What do you class as sleeping through the night?

[cavwda]

@chpjoe Thank you! This is really helpful!

 

[hawleyray]

@cavwda Also what made a huge impact for me was getting a storybook about weaning (there are several, I bought boobie moon), reading them daily for a couple weeks and talking about how boobie was going to be sleeping at night. Then when I did start to replace nigjt nursing with cuddles I would repeat that boobie is sleeping and my kiddo understood that. At 18 months she was ready and the whole process went smoothly with a little whimpering but no screaming.

 

[cavwda]

@hawleyray That’s really cool! I’d not even considered storybooks on it. Thank you!

 

[carriebell]

@sass I go to sleep, baby is asleep, I wake up, baby is still asleep ‍

 

[jimbobby2021]

@sass Sleeping through the night is 10-12 hours, no wakeups, no feeds.

However with newborns, sleep can be so hard, so many parents get ahead of themselves and make up their own definitions like your friend did. Its fine for each new parent to define it however they want to, however it can be a bit demoralising and not very empathetic to other new parents who struggle with baby sleep as the statement gives the mistaken impression that most babies are ‘sleeping through the night’ while there is something ‘wrong’ with their baby’s sleep.

Interestingly, science actually shows that babies really are crap sleepers, with many not sleeping through the night until 1-2 years old however majority of parents surveyed were unsatisfied with their baby’s sleep and expected that their babies should sleep better than they do.

As an anecdote…our baby, a great sleeper from the start, started sleeping 8 hour stretches from 2 months. We thought that was pretty damn good (and listening to other new parents, it did seem that ours was a bit of a unicorn good sleeper), but we stilll never used the ‘sleeping throught the night’ until they actually started doing 10-12 hours with no feed or wake up. And even then we only shared that information with only few people as we knew that many other new parents in our circle were sturggling with sleep.

 

[lruiters]

@jimbobby2021 I love that you said you didn’t share it with everyone. I think you should definitely brag about your kids when you are proud of them or when they do give you that sleep you’ve been wanting for so long, but also important to realize majority of the time it’s nothing you did that other parents are doing wrong. It’s solely based on each individual baby lol. My almost 5 week old has had the same wake up schedule since we brought him home. And I think it is bc I was having to wake him for feeds until he gained back to birth weight. But even stopping he wakes me up now at 2 and 5 every night and then up for the day at 7:30-8. Thinking about making bedtime at 7:30-8 rather than 9-10 to see what happens lol

 

[madtilly62]

@sass For me, sleeping through the night is going from what would be considered a 'standard' child's bedtime (6-8pm) to a 'standard' child's wake up time (6am onwards) without requiring any intervention from their parent. By my definition, my son started sleeping through the night at 9 months old when he dropped his final 4am feed.

I'll confess that it slightly annoys me when people refer to their weeks old baby as 'sleeping through the night' when what they mean was that they did a 6 hour stint and then had a feed and a cuddle and went down for an additional 3 hours, then maybe another feed and another couple of hours after that. This is what my son did and I considered him to be doing really well until I heard other mums claiming that their same aged babies were sleeping through the night, at which point I started wondering why mine wasn't doing that and wondering what we were doing wrong. It was only later when we got into more detail that I realised we were describing the same thing but in different ways. I think using the phrase as shorthand for 'sleeping a solid stint appropriate for the age of the child in question' leads to confusion and unrealistic expectations amongst parents.

 

[brandonsmom777]

@sass Yeah, to me it's me not having to get up to assist back to sleep (whether in between sleep cycles and wake and need resettling or a feed.) 5 mo and down to 2 wakes a night, one just for a resettle and one to feed,

 

[tiras84]

@sass So officially sleeping through the night is 12am-6am. Some sleep trainers in the 00s started advertising 7-7 as an attainable goal which is so misleading! It’s physiologically normal for babies to require food or comfort during those 12 hours.

So in answer to your question - I consider 7-7 with two feeds sleeping through the night. If I get 5 hours of linked sleep that’s a win.

My daughter slept 11 hours without waking at one stage and I hated it. She was starving when she woke up (4 months old at the time). I’d much rather her wake for a feed so she is content

 

[nidmahl]

@sass I consider it not only no wakes, but a decent length of time. For us when he was sleep trained something like 7 pm to 6 am.

 

[pgardner2358]

@sass My 16 month old only does 10-10.5 hours at night, so for us, I’d consider sleeping through the night needing no intervention between the hours of 8pm-6am. Most of the time he wakes between 4-6am and needs some back pats or comforting to go back to sleep. So, we’re 90% there but still not what I’d consider fully sleeping through the night.

At a minimum, I think sleeping through means 8 hours and no intervention.

 

[bowell]

@sass i would define it as what my LO does right now - sleeps 11-12 hours a night, no waking, or if she wakes up she falls back asleep on her own without tears

 

[josh_ats]

@sass Yes I agree sleeping through the night to me means when you put your baby to bed they do not wake up until the morning 6am or after (10-12 hours of sleep total).

 

[goldensilver]

@sass When mommy & daddy don't have to get up after we go to sleep (until usual morning wake)