleep train - I have freinds for whom it's worked wonders!

My bf dd2 slept through from 3 weeks (would go from 10pm-7am), in the moses basket next to my bed. She's more restless now, aged 5mo, but I think she's getting hungrier and want to hold off weaning a bit longer if I can. So yes, it does happen.
(dd1 had me up 3 times a night until she was 8mo, but that's another story!)

My ds tried to sleep through at 2 weeks .

I had to wake him to feed him as he wasn't gaining weight. But despite his reluctance, he was fully bf for 12 months (a lot of EBM in the early weeks).

Once we got that sorted (or rather, stopped worrying about his rate of weight gain) he slept through from about 8 till 6 - although for a while I would wake him at 10 for a feed.

But I think it is just luck - we do acknowledge that if we have another one, we have to have signs in every room reminding us that they are all different. He was a very easy baby (apart from his reluctance to breast feed properly - which we did eventually sort).

He slept in the same room as us for the first 6 months.

We did have a rule (used more after about 4 months) that we would leave him to cry for 5 minutes and if he was still crying, then go and see what it was.

Well mine didn't sleep through (by which I mean 12 hours) until around 6 months and well onto solids - and certainly for them, sleeping through was related to being well fed. So for me, the answer is no.
BUT both went through a phase at around 8-14 weeks where they had a lengthening block of sleep of around 6 hours (and occasionally 7, 8 or 9) - but I could never get them to do this from my bedtime, it was always from 7pm so still resulted in them waking in the small hours. Then they regressed around 4 months as aloha describes, with more wakings.
I do know of some very good early sleepers who were fully breastfed, but I think it is less common than in bottle feeding, for a variety of reasons.

Dd2 is 12 weeks and sleeps from about 8pm to 5-6am and is fully breastfed. DD1 used to sleep from 9pm -5am at about the same age and was also breastfed. Neither cry (cried) , or even noticeably wake between those times. I'm just lucky I guess

Fraid not...ds only really started sleeping properly when I stopped all BF except bedtime (still doing that one) - at 13 months.

Up til then he woke at least once every night (except a handful), for over a year. Often twice. I didn;t do any sleep training until he was 12 months.

One thing that did help settle him a bit which I did around 9 months was cutting up an old nightie of mine into comforters. He currently has 3 on the go, so he can't lose them all around the cot in the space of one night. To begin with I used to walk around with them stuffed down my bra in the hour before bedtime.

DD1 has been sleeping from about 6.30pm to about 4.30-5.30, then back to sleep for the next 3 hours, she is now 8 weeks. This was all entirely baby-led so we are sickeningly lucky, but there was another major factor: previously she was sleeping in our room, and we were leaping up at every little cry or rustle and probably keeping her awake by rocking her or shushing her. As soon as she was in her room, we all slept better. I would probably have put her in her own room a bit earlier with hindsight.

Forgot also to mention that DD is entirely BF, and she does have a feeding frenzy before she goes to bed. The other factor that really changed was for us to decide when she was asleep, instead of waiting for her to be asleep before putting her in the cot. I think she goes off to sleep when she is awake but calm, rather than being completely conked out.

I do Gina Ford and I think her idea of splitting a feed at bedtime. Ie feed from one breast at 5.00 and then let baby have a kick around in the nude, then a bath then the other breast seemed to work for my little boy. He's slept through from about 10 weeks-now (18 weeks) fingers are still crossed.

my first dd slept through fully bf from 6 months (once she went into her own room and I refused the night feed she gave up and slept through) dd2 started sleeping through 7 - 5 at 3 months and was doing about 6 hours a night from about 8 - 10 weeks (when I put her in her own room at 3 months old she did it herself and didn't ever need that night feed) I think it is a combination of how they are as a child, luck and habit forming.

I am sooo jealous of all the success stories !