When do baby's start sleeping through the night? Ours sleeps about 3 hours at a time. She is eating both formula and breastmilk. The breastmilk is given through a bottle. Just curious on the "timeline." The little one is almost 6 weeks old.
I am going to go out and buy the book "On Becoming Babywise." Thanks everyone for your input it will be helpful. Keep it coming.
I also fed my baby breast milk through a bottle and formula. I work full + time and have since 3 weeks after he was born. I decided that he could go through the night w/o feeding when he was 3 months old. He adjusted quickly and has been sleeping through the night since.
M.
I too read On Becoming Baby Wise. What a great book! My son was sleeping through the night one week after I read it, he was 3 months old. He was happier and Mommy and Daddy were too!
My question is, what is so important about sleeping through the night? I think there is entirely too much focus on this, and I swear for the first year, very nice people trying to make conversation will ask you this over and over and over. I think this issue is only important from the caregivers perspective, it is a completely unrealistic expectation of infants. Especially in the early months, and especially with breast milk (the best gift you can give your child) babies by biological design, need to wake up and eat. That arousal is an important mechanism, and it is not something to be trifled with. To understand the evolution of infant sleep, I would suggest looking at McKenna's work at the mother-baby behavioral sleep laboratory: http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab
There is a great (short) book out there called On Becoming Babywise. It was a quick read with ideas that were easy and just made so much sense. We were recommended it by some friends with our second baby, and she slept through the night around 5 or 6 weeks (at least 6 hrs). It helped with so many other things also, our lives were a lot easier than they had been with our first child. It talked about making a schedule that works for you. Feed your child strickly on this schedule, and don't feed them to put them to sleep, it makes them depentant on this. We fed our daughter every couple hours at first, even if we had to wake her, and even as a new born attempted to keep her awake for a few minutes. Then we would just lay her into her bed. As the weeks went on, we would up the time line, because we had to keep waking her. The book also suggests not using monitors at night. It said you will hear your baby if there is a problem. Not everyone may be comfortable with this, but we did it, and our duaghter seemed to learn that crying was not the way to get everyone in the house to jump up. If on the occasion she woke a few minutes before her feeding, she just layed there quietly. According to my doctor, she would cry if she was uncomfortable because she needed to eat. My doctor also said that it was fine that she was going so long at night (we had a full 9 hrs by 2 1/2 months. The book also explained that many time, babies that are still waking up throughout the night when they are 6 mo. or so are doing so out of habit. They may be hungry, but its because they are not getting enough during the day and evening, or they may not be hungry, just kind of programmed to wake up at certain times. Everyone finds different things that work, but this helped us. Good luck.
My daughter woke every 1-2 hours until she was 15 months old. At 18 months she started sleeping for 6 hours at a time.
You didn't indicate what age your baby is.... but it is very normal for them to wake every 2-4 hours until at least a year, as they are hungry.
Every baby is different. Some sleep great, others do not. There is really no way to tell.
Hi A.!
I was a little up tight about my baby sleeping through the night at first, until I read an article from Dr. Sears about infant sleep cycles. It made a lot of sense, especially how night wakefulness is a survival mechanism for babies. Here is the article if your interested:
as others said, get the book "on becoming baby wise" My son slept through the night at 9 weeks and my daughter at 11. Both were breast fed exclusivly. Its more a matter of getting them on an appropriate schedule, and it just happens naturally. It also helps your baby be more content all the time, because all there needs are met and you dont have to guess as a parent what the fussing is about. My son is still a great sleeper and a very easy going kid and he is 5 now, people comment all the time on what a "good baby" my daughter is. I think they should send that book home from the hosptial with new moms!
my daughter started sleeping thru the night when she was 3weeks old, she was in a bassinet beside my bed. however, i tried to get her started sleeping in her room in her crib now that she is almost 4 months. she did great with the crib the 1st week then all of the sudden she hated the crib so i tried the bassinet again and she hates it to, the only way i can get her to sleep at all now is in bed with me. but anyway, it was just a few weeks after she was born, she would sleep from around 10pm to 5am
When you find out, let me know! My daughter is 7 months, is breastfed and gets some baby cereal and fruit or veggie 2X a day. She sleeps about 4 hrs at a stretch and wakes to nurse. I am starting to not even notice when she wakes to nurse unless I'm flipped over on my other side *we co-sleep*.
Good Luck!
B.
My daughter didn't start sleeping through the night until she was 5 months old. We noticed though she didn't do this until we got her on a schedule. I think that really helped. We would feed her every three hours. Once we started doing that during the day, she started going to sleep at 9 pm and waking at 6 am.
Depends on the baby however swaddling at night helps tremendously with sleeping longer
Well my son is almost 4 wks old now and he just started sleeping through the night occassionally. We can usually go 2-3 nights and have one bad night in bewteen. I have heard though that it can take up to 3-4 months for them to sleep through the night, good luck.
On another note though, you said you are doing formula and breastmilk given through the bottle. How is that workingout for you? That is exactly what we have had to do with my son because he was in the NICU for the first week and between that and stress it has caused my milk production to go WAY down. I can harly produce 2-3 oz a day now. Any advice?
S.
For my two kids, for total sleep through the night, for 10-11 hours no waking up at all, it was about 1-1/2 years old at the earliest. Yours at 6 weeks is right on target. Developmentally, and for the sake of nutrition intake, she really can't go more than that right now. There's a good book called Babywise that talks about how to get them to sleep more and more at night. K.
I have two girls that both started sleeping through the night at six weeks. They were on a very good schedule of eating every two to four hours during the day and then I started to feed them rice cereal mixed with formula with a spoon at around nine at night. Both of my girls by one month only got up once in the middle of the night before they slept through. I also let them "cry it out" for the first two nights and then they didn't wake up anymore in the middle of the night. When they started out they would sleep from 10-5 and now my youngest is 4 months and she sleeps from 8-6 every night. I know it is very hard those first few nights, but I believe that it is better for them to get more sleep. I don't know if it has anything to do with their development, but they are both ahead of schedule on most things.
basically anything over 6 hours is "sleeping through the night" and most babies are able to sleep at least that long pretty early on. my daughter slept through the night from very very early on. we were seriously spoiled! she still is a very very good sleeper at 15 months so umm i cant help ya but from what ive read sleep patterns change as babies develop
You've gotten a lot of suggestions, but I thought I'd just throw my two cents in. My daughter is 3 months old and we are working on getting her to sleep the whole night. She sleeps a good 6 hours then wakes up and then sleeps another 3 or 4. What we've done is slowely decreased the amount we've given her at night time. She was getting 4 ounces then we cut it to 3 for couple nights then 2 then 1 and then we cut the feedings out all together and gave her the binki just to calm her down and then I'd rock her to sleep. Our big thing now is getting her to fall asleep initially on her own. When they are really little often times they do need to still eat, it depends on the baby. When she is about 2 1/2- 3 months I'd start letting her cry herself back to sleep, or let her fuss longer before you go and get her in the middle of the night. If she's waking up multiple times in the night, say 12-3-6 I'd skip feeding her at the 12 feeding completely, cut her ounces down at the 3 and then feed her a regular bottle at 6.Hope this helps somehow
