How long before your babies slept through the night

[llzink]

I know every baby is different but I would like to get an rough idea on how many weeks/months it took for an extended nights sleep. DS is only 2 weeks old and is sleeping for 3-4 hour sessions at night. He is sleeping in his crib in his nursey now. We have ocean sounds playing all night to help him sleep. Since DS is our first child I would like to see if anyone has any advice or tips on getting baby prepared to sleep longer during the night when he gets a little older (3-4 months). Thanks

[mama2be]

2 months seems to be the magic number!!!! Tristan has slept thru the night for about the past 4-5 weeks with three exceptions.

One he didn't get fed right before we went to asleep (he was asleep)
so he woke us around 3:30 fed and went back to sleep...

And the other two nights were when I was just up at my parents house he seemed more restless which kept waking me up but he was not crying just restless like he knew daddy wasn't with us.

You sound like you are doing great and DS is doig SUPER!!!

[mharling]

Ds is 7 weeks old and just started sleeping through the night. Saturday he slept from 11:45 to 6:00 and Sunday from 10:30 to 5:10. Last night was 10:30 to 4:00. Not quite like the 2 previous nights, but still 5 1/2 hours, so not bad! Up until this point, a normal night consisted of about 4 hours of sleep, nursing and then 3 more hours. I was very happy with that too!

We are reading Marc Weissbluth's book, 'Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child'. My advice would be to get this book. My brother and SIL, as well as lots of people here, have used it with great success.

Mary
Mommy to Lane Michael 4/6/03
http://www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=67b0de21b33928e40550

[KimberleyDawn]

Congrats on the new baby! William was feeding 3-4oz. every 4 hours at about 2wks. and dropped his 4am bottle and started sleeping through the night (12am-7am) at about 6-7wks. At about 9wks he dropped another bottle and has been on a 7am, noon, 5pm, and 9pm feeding schedule ever since. Are you breast or formula feeding? Most people don't do this (don't do it without speaking to your dr. 1st) but I also started giving 2 tsp. of rice cereal with the last bottle when he started the 9pm feed as his last for the night.
Kim

[C99]

Nate's 4-months-old and does not sleep through the night by what we would consider to be sleeping through the night (8-10 hours). He goes about 4-5 hours at a time initially and then wakes up to eat every 2 hours or so after that. He sleeps with us, so I am not exhausted, but longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep would be nice. I recommend that you read The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. I'm in the middle of it now and I love that it gives you concrete things to do to help your child sleep through the night.

[dogmom]

Just a warning, don't count your sleeping chicks before they hatched. I was almost smug when my DS was sleeping 5 hour stretches within the first two weeks and stayed that way until 6 weeks or so. "We have such a good baby" I would say, and my DH would say, "Isn't it a little early to say that?" ;) Then at some point he woke up every 3-4 hours, then every 3, then every 2 hours. Somewhere in here I had to transition him to the crib from co-sleeping because he was thrashing too much and not wanting to be sleeping with me. Just before his four month point he was waking up every 3 hours on the dot and would drain both my breasts, and he was eating plenty during the day. I think that's the point I posted a "please tell me it will get better message." The past 4 days he just dropped one of his night feeds. He now goes from 7:30 to 1 am, then wakes up again at 4 am, then at 5, then at 6...I usually bring him into bed around 4 or 5. You would think if I woke him up at 10 pm to feed him he wouldn't wake up at 1 am, but he still does, so I just let him sleep until he's hungry. Things are definately looking up in the sleep department. I guess that's a long winded way of saying babies have such different sleep styles, like adults. I hope that yours sleeps through the night soon and continues to do so.

Jeanne
Mom to Harvey
1/03

[Rachels]

Sister, I hear ya! Abigail was GREAT her first three months in the sleep department. By three months, she was consistently doing 5-7 hour stretches at night. Since then, she has slept through the night exactly four times. We had months when she woke every hour or less.

I add this in because I was pretty hard on myself about it. I kept hearing all these wonder stories, and they made me question what I had done wrong to make my child stop sleeping. But you know, all kids are different. My current philosophy is that they'll sleep eventually, and that by the time something is recognizable as a pattern, it's probably about to change anyway. So I just try to take it one night at a time.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[Andrea S]

Andrew was 7-8 months before he stopped waking up during the night. He would havea good 5-6 hour stretch (starting at 9pm) then it was all down hill. Sice about 8 mas he sleeps 10 hours (7:30pm-5:30am) Sometimes he stills wakes up briefly.

Andrea
mom to Andrew 8/14/02

[colleenfs]

Julia is almost 17 months, and she hasn't slept through the night for more than 5 days in a row yet. I'd say that in any given week, she sleeps through 3-4 times, and the rest of the time she wakes up hollering at least once if not twice. There is no explanation for this. The has all 16 teeth now, save the 2 year molars, and she doesn't need to be fed... Some day... When she does sleep through, it's 7:30pm-8am.

Colleen
Mama to Julia 1-10-02

[AngelaS]

Both of the girls were sleeping at least 8 hours at night by 4 months. Call me mean, but once they went three nights in a row without waking up to eat, I no longer fed them in the middle of the night. I would instead get up and give them some snuggles and then tuck them back in, just like at bedtime. DD 1 fussed for about 10 minutes the first two nights and slept after that. Dd 2 fussed about 5 minutes one night and slept thru from then on.

I think it's VERY important to teach good sleep habits EARLY. I know too many people who are still getting up multiple times a night with PRESCHOOLERs and that's just nuts!

[nohomama]

Lola didn't sleep through the night until she was 14 monthes old. I remember having a period around the 3 month mark when she was sleeping for 5 & 6 hour stretches and I actually said out loud that I missed her younger days. No, I wasn't on crack, but damn if I didn't live to regret those words. I knew as the words were flowing out of my mouth that I was tempting fate.

For us the solution for better sleep was moving her out of our bed and into a crib. Lola's father and I both loved co-sleeping when it was good but it got to the point where it no longer facilitated better sleep but rather the opposite.

Lola still has nights when she's fitful...not waking up but not sleeping soundly either. It usually coincides with days when she's been very active and/or hasn't napped well.

I also recommend Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. Honestly, we weren't able to use much of her method but it proved useful to us in coming up with our own.

Good luck! These thing do get better.

[mcmorfit]

Congratulations on the wee one, who it sounds like is off to a great start!

Lucy just hit the 3 month mark and has been sleeping for 7 - 9 hours at a stretch for the last month. She usually turns into a pumpkin around 7:30, so she wakes up to feed anywhere between 2:30 and 4:30, then sleeps until 7:00 - 8:00. My DH (who is in charge of late night changes) decided that to prepare Lucy for longer stretches of sleep he wouldn't change the diaper unless a blow out occured, I'm still waiting to see the data, but it seems to be working!

I've read both the Weissbluth and Pantley books and got a lot of information out of both of them. Remember that all babies are different, but they love the 3 R's - routine, repetition and rhythm - so whatever you do make bedtime the same (or at least try to) so that the wee one gets the idea for the BIG sleep.

Good Luck!

[peanut4us]

Our baby is 2 months old today, and she has slept through the night since last Friday. I keep telling myself that it is some kind of glitch in her system and that I shouldn't get used to it... but I can hope. And when I say sleep through the night I mean minimum 8 hours... the first time she did it, it was for 11 hours. Talk about feeling like a new woman the next day.

I have read through the Happiest Baby on the Block by Karp. It is something you can use now... even at your baby's young age.

We still swaddle Sara (with one arm out... she likes a little freedom). And we use a white noise machine with her. And we are Bfing...

I think those are the important data.

[egoldber]

My DD first started sleeping through the night at about 8-10 weeks. But she didn't do it reliably until she was about 5-6 months. And she didn't go to sleep on her own (without being rocked or fed to sleep) until about 7-8 months.

But when teeth start coming, all bets are off!!

[brubeck]

I think you are doing the right thing having him sleep in his own crib. 3-4 hours is great at 2 weeks old. I did the solo crib thing with both my kids and they slept 6 hours at 6 weeks, 8 hours at 8 weeks and 10 hours at 10 weeks. They have been sleeping through the night ever since, although occasionally one of them will wake up, make noise for a minute or two and then put themselves back to sleep.

My only technique was to start them in their own cribs in their own room from night 1 and once they hit 3 or 4 weeks I gave them 2 oz of formula before their nighttime BF session. Keep the same bedtime routine going every night, and when you get up in the night to feed him keep it dark and quiet with no play.

It also helps if you can keep him up (perhaps eating) for the hour before bedtime. That helps tire them out.

2 weeks is not very old. Just remember that he will sleep longer as he gets older!

[Rachels]

...Although I have many friends whose cosleeping babies sleep all night, and an equal number whose crib babies don't. There's no right answer on this. You have to do what works for your family.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[Sarah1]

I have to second those moms who said "don't count your chickens"--Audrey was sleeping thru the night around 3-4 mos, and then around 5 mos of age, she got a cold and was waking up once, sometimes twice, at night, and the habit just stuck. She is now 6 1/2 mos, and last weekend, I just said, ENOUGH!

I had to institute some "tough love" and took a combo Ferber/Weissbluth approach--basically when they wake up at night, you just let them cry. Yes, it is hard to listen to crying, but I have found it works. I found that going in to "soothe" without feeding was just counterproductive. Her crying just intensified when she saw me, and she was pissed off that I wasn't goin gto nurse her. I'm happy to say after ONE night of crying for an hour & 15 minutes (that was definitely rough), so far, she is sleeping through the night. She has woken up and cried for like 3 minutes, but puts herself back to sleep. I have not fed her in 5 nights!