When Can My Baby Sleep Through the Night?

It's the question we've all asked within weeks of our beautiful bundle's birth.  Once the bliss of having a newborn starts to wane under the cloud of sleep deprivation, thoughts of sleep (more sleep, please more sleep!) begin to take over.

Some babies are natural sleepers; these little angel babies can knock off 10-12 hours a night at about three months old with little-to-no concerted effort from their parents.  You don't hear about them much because their parents know not to mention it in public.

For the most part, babies will need to have calories in the night for up to six months of age*, beginning with feeding every three hours as a newborn to just one feed per night at four-to-six months. (*Your baby may need one night feed for a little longer if he is on the small side, and definitely longer if baby isn't holding his growth curve - if that's the case, seek the advice of a pediatrician.) 

The idea of baby sleeping 12 hours straight may sound absurd to the mom of a 10-month-old who wakes 3-4 times a night for her self-declared snack time. But these wakings are not physiological. In a healthy baby, night wakings at this age are in the realm of habit and a lack of self-soothing sleep skills.

For example, babies who are breastfed to sleep or use a soother will wake fully, crying out, when they come to a normal awakening at the end of each sleep cycle. These mini-awakenings are a normal part of sleep; we all have them with little or no recollection in the morning. Babies who have already learned to self soothe wake only briefly and simply reposition themselves before starting their next sleep cycle. Babies (or toddlers) who need a "prop" - something external like a soother or breastfeeding - to fall asleep wake fully, crying out for the "prop"  they intially fell asleep with.

In the case of a baby who is dependent on a sleep prop, it will take some encouragement and habit-breaking to help her learn not to wake in the night once she's past the age of physically  needing night feeds. The good news is, there are more compassionate methods now than the old-school cry-it-out technique (which essentially means saying good night to your baby and not opening her door until 7 a.m. - apparently effective, but jeesh...). 

The method I recommend to parents is one in which you are beside your baby supporting them with voice and touch as they learn this ever-important new skill of falling asleep. And it works, virtually every time.

So if your baby is healthy, beyond the newborn stage and is still waking every 2-3 hours, or beyond four months and waking more than once or twice, or beyond 7-8 months and is waking at all, you can assume it's an issue of habit, not physiological need. Babies will always make up the calories during the day to get all the nutrition they need.

With the right advice and a proven plan, your baby could be sleeping through the night within a week.  Then you'll be the one keeping quiet at the Mommy group. 

Sleep Is A Dream

Sleep is a dream, too good to be true

Because I am a Mom of not just one but two.

For those parents of three I shudder to think

Of how brief their shut-eye – the span of a blink?

If not one then the other. If by chance they both snooze,

My body’s forgotten just what it should do.

I lie awake staring, growing even more tense;

I know all too well that the peace will soon end.

From the moment of birth until now four years on,

It’s been work through the day and a job all night long.

I’ve tried everything – read five books or more,

Ferberized while they cried, and camped out on the floor.

I am so tired now. It’s all that I know.

My patience is thin, my body moves slow.

I try to carve out some time for my spouse;

When he speaks, sleep is all that I’m thinking about.

It’s become an obsession, a fix I can’t get –

It’s dragging me down, I can’t focus or think.

Is this the best that it gets? This is life as a mother?

A string of hangovers, one after the other?

I love my kids dearly, they’re the reason I live,

But at the price of my sleep I don’t have much to give.

So I’ll slog through the day, enjoy second winds,

And hope that tonight, my new life begins.

I’ve hoped that before, yet it goes on and on.

To sleep through the night is for other kids’ Moms.

I don’t sleep well or much, not nearly enough.

My kids don’t sleep either, and it’s all the more rough.

I know that there’s more, for them and for me.

We can have much more joy, so much more “joie de vivre.”

The life in my head I am too tired to lead.

Will my kids ever know the fun, boisterous “real" me?

For now I put one foot in front of the other

And hope that a new path I soon will discover:

To tuck my sweet ones into bed with a kiss,

As we all drift off fast to a full night’s sleep bliss.

And wake with eyes bright, full of wonder and magic,

Greeting each day like an artist’s blank canvas.

I want that for me, for my children of course,

An end to the stream of emotion outbursts.

To be one of those families hand-in-hand on the beach,

Not corralling their kids or dragging their feet.

Or the ones in the park full of giggles and smiles,

Running after kids like they could do that for miles.

Sleep is a dream? Too good to be true?

It’s happened for them, maybe one day, me too.

Inspired by comments from the parents I meet who have suffered months or years of sleep deprivation, and yes, my own experience too. I want to help every one of them.

Sleep is possible for every child, every family.

Adventures in Sleeplessness - stories from sleep-coached dads

Dads often suffer as much as moms when their baby or toddler isn't sleeping.

Moms definitely feel the brunt of post-partum sleep deprivation – those newborn months are a blissful slog.  But (thankfully) modern dads are often very involved in soothing their restless little ones, especially as they get a little older, and they too pay the price of sleepless nights. Here are a few of their stories about getting to the other side of sleeplessness:

Zac

Ok. 

Some parents have good sleepers.  You ask them how they do it and they tell you that they just put their kid to bed and they sleep. They look at you like it's a silly question. 

It was honestly pretty hard not to resent parents like that because we didn't have one of those kids.  

By the time our daughter was two, Melanie and I had developed a lengthy, complicated and totally useless bedtime routine.  It was a combination of nursing, dancing, singing, voodoo, stories, more dancing, patting, loveys, no not those loveys, new ones, not those ones, the other one ("it's in the car.  It's in the car!"), bouncing in fifteen different ways, bouncing while patting and dancing and singing, high humming, low humming, and finally like another hour of nursing.  Every night our ritual seemed to get longer.  Wake ups were still happening two to five times a night, quenched only by more nursing and the kind of bed sharing that wasn't good for any of us.  We were exhausted, barely coping, and very deeply unhappy.  The idea of sleeping through the night seemed impossible - hearing about it felt like a cruel joke being played on us. 

Hiring a sleep coach turned this around for us.  She simply taught us how to teach our daughter to sleep.  We may never have done it without her. Things changed very quickly for the better.  I think it honestly took about a week or two and our toddler was sleeping through the night.

What can I really say about having sleep come back to you and your partner's life, to your kid's life?   It's incredible.  All of us were (and are) happier.  Our daughter stopped acting up.  She was well rested for literally the first time in nearly two years and so were we.  I started being able to hold adult conversations again without forgetting words like "car" and "house".  I'm not even sure I knew what a wreck I was until things started improving. 

A year and a half later things are still good with us. The skills we all learned have not gone away.  We are still happily sleeping through the night. We seriously got our lives back. 

Brandon

Sleep training has been amazing for us! Before we started, we were co-sleeping with Gus, and we were both turning into zombies; Gus was waking up almost every hour and Justina would nurse him back to sleep. None of us was getting enough sleep; I even noticed that Gus was starting to get grumpy during the day which was unusual because he is a pretty smiley guy.

I had been holding out on hiring a sleep trainer, but co-sleeping just wasn't working. Then we saw that Hilary was holding a public seminar. We had other plans that weekend, but we changed them and went. I couldn’t believe it when she said most babies on her plan learn to sleep through the night within a week, two at most.

We signed up that day.

It took two nights of sleep training and Gus was sleeping through the night! It was unbelievable. It changed our lives.

We like to camp, which has still been a bit of a struggle for Gus as he often wakes up during the night while we're camping. We worry that we'll ruin everything he’s learned, but Gus picks it back up again as soon as we’re home and back to the routine.

It's been great, and I think our little boy is happier now that he is sleeping through the night.

Jeff

Before our twin girls arrived, I was an active, energetic, guy who thought that he could handle any challenge these two little ladies might throw my way. Well within a week of their arrival I had to concede that I was wrong – the feedings and diaper changes felt like a constant tick-tock of the clock: tick – get the formula heated, tock – help my wife double breastfeed the girls, tick – get the formula heated, tock – change those diapers.

Please sleep now… please…

Fast-forward eight months to when we met Hilary, a sleep coach, and her family in the park. Our girls were still feeding at least once during the night.  We were tired. Very tired. We hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since the girls arrived. 

We had an initial consult and signed up for a full sleep-training plan. Four or five nights later, they were sleeping through the night. We couldn’t believe it. Seriously, it happened that quickly.  Pretty soon, all was ironed out like a smooth, starched shirt: their 5 a.m. waking turned into 6, then 7, and now, almost two years later, they sleep until 7:30 or 8 every morning. Double WOW (one for each of them!).

Our lives are still very full with our lovely girls, but we are all happier, healthier and more energetic with a good night’s sleep every night. Hilary’s thoughtful and thorough approach, which was tailored to fit our girls’ sleep history and patterns, made all the difference for myself and my family.