How old was your bub when they started sleeping thru

Hi,
My little man is now 7 months. he ws sleeping thru, well from 9.30 pm till 7 am from around 6 weeks old.
when he was 3-4 months i had to start helping my hubby a bit more so my mum and mother in law were looking after him alot more. from then he started wakeing at night. plunket and others told me this was likely to be from the seperation.
feeling sorry for my beautiful lil man i diligently got up to him some times 6 times a night.
tho he is only waking up about twice a night now, and sometimes he is hungry and feeds but mostly its just a cuddle and a small comfort feed he is aftr. im wondering when hes gunna start sleeping 9 hours again???
i know i need to count my self lucky cos as soon as his mouth finds my nipple hes asleep again, an i just gotta wait for him to finish and i can go back to bed my self, but im just curious as to how long this is likely to go on.

my son was sleeping thru by 4weeks but then as he hit 10months he stopped again! now he is 16months and wakes up and wants a bottle =S think it may hav something to do with him getting his 2yo molars tho..

Well Im bummed! My nearly 5 month old son was sleeping through the night 7pm to at least 5am, have a bottle and go back to sleep and on the odd occassion 7pm to 7am. Now suddenly after this past week of hot weather he is waking up 3-5 times a night even though the weather has settled, he is all out of wack and no one in our house is very happy with sleep deprivation so im clueless....hopefully he'll get back on track soon!

My son started to sleep through the night when he was about 2 1/2 months. When he was about 3 months we went away on holiday and he kept waking up because he was getting sick. Finally back home, it took us about a month an a half to get him to sleep all the way through again. I thought it was the end of me if he doesn't sleep through the night again, but I thought if I slowly drift him back to the routine, maybe he'll start to sleep properly again, and it worked. I would suggest just be patient with him and he'll eventually get back to routine. Sometimes it could also be unset tummy, so giving his tummy and back a bit of a rub might get rid of some wind. Hope that helps.

our litle man was a good sleeper from birth would sleep 7hrs straight through which i thought was GREAT!! when he was about 3 to 4months he started sleeping 12 to 13hrs which is fantastic. hes 8months and still doing the same... hope it doesnt change!! fingers crossed!!
bed times normally around 8- 8-30pm hes up around 9am.

At 6 weeks my DD was sleeping from 10 or 11pm to 6am with no feeds and by 3 months she was sleeping 12 hours with no feeds. Now she sleeps 12 or 13 hours (7-7 or 7-8), she's 7 months. She's our first and I honestly wasn't expecting to get this much sleep, so I'm so grateful.

my 2 girls both slept thru from the age of about 3-4months and a good 10-12hours - my boy however who is 12 months is still not sleeping thru, has always woke for a feed and now I cannot get him settled after he wakes and he is awake for 2-3 hours in the early hours of the morning every night...it seems it is now the norm for him to do this.
[Edited on 06/03/2009]

Hi,
My son started sleeping 10hrs only at 11mths without needing a feed/bottle. At 6-8mths he was still getting me up every 1.5hrs for settling/comfort/feeding etc. He only dropped his 2am breastfeed about 9mths of age. I was sleep deprived for months and it was really hard at times. I co-sleep (which I highly recommend) and did what ever I could to get through. He is now 12mths sleeps from 8pm - 6am in his cot, always goings to sleep happy and I am so glad I didn't do control crying or ever not go to him when he needed me. He is very content and I think they are all just so different you just need to meet their needs as they arise. We still stay with him when he is going to sleep, either nursing him or holding his hand and it is one of my favourite times of the day.
Maybe you could try co-sleeping, I think that helped my little man to start sleep longer at night. He would just wake up and be re-assured I was there and go straight back to sleep. Sounds like you are doing a great job though - do whatever you think he needs and I am sure he will start sleeping 9 hours again eventually.

Hi KazzH, my little one was sleeping through quite early but at about 4 1/2 months started waking, usually twice a night. A few books i've read have said that night waking after 6months is rarely about hunger but more about comfort and habit. You say as soon as your little one starts to feed he's asleep so maybe he's forgotten how to self settle and is now relying on you. As I said I'm now going through the same thing so as soon as I can send my toddler to nanny's for a weekend i'm going to stop picking up and feeding and just pat him - i'm ready for a few disturbed nights but hopefully it will get him sleeping through again! Good luck

You say as soon as your little one starts to feed he's asleep so maybe he's forgotten how to self settle and is now relying on you.

My frustration is about to show now, so this is not a "go" at anyone........but how on earth can some book know whether or not my child needs feeding? And what is so wrong with wanting comfort and help to settle off to sleep; why is it that meeting their psychological needs doesn't seem to merit as much attention as their physical ones by the majority of "experts"? We are talking about babies, yes it is frustrating, yes it can be annoying and it sure can be damn exhausting but I signed up for sleep deprivation when I chose to become a parent and I certainly never expected my babies to sleep like adults do. And to top it all off, I suspect that night waking for feeding past 6 months is a hell of a lot more common than those "experts" would have you believe.

If I have discovered one thing that has saved the sanity in our house it is doing what needs doing to get back to sleep as soon as we can....if the is feeding that's what happens, if it's a cuddle at 2am that's what happens and you know what, when he was ready and decided that he didn't need the help any more he stopped waking. The best judge of what my baby needs is him, he knows when he feels hungry, not me or the clock or some "expert" that insists he only needs feeding every x number of hours. Babies and toddlers and children and adults wake at night for all sorts of reasons; because they are in pain, they're sick, too hot/cold, they are scared, hungry etc............it seems to be perfectly acceptable for us to get up at 2am and have a snack when we are hungry or get up to go to the toilet but not our babies.....does that sound crazy to anyone else here?

To answer the original question, DS1 was 11 months after doing controlled crying (which I will never do again), but closer to 13 months before he was consistently doing more than 5-6 hours at a stretch (which is classed as sleeping through anyway). DS2 was 7 months when he started doing 10+ hours, he did it for 3 weeks before he started waking and feeding again; when he was 13 months old, he went back to doing 10+ hours a night and most nights it now averages about 12............so once they start it doesn't mean it will continue like that forever more. We did nothing to "encourage" it other than tweak a couple of things in his bedtime routine which consisted of getting him to bed earlier, though the other night he was up and down all night but a cuddle sent him right back to sleep.

For anyone interested in ways to "encourage" longer sleeping at night and to loose the sleep associations you don't want I recommend the No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley; by far the best book I read and one of the few that doesn't advocate leaving them to CIO. Her website can be found here and might offer some tips.

You have to do what you feel is right for you and your family; if that is leaving them to CIO or doing controlled "comforting" then do it. If it is helping them to get off to sleep by feeding/rocking/singing whatever then do that. I personally feel that the "experts" have given parents very unrealistic expectations when it comes to how much sleep their children are liable to "need" and with what and how they actually get it.

I am now stepping down off my "soapbox" and quickly exiting through the back door. LOL

ds was around 8 months when he started to consistently sleep through the night. Every now and then he would wake himself up, mostly just because he had wedged himself up the other end of the cot and could not move any more or he was teething.

I can not acutally remember when he stopped requiring a feed during the night though. I think that occurred around the time i went back to work 4 days (so may be at 6 months??)

I think it varies. SOme sleep through right from the get go and some dont start until they are past 2 years.

Hi, your boy is very cute!! I'm wondering, maybe he could be teething? My daughter was sleeping through from about 7 weeks but started waking when she was 5 months old. I was so confused, I would just feed her cause I didn't know what else to do, and I was usually half asleep so I was a bit hazy. Then a few days later she got her first tooth. She went back to sleeping through 6pm - 6.30am, until the next tooth came. It only lasts a few nights, but instead of feeding her i give her nurofen and put her back to bed. She's 7 1/2 months old now, and I haven't had any dramas since.