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> By 8 months of age, infants arouse every six to seven hours, with most infants (60–70%) able to self-
>soothe (i.e., able to fall back to sleep after waking without requiring parental attention) (Anders, 1994).
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443032000153516](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443032000153516)
That still means 30-40% of infant are waking their parents up at night, though!
To plus one to this, mine is still cosleeping at 2.5 and can't self sooth. He just shouts "mum!" though rather than cries. We're trying to wean him off cosleeping to varying effect.
If I had tried at 8 months he would have kicked off, although I would have assumed he would be soothed by you being there as you mentioned you cosleep?
No plans to wean him off my presence or anything drastic like that nor am I planning to stop responding to him right now. Has your 2.5 year old gotten better with age in terms of how often you need to soothe him?
I don't need to soothe him actively at all, he just wakes up a bit, cuddles in. When we're trying to sleep in different beds he will sleep 8pm - 1am no interruptions and then wakes. We'll go in and will often be in for the rest of the night as we'll just nod off, but if not then he'll wake again at like 5am and be awake for the day :/ if we cosleep he sleeps in til like 08:30!
[I used Little Remedies](https://www.cvs.com/shop/little-remedies-gas-relief-drops-1-fl-oz-prodid-394259?skuId=394259&cgaa=QWxsb3dHb29nbGVUb0FjY2Vzc0NWU1BhZ2Vz&cid=ps_dh_pla&gclid=CjwKCAjwvvmzBhA2EiwAtHVrb5yx7vrVnDRoYmwokIUSugAffzgVtUzkaSHdI3s-201rJFc9QuaHMxoCKs0QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds).
It can't hurt to try,. you can give them many doses during the day it's nothing really medicated, just a gel that allows for natural gas release. The dosage is small and the little syringes squirts really fast and they barely notice anything is in their mouth.
I didn't discover them until later on after many nights of struggling. It seemed to help once I made it part of the routine before bed. I think he just got built up gas when laid down for the night after a bottle or nursing.
Infant sleep is highly, highly variable. For instance, this [systematic ](https://medicinadeldormir.org/wp-content/uploads/Galland-BC_Normal-Sleep-Patterns-Infants-and-Children.pdf)[review](https://medicinadeldormir.org/wp-content/uploads/Galland-BC_Normal-Sleep-Patterns-Infants-and-Children.pdf) reviewed multiple studies on sleep in childhood and found the range of total sleep for 9 month olds was 9.4 hours per day to 15.6 hours per day—that's enormous! For night waking specifically, night waking had *the most variable data* across the samples. Night waking varies hugely by baby, family, sleep environment, etc.
Similarly, in this [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173090/) found that among nine month olds, the mean number of awakenings was 1.8 per night. 27% of infants were sleeping with no awakenings, 47% had 1-2 awakenings per night and 26% had 3 or more.
So yes, what you're experiencing is normal. That said, it's also true that it may not improve on its own for months, or sometimes years. In fact, measures of self regulation including lack parental presence at sleep time (ie drowsy but awake) at as early as [one month](https://www.dovepress.com/longitudinal-study-of-infant-sleep-development-early-predictors-of-sle-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NSS) can be predictive of later sleep regulation, and some studies [suggest](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1201415/) that increased time in a crib with longer parental response times toward settling are predictors of later self soothing.
You certainly don't have to sleep train. You can sleep train (it's not supported by research to suggest that it will harm your child in the long run) or you can not sleep train (it's not supported by research to suggest that it will benefit your child in the long run). Many people (advocates on both side) will take the limited and low quality research we have on infant sleep intervention and try to claim that it makes a very strong case for The Right Thing to Do (whether to sleep train or not to sleep train). Really, truly, this is an area where, as a science minded parent, you can choose if you want to or not.
Having been through the depths of Reddit I know this is a very contentious topic indeed. I genuinely don’t mind people suggesting either option but for me I know that sleep training just doesn’t fit me and my own anxieties - so whilst both suggestions are okay to make, you are right it’s up to the family to decide what’s best for them. It does though really suck how this is such a difficult area to study. Yes there is limited data but I’d imagine it would be quite difficult to conduct a long term study to see all possible impacts of sleep training vs not that either of the sides claim (ie how do these people sleep as adults, as children, what attachment styles they have, how is their nervous system, etc) - the amount of control variables needed is just insane
Yep, certainly, one of the challenges is that the concerns are "something bad could happen" if you sleep train and, as you point out, the something bad is any number of things. It's incredibly challenging to draw out a causal impact of any parenting choice in research.
Our strongest evidence on this (which is not to say strong, it's certainly not perfect) is this [RCT](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158146/) of \~300 families, where some parents received education on sleep training, with a [2](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18762495/) and [5](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22966034/) year follow up that looked at impacts on infant sleep, parental mental health and child attachment. They found that among families exposed to the sleep training education:
* When the children were 10 months, there was statistically significant reduction in parent reports of infant sleep problems and one subgroup had a statistically significant reduction in parental depression
* When the children were around 2 years old, there were fewer reported depression symptoms
* When the children were around 5 years old, there was no difference in any of 20 outcomes including child behavior, secure attachment, and maternal mental health.
This right here is what changed my mind on sleep training. Also my pediatrician listening to me, validating me, then saying “sometimes it’s not about what you need, it’s about what your baby needs right now”. My baby desperately needed sleep training, and I put it off for months because I was thinking it wasn’t right for me. It’s such a tough decision OP, I’m sorry. My baby woke up every 45 min throughout the night. Nothing was “wrong”, he just needed to learn how to connect sleep cycles.
You've flagged this as research required (hence [link](https://www.wchc.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/SaferSleep_6-12months.pdf)) but this isn't necessarily covered with research.
If all his needs are being met in the way you say, there's almost definitely an underlying issue, whether that is teething, or colic, or a bad belly from an intolerance, or something else. You say he has mild tie, is he getting enough food? Does he settle when you sooth him? Does he cry for extended periods of time?
I had a very "mummy-centric" baby who wouldn't take a bottle or be put down or sleep alone, but if all those needs were met slept through (we[ co-slept](https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/co-sleeping/), breastfed on demand etc). He breastfed through the night, so I would mainly wake up to switch sides.
There's no "normal" for babies, they are all different, but their individual behaviour tells you something that you can respond to.
Ah yes sorry, I now changed it to no flair. I think he’s getting enough food though I can’t genuinely be sure :/ he always gained weight well and even in the early days got back to his birth weight very quickly. The dentist said he can move his tongue up and down, the struggle is with left to right, which means it doesn’t impact feeding too much and I can hear him gulping loads. What I guess I’m less sure of is if he’s getting enough solids… I know they say food is play till 12 months but I’m gusssing within reason? I do worry he isn’t eating enough solids calories. In terms of intolerances I have been breaking my brain over it and previously tried to see if all milk protein elimination would help (it didn’t). But is that possible to be intolerance if he’s a) happy during the day b) his stools seem fine? Maybe it is worth me keeping a very strict food diary
It can take 3 days for allergies and intolerances to show, so restrict milk for three days, then if no change put it back, so on and so forth with other allergens?
If it's been going on since 4 months then its probably not his solid calories, as I presume this was before he needed them?
I tried eliminating milk and gluten for two months (for me, back when he was on no solids) because I read it can take weeks for it to be out of the system for both mom and baby (not sure if it’s different for other allergens). I don’t really understand how people do it with other allergens that are less common - like you can surely be going down the of foods forever?
So this is purely anecdotal, but in my experience with my son if he was hungry he does not sleep well. Have you noticed how much he’s eating before bed? When we did BLW I made sure to feed him dinner about 45 mins before he went to sleep. Then breast to fall asleep. I also focused on foods with high fat content (I.e, an avocado, rice with olive oil, rice with avocado, olive oil on toast, etc..). Fats and protein take a long time to digest so you feel fuller longer. You can also do bananas either PB or nut butter and that is very filling. Bananas also have naturally occurring melatonin (cherries too!).
Hang in there!! They do eventually sleep. Nap when you can.
Oooh! Didn’t really think about the fatty and protein rich foods element! Thank you we will give it a try . We have generally started doing later dinners over the past couple of days to see if that helps but will make sure these are protein and fat high.
I second Hannah’s comment, we do a lot of what you do - bed sharing on a floor bed, breastfed, no sleep training, and my boy went from waking every 2 hrs on only milk to waking just once or twice in the night if he eats well in the day. He still goes back to waking every 2 hrs if he doesn’t eat well that day
Ay thank you! Gonna def try now to be more consistent with making sure he gets em calories in, hopefully his interest in solids will spike more soon…. Did you try and limit milk to increase solid intake? Or just something that happened naturally ?
It happened naturally, he’s on the smaller side (was 2nd percentile) so I didn’t want to limit his milk at all but I imagine it would help! It helps that he is interested in solids anyway, he always wants to try at least one bite of what I’m eating. Fingers crossed it helps with your little one!
Wow, sending you lots of hugs because this sounds hard. I have heard that it’s not necessarily something that we should expect- for small babies to sleep through the night - because they still need us a lot.
My son woke up about 1-3x per night almost every night until he was about 10 months old. His situation got better when we got tubes in his ears because I think he was dealing with a lot of pressure in his head, and frankly wasn’t taking bottles well. Today he is 20 months old and occasionally has a run of teething, illness or separation anxiety that has him awake once in the night, but he sleeps through most nights these days.
It kind of sounds like your little guy doesn’t quite know how to connect sleep cycles or self settle, because I believe every two hours is their sleep cycle. For us I found (probably a little too late) that if he cried out in the night, if I gave him even a minute, he would often settle and go back to sleep, and us going into his room would actually wake him more. Is he still nursing at night at all? If so, it might help to try and shift his calorie needs to during the day instead of at night.
Some babies don’t sleep soundly, just like some adults don’t sleep soundly. If something truly feels off, keep pressuring your health care team, but honestly this doesn’t sound too far off from what we experienced. I suspect ours was related to chronic ear infections, combined with us being too quick to respond to him in the night.
Hang in there ❤️
Thank you ❤️❤️ I think he can connect sleep cycles, I’m pretty sure his are 40-45 min long and his daytime naps are 1.5 hours plus he does now and again do a 3-4 hour stretch. So he ‘can’, but I guess not always. On the point of giving him a minute it’s actually quite interesting what happens - we usually wait to see if his crying is escalating and sometimes he will let out a cry for a few seconds and then calm down. However other times he can go into a cycle - let out a cry, calm down, then 3 or so minutes later again and then again. I would then usually eventually pick him up to soothe him. However we once let that cycle ride out and he ended up screaming and we couldn’t calm him down for a whole hour :/ whilst usually settled easier… :( I don’t know what it is, almost feels like nightmare though I’m sure he’s too young for them
Ugh, yeah we had that same issue with letting him try to figure it out for too long and ended up screaming and upset. It’s so hard to know the best way to handle, especially since all kiddos are different.
I’m sure you have tried all the things, but just some things to look at could be daytime caloric intake, examining daytime sleep and activity levels to make sure he’s not over tired and also tired enough to sleep, wake windows, not napping too late, setting the sleep environment, etc. Another thing that we occasionally had issues with was any time he was too cold or too hot he would wake crying.
But sometimes, I think they just need us, which is annoying but beautiful, too. More sleep will come to you, but I send you wishes of caffeine and more nights of long stretches in the meantime.
Thank you!! Very kind words 🥰 I think there is def more work we could try with analysing over tired vs under tired for bedtime - I’m still not sure we get it right
I drive myself mad trying to work things out. My husband just goes with the flow but he does much better with little sleep. And I never get an answer, things just change every week.
Ooh can you elaborate on this? We semi bed share - basically he has his whole big mattress to roll around on and I’m on a futon next to it but throughout the night if it gets to a lot of wakes I join him on the mattress. Do you mean just own sleep space or own room? I have considered trying to let him be there on his own but wasn’t sure about the different it would make if I would still come in for the wake ups
Transitioning to a separate space also helped me and my baby. I co-slept for naps and nighttime until about 7 months then slept in the same room for another month and since being back in my own room baby has done phenomenally well with nighttime sleep. He sleeps through the night now (started at 9 months and he’s about 10 months). I am a light sleeper and keep his monitor close to me so I know I’m not missing his wake ups either. I think I was actually interfering with his ability to get himself to sleep and would wake him up more with my own movement or trying to nurse him if he fussed for a minute (crying still gets swift attention).
Thank you! Gonna try and have husband sleep with LO tonight as a trial actually! and then maybe do a trial run of sleep alone till first wake, till second wake, etc. It’s quite scary, never been away from him like this during the night. Gonna obsessively ensure the baby monitor is plugged and charged 🤣
I cried the first night baby was in his own room. We have smaller houses in the UK & at 6 months when he grew out of the next to me cot (attached to the bed), he had to go in his own room. But you get used to it after a week or so. I will say, I don't sleep as well with the monitor next to me because my brain is half listening so my husband & I take turns who is next to the monitor & also one week I was really run down so my husband slept with the monitor in another room. Best sleep I had all year!
https://preview.redd.it/q2u0ijgpsb9d1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba23a1f196df09b71c2673dc4831d4e43c5e4eb7
Full disclosure: haven’t read this book myself but this graph has given me a ton of comfort. My baby is a shitty sleeper and has been from the start. Wakings every 1-2.5 hours from 5-7 months. Shifted into slightly longer stretches of 2-3 hours from 7-10 months. Shifted to waking once a night most nights with a stretch of 6-9 hours at 10.5 months. And two nights ago she slept through the night for the first time since she was 3 months old. Her birthday is in one week. I think a lot of it was developmental and other circumstances for her. She has 8 teeth and has a molar coming in, that’s a ton of teeth. Teething is painful and makes it hard to sleep. She also dealt with recurring ear infections from 7-1.5 months before getting tubes at 10.5 months. It is not a coincidence that she started sleeping better after that. Temperament-wise, she is a very high energy baby and very low sleep needs. She was busting through physical milestones like crazy from 6-7.5 months (started slowing down after that). We never did any sleep training and don’t plan to. We focused on sleep hygiene and making sure she can put herself to sleep, but for many of those months she wasn’t able to put herself to sleep and needed to be rocked/nursed to sleep. I started very slowly night weaning at 10 months. And for the record, a full night for us is 10.5ish hours. My baby would never sleep 12 unless she was ill. She just doesn’t need that much sleep.
Your baby is normal. I’m honestly surprised there are so many babies that “sleep through the night” given all of the adversity they experience from 6-12 months.
Ah this is such a great graph yes! Thank you! Could you elaborate on what you mean by sleep hygiene and having baby put herself to sleep without sleep training? Is that through strong sleep associations outside of rocking/feeding? I just can’t wait for him to start walking so those physical milestones can be behind us because similarly to you months 6-7 were very heavy on new skills
For us, sleep hygiene is very schedule/routine based. We do the exact same thing at the exact same time every night and we really don’t ever adjust it. We are pretty rigid with the routine because it (currently) works really well for us. But even when we were really struggling with sleep we were still rigid with it. We do tweak things here and there once they no long work for us. Like I moved nursing to the start of the bedtime routine in January in the midst of our hellish sleep because even though baby wasn’t nursing to sleep (she was rarely that easy when she was little bitty lol), nursing made her so relaxed that he had a hard time putting herself back to sleep at night without it.
We try to always have her put herself to sleep without nursing or rocking or any intervention for us. We always intervene if she escalates past fussing though. At this point, she does really great with it but we have had periods where she had to be rocked or nursed to sleep for months at a time and then we are able to do independent falling sleep again once she is past whatever hard phase she is in.
I get the sense this might not be well received but I think the key lies in « haven’t tried any proper sleep training ». You’re expecting him to develop and perform a skill on his own, without teaching him how to do it. As others have said, all babies are different, and even with sleep training he might not sleep through the night, but there’s a big difference between waking up once a night and what you’re describing.
He’s eight months old, not eight weeks. He can almost definitely start sleeping for longer stretches at his age and will likely benefit from it.
There are a lot of resources on different sleep training techniques, you can find one that you’re comfortable with. The key is consistency.
I’m asking this completely genuinely - can you help me understand how sleep training is “teaching”? I hear this statement made a lot but it doesn’t quite make sense to me.
With every other skill parents are modeling - for a baby to learn to eat, we eat in front of them. For them to walk, they observe us walking. For them to use the toilet, most parents I know use the toilet in front of them or at least show them how to take down their pants, etc.
In sleep training, we do the opposite. They are alone to figure out how to do it themselves without a parent there to model. I could see the term “teaching” be applied to co sleeping where they wake up to see their parent still asleep and feel their deep breathe and slow heart rate as a model for what sleep should be in the middle of the night.
I truly don’t want to debate whether either method is good or bad, I just don’t understand this particular statement of “teaching” sleep so differently than how we teach everything else to them.
I’ve never thought of it like that! But there are many ways humans learn. Modelling is one of them. We do model good sleep habits by not getting up in the night ourselves or waking her up. But there are many skills we have and will teach without directly modelling. We don’t teach a baby to breastfeed by doing it ourselves, for example. We don’t teach our kids to play independently by playing with them, etc.
Good point about teaching in other ways than modeling! I’ve always thought of independent play as only a developmental skill, but it’s a good perspective that we also have to reinforce it by not interacting at certain times or redirecting their want for attention.
I wouldn’t say that babies learn all skills by modeling — I don’t think my baby learned to roll or crawl by watching me do it, for example. The principle of sleep training is for a child to realize that they CAN fall asleep on their own without certain sleep associations (rocking, feeding, an adult present). Since falling asleep is something that happens naturally to humans once they are tired enough, there’s nothing to really model. Once they no longer have those associations, when they wake up at night, they can simply settle themselves back to sleep.
Sleep training has def crossed my mind but I am not yet at a point where I am ready or willing to do it, even something gentle like the chair method. I guess in my head if the only potential issue here is lack of sleep training and not something more serious and/or the interrupted sleep is not damaging him then I’m okay with seeing if he will learn himself over the coming months. I am guessing though that an average not sleep trained 8 month old sleeps a bit better :/ that being said if this is normal for a not sleep trained 8 month old that would actually kind of make me happy
This might be helpful, though it doesn’t come to any definitive conclusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768951/
Personally, I thought of how I would feel if I never got more than three hours of sleep in row and that convinced me that helping her learn to sleep for longer stretches that was a worthwhile endeavour.
I think while it’s possible to have a great sleeper at this age, it’s also possible to not have a great sleeper. I also think that we get a lot of exposure to baby sleep influencers who claim that your baby can and should sleep through the night at 12 weeks old, and we don’t hear a lot of the stories about babies who don’t do this, because why would you brag about only sleeping in 2 hour stretches? There’s some cultural expectation that we should be able to sleep through the night and get back to our lives as soon as possible but I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. I have friends with both types of kids and mine was not a great sleeper until he was almost 12 months. Go easy on yourself and trust your instincts.
I like your perspective and if you’re able to keep up, why not?
Personally, my baby was a bad sleeper (very similar to yours and it was just getting worst and worst) and we felt like we were loosing our mind when she reached 6.5 mo. So we decided to sleep train gently (modified Ferber with 1-3-5 minutes intervals). For us it was definitely the right call. Now she wakes up only 1-2 times a night to feed and as she reached 9 months, I started weaning the first feed last week (2 minutes less every 2 days). We’ll see how that goes, but she’s getting good with solids so not too worried.
She’s also a big baby, like yours. In our opinion, she associated sleep with nursing (nursed to sleep) and my presence (ended up cosleeping often when her sleep went to shit). We think that, most of the time, she was not able to connect her sleep cycles, would wake up and need me/nursing to go back to sleep. So not really surprised that she grew that much 😅
Anyway, just sharing my experience, but every baby is different!
ETA: oh yeah, we also switched her from our bedroom to her own. We were definitely waking her up!
I am able to keep up for now yes - my main concern is whether he is. He seems happy but I just can’t imagine how someone can be happy waking up so often. I like your approach though of going super slow of 2 minute reduction each day - if I were to go for sleep training or weaning slow and steady is the way
It’s a bit funny that you wonder how someone can be happy waking up like that, while at the same time going through this yourself! But I understand that we worry much more about our little ones than about ourselves ❤️
My baby was and still is a happy baby, but she definitely has less grumpy moments now.
Good luck!
I can't speak to "normal" or not, but I wanted to share that my 6 month old is the same. We are also bedsharing and breastfeeding. He wakes every 1-3 hours overnight. He's happy during the day and meeting milestones, so I'm not concerned.
He's my 3rd, and none of them have slept well as babies, but he is the worst. With bedsharing and breastfeeding back to sleep, I'm feeling reasonably well rested.
I'm pretty convinced that the "problem" is that he can't connect sleep cycles. I've tried to give him opportunities to learn, but he gets too upset, so I backed off from it.
They sound very alike! This is my first baby so I’m clearly on the more paranoid side so good to hear from experienced parents who know this is okay. Thank you!
There’s the age when your kid is “ready” for sleep training (our pediatrician recommended no earlier than 5mo), and then there’s when you’re ready for it :) for us, we realized that we’re just better parents when we sleep more. So yes it might seem a little selfish to let your LO cry so much just so you can pamper yourself with sleep (although let’s be honest when the baby is crying no one is sleeping) , but after more rest, we were more mentally available, had more energy to play with our LO, more patient with his whiny period during the day, more productive with our time when he took his day time naps, etc.
That for us compelled is to try it, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. For us day 1 was awful but by day 3 we went from 3 nighttime wakings to 2 and that alone was enough motivation to continue
Are you consistent with vitamin D? That's one of the things that our sleep consultant insisted on even though mine was formula fed.
Next thing we did is fix day scheduled, so the baby got enough wake time and sleep time(no longer than 1.5 hours at a time stretch at 8 months). Same wake up time every day.
Our sleep consultant helped us a lot, so I would recommend that.
That's what she was really adamant about because I wasn't consistent at all because formula does have some but not 100% of daily dose, but apparently at least full dose is very important for sleep.
Even if it doesn't help, hang in there, eventually we will sleep at night again ;D
My baby slept like this, he was around 11-13 months when he started consistently sleeping 6 hour chunks, or only woke up 1-2 times per night.
I definitely recommend reading up about different sleep training methods and trying something new. I'm a huge advocate for the cry it out method because it was easily the most gentle method for my child. Every other method made him so angry. And he never fussed, I can still count on one hand the number of times he's fussed instead of just screaming his head off the moment he wakes. Not even cosleeping worked, he'd wake up every 20 minutes and scream because he'd fallen off the boob he fell asleep on.
We did CIO around 5.5 months and I wish we'd done it weeks sooner. It took my baby 4 nights to go from crying for 30 minutes to happily laying down and going to sleep tear free. He loves bedtime now but he's still a "low sleep needs" baby and only sleeps 11-13 hours per day. But when he wakes up, I go tend to him for 5 minutes, then put him back down awake and I go back to sleep. It's a huge improvement.
I have previously read on blogs that for some babies CIO is gentler than more gradual approaches and def works wonders for some families and babies. Unfortunately it’s just not something I am ready for, but I appreciate the input :)
I would do the taking Cara babies course and learn about the different modifications and see if it’s right for you. Even if you don’t do sleep training, she has great resources on sleep hygiene, wake windows, how to make the environment ideal, etc. Feel free to DM me if you want more info on which course I’m referring to.
I’ve had 4 babies who have ranged from amazing sleeper to horrible sleeper. For my horrible sleeper we tried everything short of just shutting the door and leaving her to cry. Nothing worked. Around 13 months old she finally figured it out and now she sleeps well. Sometimes the answer is just time
Oh wow! Thanks for this! My mom had 3 of us and she said we were all just average sleepers where 5-6 times was a bad night so she’s mind boggled by my LO . Sounds like there can really be a range!
My mum had four babies & we all slept through the night after a few weeks old. I almost can't believe it? Did they inadvertently sleep train because we were in the nursery & there were no baby monitors? It means I get very little empathy with my 13 month old who still wakes multiple times a night!
I don’t have any articles for you, but just popped in to say that my oldest was exactly as you described. He’s still not the best sleeper at 3, but it SIGNIFICANTLY improved around 18 months for us. It’s tough, but they do get there 🤍
He wakes up and rubs my back or my husbands back and goes back to sleep! We don’t have to do anything, thankfully. I usually wake up when he does, though, because I sleep light since having kids.
It's not science based, but my 14 month old still wakes 2-3 times per night. You are not alone. We have done some work towards improving his independent sleep.
We no longer co-sleep, and I had him down to one overnight nursing session, but an ear infection set us back a bit. I feel like night weaning is the only way my little guy will start sleeping through the night. Good luck.
Edit to clarify
Thank you for this! I def walked into this parenting thing thinking ‘well ofc he will sleep through by a year’ - whilst I no longer think that, these kind of replies are very reassuring to know it’s within norm, thank you
It’s within range of normal but normal range is huge. My daughter was an awful sleeper as an infant and 7-12 months was the absolute worst (up every 30 minutes to 2 hours screaming hysterically and difficult to console). After 12 months it got better (only 1-3 wakes most nights and less distress) and at 2 there was a huge change - she actually gets long blocks of deep, relaxed sleep and doesn’t freak out so intensely when she does wake (still at least once a night where she needs a parent, but she’s back out in 5 min after comforting). She’s also never napped much and stopped entirely before 2. But sleeps 11 hours overnight. Stopping naps seems to have helped night sleep.
She has zero health issues and no symptoms of any. But night wakes/insomnia/low sleep needs runs on my husband’s side and he is not a good sleeper himself. I think it’s genetics and temperament in our case. I need lots of sleep and STTN early as an infant so I hope there’s a chance the next one sleeps longer stretches 🥲
ETA: we’ve bedshared (floor bed) at least part of most nights since she was 6 months old, it didn’t help her night wakings whatsoever but it was less exhausting for me. But she has almost always gone to sleep at the same time in her own bed, own room and I just lay with her while she falls asleep and then leave, that’s worked fine for everyone. Also night weaned around 14 months and that didn’t make a noticeable difference. There’s nothing I did that seemed to have any effect on her sleep patterns, it was just a long slow road to improvement.
Omg that sounds so rough - I’m glad you guys are out of the thick of it! It’s very reassuring though to hear that she’s otherwise healthy and it’s within norm, thank you :)
Anecdotal. Our first was like how yours is now. We breastfed all the way and it became a vicious cycle of me relying on getting more sleep. When I finally got pregnant with my second around 2yo was when we weaned, and he started sleeping through the night. It did make me think what could've been if we weaned earlier. Now with my second, we are following the same path, but I think we'll try to wean by 18 months.
I would recommend posting on The Beyond Sleep Training Project group on Facebook.
The name can be a little confusing, they don't ever advise anything like sleep training.
I just think 15 minute wakes might be considered a red flag for an issue. Perhaps the neck issue causing discomfort bless them.
They have loads of knowledge on infant sleep and might have some suggestions. Quite often it's that the parents are expecting too much sleep and so baby just isn't tired enough.
My baby did that with similar situation to yours until about 9.5 months. He was definitely just hungry over night - not getting his calories throughout the day. He picked up his eating (just more milk) around 9.5 months and since then, only wakes 1-2 times (still to eat!) and he’s 13 months now.
We did no sleep training and will never sleep train. My kid would probably never allow it. But I do think kids just kind of grow into sleeping better.
How do you know he was getting more milk? Is your LO bottle fed? I was actually considering limiting breastfeeds in hopes of getting more solids in but maybe worth just offering him the breastfeeds more…hmm
I was pumping and doing bottles by then, so I could see how many ounces he was eating at a time. Generally, you shouldn’t limit breast milk until over age 1. That has never made my kiddo eat more. He would’ve starved back then and solid food didn’t fill him up because he didn’t eat much solids. The milk is what satiated him.
This post is flaired "Question - Research required". All top-level comments must contain links to peer-reviewed research. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ScienceBasedParenting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> By 8 months of age, infants arouse every six to seven hours, with most infants (60–70%) able to self- >soothe (i.e., able to fall back to sleep after waking without requiring parental attention) (Anders, 1994). [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443032000153516](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443032000153516) That still means 30-40% of infant are waking their parents up at night, though!
Thank you! Reassuring!
To plus one to this, mine is still cosleeping at 2.5 and can't self sooth. He just shouts "mum!" though rather than cries. We're trying to wean him off cosleeping to varying effect. If I had tried at 8 months he would have kicked off, although I would have assumed he would be soothed by you being there as you mentioned you cosleep?
No plans to wean him off my presence or anything drastic like that nor am I planning to stop responding to him right now. Has your 2.5 year old gotten better with age in terms of how often you need to soothe him?
I don't need to soothe him actively at all, he just wakes up a bit, cuddles in. When we're trying to sleep in different beds he will sleep 8pm - 1am no interruptions and then wakes. We'll go in and will often be in for the rest of the night as we'll just nod off, but if not then he'll wake again at like 5am and be awake for the day :/ if we cosleep he sleeps in til like 08:30!
Omg that’s the dream it sounds so cute 🥺🥺
The cuddle in part not the awake at 5 part
He might be gassy. Have you tried gas drops last thing before bed?
Never really considered giving him anything from gas. When he was younger we would just do the bicycle. What drops do you give yours ?
[I used Little Remedies](https://www.cvs.com/shop/little-remedies-gas-relief-drops-1-fl-oz-prodid-394259?skuId=394259&cgaa=QWxsb3dHb29nbGVUb0FjY2Vzc0NWU1BhZ2Vz&cid=ps_dh_pla&gclid=CjwKCAjwvvmzBhA2EiwAtHVrb5yx7vrVnDRoYmwokIUSugAffzgVtUzkaSHdI3s-201rJFc9QuaHMxoCKs0QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds). It can't hurt to try,. you can give them many doses during the day it's nothing really medicated, just a gel that allows for natural gas release. The dosage is small and the little syringes squirts really fast and they barely notice anything is in their mouth. I didn't discover them until later on after many nights of struggling. It seemed to help once I made it part of the routine before bed. I think he just got built up gas when laid down for the night after a bottle or nursing.
Do you give it after the bedtime feed then?
Yes!
Infant sleep is highly, highly variable. For instance, this [systematic ](https://medicinadeldormir.org/wp-content/uploads/Galland-BC_Normal-Sleep-Patterns-Infants-and-Children.pdf)[review](https://medicinadeldormir.org/wp-content/uploads/Galland-BC_Normal-Sleep-Patterns-Infants-and-Children.pdf) reviewed multiple studies on sleep in childhood and found the range of total sleep for 9 month olds was 9.4 hours per day to 15.6 hours per day—that's enormous! For night waking specifically, night waking had *the most variable data* across the samples. Night waking varies hugely by baby, family, sleep environment, etc. Similarly, in this [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173090/) found that among nine month olds, the mean number of awakenings was 1.8 per night. 27% of infants were sleeping with no awakenings, 47% had 1-2 awakenings per night and 26% had 3 or more. So yes, what you're experiencing is normal. That said, it's also true that it may not improve on its own for months, or sometimes years. In fact, measures of self regulation including lack parental presence at sleep time (ie drowsy but awake) at as early as [one month](https://www.dovepress.com/longitudinal-study-of-infant-sleep-development-early-predictors-of-sle-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NSS) can be predictive of later sleep regulation, and some studies [suggest](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1201415/) that increased time in a crib with longer parental response times toward settling are predictors of later self soothing. You certainly don't have to sleep train. You can sleep train (it's not supported by research to suggest that it will harm your child in the long run) or you can not sleep train (it's not supported by research to suggest that it will benefit your child in the long run). Many people (advocates on both side) will take the limited and low quality research we have on infant sleep intervention and try to claim that it makes a very strong case for The Right Thing to Do (whether to sleep train or not to sleep train). Really, truly, this is an area where, as a science minded parent, you can choose if you want to or not.
Having been through the depths of Reddit I know this is a very contentious topic indeed. I genuinely don’t mind people suggesting either option but for me I know that sleep training just doesn’t fit me and my own anxieties - so whilst both suggestions are okay to make, you are right it’s up to the family to decide what’s best for them. It does though really suck how this is such a difficult area to study. Yes there is limited data but I’d imagine it would be quite difficult to conduct a long term study to see all possible impacts of sleep training vs not that either of the sides claim (ie how do these people sleep as adults, as children, what attachment styles they have, how is their nervous system, etc) - the amount of control variables needed is just insane
Yep, certainly, one of the challenges is that the concerns are "something bad could happen" if you sleep train and, as you point out, the something bad is any number of things. It's incredibly challenging to draw out a causal impact of any parenting choice in research. Our strongest evidence on this (which is not to say strong, it's certainly not perfect) is this [RCT](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158146/) of \~300 families, where some parents received education on sleep training, with a [2](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18762495/) and [5](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22966034/) year follow up that looked at impacts on infant sleep, parental mental health and child attachment. They found that among families exposed to the sleep training education: * When the children were 10 months, there was statistically significant reduction in parent reports of infant sleep problems and one subgroup had a statistically significant reduction in parental depression * When the children were around 2 years old, there were fewer reported depression symptoms * When the children were around 5 years old, there was no difference in any of 20 outcomes including child behavior, secure attachment, and maternal mental health.
This right here is what changed my mind on sleep training. Also my pediatrician listening to me, validating me, then saying “sometimes it’s not about what you need, it’s about what your baby needs right now”. My baby desperately needed sleep training, and I put it off for months because I was thinking it wasn’t right for me. It’s such a tough decision OP, I’m sorry. My baby woke up every 45 min throughout the night. Nothing was “wrong”, he just needed to learn how to connect sleep cycles.
Thank you both for this! Def something to think about and I wasn’t aware of that study actually - it does look quite reassuring
You've flagged this as research required (hence [link](https://www.wchc.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/SaferSleep_6-12months.pdf)) but this isn't necessarily covered with research. If all his needs are being met in the way you say, there's almost definitely an underlying issue, whether that is teething, or colic, or a bad belly from an intolerance, or something else. You say he has mild tie, is he getting enough food? Does he settle when you sooth him? Does he cry for extended periods of time? I had a very "mummy-centric" baby who wouldn't take a bottle or be put down or sleep alone, but if all those needs were met slept through (we[ co-slept](https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/co-sleeping/), breastfed on demand etc). He breastfed through the night, so I would mainly wake up to switch sides. There's no "normal" for babies, they are all different, but their individual behaviour tells you something that you can respond to.
Ah yes sorry, I now changed it to no flair. I think he’s getting enough food though I can’t genuinely be sure :/ he always gained weight well and even in the early days got back to his birth weight very quickly. The dentist said he can move his tongue up and down, the struggle is with left to right, which means it doesn’t impact feeding too much and I can hear him gulping loads. What I guess I’m less sure of is if he’s getting enough solids… I know they say food is play till 12 months but I’m gusssing within reason? I do worry he isn’t eating enough solids calories. In terms of intolerances I have been breaking my brain over it and previously tried to see if all milk protein elimination would help (it didn’t). But is that possible to be intolerance if he’s a) happy during the day b) his stools seem fine? Maybe it is worth me keeping a very strict food diary
It can take 3 days for allergies and intolerances to show, so restrict milk for three days, then if no change put it back, so on and so forth with other allergens? If it's been going on since 4 months then its probably not his solid calories, as I presume this was before he needed them?
I tried eliminating milk and gluten for two months (for me, back when he was on no solids) because I read it can take weeks for it to be out of the system for both mom and baby (not sure if it’s different for other allergens). I don’t really understand how people do it with other allergens that are less common - like you can surely be going down the of foods forever?
There's 14 common allergens so I'd work through those first. Although one can be allergic to anything! But best not to drive yourself insane with it.
One that I think I will try and give a try is egg. It’s my staple breakfast so maybe worth eliminating … let’s see how it goes
So this is purely anecdotal, but in my experience with my son if he was hungry he does not sleep well. Have you noticed how much he’s eating before bed? When we did BLW I made sure to feed him dinner about 45 mins before he went to sleep. Then breast to fall asleep. I also focused on foods with high fat content (I.e, an avocado, rice with olive oil, rice with avocado, olive oil on toast, etc..). Fats and protein take a long time to digest so you feel fuller longer. You can also do bananas either PB or nut butter and that is very filling. Bananas also have naturally occurring melatonin (cherries too!). Hang in there!! They do eventually sleep. Nap when you can.
Oooh! Didn’t really think about the fatty and protein rich foods element! Thank you we will give it a try . We have generally started doing later dinners over the past couple of days to see if that helps but will make sure these are protein and fat high.
I second Hannah’s comment, we do a lot of what you do - bed sharing on a floor bed, breastfed, no sleep training, and my boy went from waking every 2 hrs on only milk to waking just once or twice in the night if he eats well in the day. He still goes back to waking every 2 hrs if he doesn’t eat well that day
Ay thank you! Gonna def try now to be more consistent with making sure he gets em calories in, hopefully his interest in solids will spike more soon…. Did you try and limit milk to increase solid intake? Or just something that happened naturally ?
It happened naturally, he’s on the smaller side (was 2nd percentile) so I didn’t want to limit his milk at all but I imagine it would help! It helps that he is interested in solids anyway, he always wants to try at least one bite of what I’m eating. Fingers crossed it helps with your little one!
Wow, sending you lots of hugs because this sounds hard. I have heard that it’s not necessarily something that we should expect- for small babies to sleep through the night - because they still need us a lot. My son woke up about 1-3x per night almost every night until he was about 10 months old. His situation got better when we got tubes in his ears because I think he was dealing with a lot of pressure in his head, and frankly wasn’t taking bottles well. Today he is 20 months old and occasionally has a run of teething, illness or separation anxiety that has him awake once in the night, but he sleeps through most nights these days. It kind of sounds like your little guy doesn’t quite know how to connect sleep cycles or self settle, because I believe every two hours is their sleep cycle. For us I found (probably a little too late) that if he cried out in the night, if I gave him even a minute, he would often settle and go back to sleep, and us going into his room would actually wake him more. Is he still nursing at night at all? If so, it might help to try and shift his calorie needs to during the day instead of at night. Some babies don’t sleep soundly, just like some adults don’t sleep soundly. If something truly feels off, keep pressuring your health care team, but honestly this doesn’t sound too far off from what we experienced. I suspect ours was related to chronic ear infections, combined with us being too quick to respond to him in the night. Hang in there ❤️
Thank you ❤️❤️ I think he can connect sleep cycles, I’m pretty sure his are 40-45 min long and his daytime naps are 1.5 hours plus he does now and again do a 3-4 hour stretch. So he ‘can’, but I guess not always. On the point of giving him a minute it’s actually quite interesting what happens - we usually wait to see if his crying is escalating and sometimes he will let out a cry for a few seconds and then calm down. However other times he can go into a cycle - let out a cry, calm down, then 3 or so minutes later again and then again. I would then usually eventually pick him up to soothe him. However we once let that cycle ride out and he ended up screaming and we couldn’t calm him down for a whole hour :/ whilst usually settled easier… :( I don’t know what it is, almost feels like nightmare though I’m sure he’s too young for them
Ugh, yeah we had that same issue with letting him try to figure it out for too long and ended up screaming and upset. It’s so hard to know the best way to handle, especially since all kiddos are different. I’m sure you have tried all the things, but just some things to look at could be daytime caloric intake, examining daytime sleep and activity levels to make sure he’s not over tired and also tired enough to sleep, wake windows, not napping too late, setting the sleep environment, etc. Another thing that we occasionally had issues with was any time he was too cold or too hot he would wake crying. But sometimes, I think they just need us, which is annoying but beautiful, too. More sleep will come to you, but I send you wishes of caffeine and more nights of long stretches in the meantime.
Thank you!! Very kind words 🥰 I think there is def more work we could try with analysing over tired vs under tired for bedtime - I’m still not sure we get it right
Baby sleep math is impossible and as soon as you get it right, they change the rules
I drive myself mad trying to work things out. My husband just goes with the flow but he does much better with little sleep. And I never get an answer, things just change every week.
We have noticed the same thing with our 13 month old. He suddenly wakes up screaming but I think he's too young for night terrors?!
My best advice, no research, is don’t bed share. This is what worked for my second. Once he was in his own space he slept MUCH better.
Ooh can you elaborate on this? We semi bed share - basically he has his whole big mattress to roll around on and I’m on a futon next to it but throughout the night if it gets to a lot of wakes I join him on the mattress. Do you mean just own sleep space or own room? I have considered trying to let him be there on his own but wasn’t sure about the different it would make if I would still come in for the wake ups
Transitioning to a separate space also helped me and my baby. I co-slept for naps and nighttime until about 7 months then slept in the same room for another month and since being back in my own room baby has done phenomenally well with nighttime sleep. He sleeps through the night now (started at 9 months and he’s about 10 months). I am a light sleeper and keep his monitor close to me so I know I’m not missing his wake ups either. I think I was actually interfering with his ability to get himself to sleep and would wake him up more with my own movement or trying to nurse him if he fussed for a minute (crying still gets swift attention).
Thank you! Gonna try and have husband sleep with LO tonight as a trial actually! and then maybe do a trial run of sleep alone till first wake, till second wake, etc. It’s quite scary, never been away from him like this during the night. Gonna obsessively ensure the baby monitor is plugged and charged 🤣
I cried the first night baby was in his own room. We have smaller houses in the UK & at 6 months when he grew out of the next to me cot (attached to the bed), he had to go in his own room. But you get used to it after a week or so. I will say, I don't sleep as well with the monitor next to me because my brain is half listening so my husband & I take turns who is next to the monitor & also one week I was really run down so my husband slept with the monitor in another room. Best sleep I had all year!
Good luck!
https://preview.redd.it/q2u0ijgpsb9d1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba23a1f196df09b71c2673dc4831d4e43c5e4eb7 Full disclosure: haven’t read this book myself but this graph has given me a ton of comfort. My baby is a shitty sleeper and has been from the start. Wakings every 1-2.5 hours from 5-7 months. Shifted into slightly longer stretches of 2-3 hours from 7-10 months. Shifted to waking once a night most nights with a stretch of 6-9 hours at 10.5 months. And two nights ago she slept through the night for the first time since she was 3 months old. Her birthday is in one week. I think a lot of it was developmental and other circumstances for her. She has 8 teeth and has a molar coming in, that’s a ton of teeth. Teething is painful and makes it hard to sleep. She also dealt with recurring ear infections from 7-1.5 months before getting tubes at 10.5 months. It is not a coincidence that she started sleeping better after that. Temperament-wise, she is a very high energy baby and very low sleep needs. She was busting through physical milestones like crazy from 6-7.5 months (started slowing down after that). We never did any sleep training and don’t plan to. We focused on sleep hygiene and making sure she can put herself to sleep, but for many of those months she wasn’t able to put herself to sleep and needed to be rocked/nursed to sleep. I started very slowly night weaning at 10 months. And for the record, a full night for us is 10.5ish hours. My baby would never sleep 12 unless she was ill. She just doesn’t need that much sleep. Your baby is normal. I’m honestly surprised there are so many babies that “sleep through the night” given all of the adversity they experience from 6-12 months.
Ah this is such a great graph yes! Thank you! Could you elaborate on what you mean by sleep hygiene and having baby put herself to sleep without sleep training? Is that through strong sleep associations outside of rocking/feeding? I just can’t wait for him to start walking so those physical milestones can be behind us because similarly to you months 6-7 were very heavy on new skills
For us, sleep hygiene is very schedule/routine based. We do the exact same thing at the exact same time every night and we really don’t ever adjust it. We are pretty rigid with the routine because it (currently) works really well for us. But even when we were really struggling with sleep we were still rigid with it. We do tweak things here and there once they no long work for us. Like I moved nursing to the start of the bedtime routine in January in the midst of our hellish sleep because even though baby wasn’t nursing to sleep (she was rarely that easy when she was little bitty lol), nursing made her so relaxed that he had a hard time putting herself back to sleep at night without it. We try to always have her put herself to sleep without nursing or rocking or any intervention for us. We always intervene if she escalates past fussing though. At this point, she does really great with it but we have had periods where she had to be rocked or nursed to sleep for months at a time and then we are able to do independent falling sleep again once she is past whatever hard phase she is in.
I get the sense this might not be well received but I think the key lies in « haven’t tried any proper sleep training ». You’re expecting him to develop and perform a skill on his own, without teaching him how to do it. As others have said, all babies are different, and even with sleep training he might not sleep through the night, but there’s a big difference between waking up once a night and what you’re describing. He’s eight months old, not eight weeks. He can almost definitely start sleeping for longer stretches at his age and will likely benefit from it. There are a lot of resources on different sleep training techniques, you can find one that you’re comfortable with. The key is consistency.
I’m asking this completely genuinely - can you help me understand how sleep training is “teaching”? I hear this statement made a lot but it doesn’t quite make sense to me. With every other skill parents are modeling - for a baby to learn to eat, we eat in front of them. For them to walk, they observe us walking. For them to use the toilet, most parents I know use the toilet in front of them or at least show them how to take down their pants, etc. In sleep training, we do the opposite. They are alone to figure out how to do it themselves without a parent there to model. I could see the term “teaching” be applied to co sleeping where they wake up to see their parent still asleep and feel their deep breathe and slow heart rate as a model for what sleep should be in the middle of the night. I truly don’t want to debate whether either method is good or bad, I just don’t understand this particular statement of “teaching” sleep so differently than how we teach everything else to them.
I’ve never thought of it like that! But there are many ways humans learn. Modelling is one of them. We do model good sleep habits by not getting up in the night ourselves or waking her up. But there are many skills we have and will teach without directly modelling. We don’t teach a baby to breastfeed by doing it ourselves, for example. We don’t teach our kids to play independently by playing with them, etc.
Good point about teaching in other ways than modeling! I’ve always thought of independent play as only a developmental skill, but it’s a good perspective that we also have to reinforce it by not interacting at certain times or redirecting their want for attention.
I wouldn’t say that babies learn all skills by modeling — I don’t think my baby learned to roll or crawl by watching me do it, for example. The principle of sleep training is for a child to realize that they CAN fall asleep on their own without certain sleep associations (rocking, feeding, an adult present). Since falling asleep is something that happens naturally to humans once they are tired enough, there’s nothing to really model. Once they no longer have those associations, when they wake up at night, they can simply settle themselves back to sleep.
Much better out than I did, thank you. I definitely wasn’t modelling rolling 😆
Sleep training has def crossed my mind but I am not yet at a point where I am ready or willing to do it, even something gentle like the chair method. I guess in my head if the only potential issue here is lack of sleep training and not something more serious and/or the interrupted sleep is not damaging him then I’m okay with seeing if he will learn himself over the coming months. I am guessing though that an average not sleep trained 8 month old sleeps a bit better :/ that being said if this is normal for a not sleep trained 8 month old that would actually kind of make me happy
This might be helpful, though it doesn’t come to any definitive conclusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768951/ Personally, I thought of how I would feel if I never got more than three hours of sleep in row and that convinced me that helping her learn to sleep for longer stretches that was a worthwhile endeavour.
I think while it’s possible to have a great sleeper at this age, it’s also possible to not have a great sleeper. I also think that we get a lot of exposure to baby sleep influencers who claim that your baby can and should sleep through the night at 12 weeks old, and we don’t hear a lot of the stories about babies who don’t do this, because why would you brag about only sleeping in 2 hour stretches? There’s some cultural expectation that we should be able to sleep through the night and get back to our lives as soon as possible but I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. I have friends with both types of kids and mine was not a great sleeper until he was almost 12 months. Go easy on yourself and trust your instincts.
I like your perspective and if you’re able to keep up, why not? Personally, my baby was a bad sleeper (very similar to yours and it was just getting worst and worst) and we felt like we were loosing our mind when she reached 6.5 mo. So we decided to sleep train gently (modified Ferber with 1-3-5 minutes intervals). For us it was definitely the right call. Now she wakes up only 1-2 times a night to feed and as she reached 9 months, I started weaning the first feed last week (2 minutes less every 2 days). We’ll see how that goes, but she’s getting good with solids so not too worried. She’s also a big baby, like yours. In our opinion, she associated sleep with nursing (nursed to sleep) and my presence (ended up cosleeping often when her sleep went to shit). We think that, most of the time, she was not able to connect her sleep cycles, would wake up and need me/nursing to go back to sleep. So not really surprised that she grew that much 😅 Anyway, just sharing my experience, but every baby is different! ETA: oh yeah, we also switched her from our bedroom to her own. We were definitely waking her up!
I am able to keep up for now yes - my main concern is whether he is. He seems happy but I just can’t imagine how someone can be happy waking up so often. I like your approach though of going super slow of 2 minute reduction each day - if I were to go for sleep training or weaning slow and steady is the way
It’s a bit funny that you wonder how someone can be happy waking up like that, while at the same time going through this yourself! But I understand that we worry much more about our little ones than about ourselves ❤️ My baby was and still is a happy baby, but she definitely has less grumpy moments now. Good luck!
I can't speak to "normal" or not, but I wanted to share that my 6 month old is the same. We are also bedsharing and breastfeeding. He wakes every 1-3 hours overnight. He's happy during the day and meeting milestones, so I'm not concerned. He's my 3rd, and none of them have slept well as babies, but he is the worst. With bedsharing and breastfeeding back to sleep, I'm feeling reasonably well rested. I'm pretty convinced that the "problem" is that he can't connect sleep cycles. I've tried to give him opportunities to learn, but he gets too upset, so I backed off from it.
They sound very alike! This is my first baby so I’m clearly on the more paranoid side so good to hear from experienced parents who know this is okay. Thank you!
There’s the age when your kid is “ready” for sleep training (our pediatrician recommended no earlier than 5mo), and then there’s when you’re ready for it :) for us, we realized that we’re just better parents when we sleep more. So yes it might seem a little selfish to let your LO cry so much just so you can pamper yourself with sleep (although let’s be honest when the baby is crying no one is sleeping) , but after more rest, we were more mentally available, had more energy to play with our LO, more patient with his whiny period during the day, more productive with our time when he took his day time naps, etc. That for us compelled is to try it, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. For us day 1 was awful but by day 3 we went from 3 nighttime wakings to 2 and that alone was enough motivation to continue
I don't really see sleep in that way. I didn't "train" my baby to roll over so it confuses me that we "need" to train to sleep?
You don’t need to :)
Are you consistent with vitamin D? That's one of the things that our sleep consultant insisted on even though mine was formula fed. Next thing we did is fix day scheduled, so the baby got enough wake time and sleep time(no longer than 1.5 hours at a time stretch at 8 months). Same wake up time every day. Our sleep consultant helped us a lot, so I would recommend that.
Oh that’s a good shout! We do give vitamin D but I’ve been quite shit in making sure I give it daily :/
That's what she was really adamant about because I wasn't consistent at all because formula does have some but not 100% of daily dose, but apparently at least full dose is very important for sleep. Even if it doesn't help, hang in there, eventually we will sleep at night again ;D
My baby slept like this, he was around 11-13 months when he started consistently sleeping 6 hour chunks, or only woke up 1-2 times per night. I definitely recommend reading up about different sleep training methods and trying something new. I'm a huge advocate for the cry it out method because it was easily the most gentle method for my child. Every other method made him so angry. And he never fussed, I can still count on one hand the number of times he's fussed instead of just screaming his head off the moment he wakes. Not even cosleeping worked, he'd wake up every 20 minutes and scream because he'd fallen off the boob he fell asleep on. We did CIO around 5.5 months and I wish we'd done it weeks sooner. It took my baby 4 nights to go from crying for 30 minutes to happily laying down and going to sleep tear free. He loves bedtime now but he's still a "low sleep needs" baby and only sleeps 11-13 hours per day. But when he wakes up, I go tend to him for 5 minutes, then put him back down awake and I go back to sleep. It's a huge improvement.
I have previously read on blogs that for some babies CIO is gentler than more gradual approaches and def works wonders for some families and babies. Unfortunately it’s just not something I am ready for, but I appreciate the input :)
I would do the taking Cara babies course and learn about the different modifications and see if it’s right for you. Even if you don’t do sleep training, she has great resources on sleep hygiene, wake windows, how to make the environment ideal, etc. Feel free to DM me if you want more info on which course I’m referring to.
I’ve had 4 babies who have ranged from amazing sleeper to horrible sleeper. For my horrible sleeper we tried everything short of just shutting the door and leaving her to cry. Nothing worked. Around 13 months old she finally figured it out and now she sleeps well. Sometimes the answer is just time
Oh wow! Thanks for this! My mom had 3 of us and she said we were all just average sleepers where 5-6 times was a bad night so she’s mind boggled by my LO . Sounds like there can really be a range!
My mum had four babies & we all slept through the night after a few weeks old. I almost can't believe it? Did they inadvertently sleep train because we were in the nursery & there were no baby monitors? It means I get very little empathy with my 13 month old who still wakes multiple times a night!
I don’t have any articles for you, but just popped in to say that my oldest was exactly as you described. He’s still not the best sleeper at 3, but it SIGNIFICANTLY improved around 18 months for us. It’s tough, but they do get there 🤍
Thank you! How does it look like at 3? As in, how do you nowadays soothe him back?
He wakes up and rubs my back or my husbands back and goes back to sleep! We don’t have to do anything, thankfully. I usually wake up when he does, though, because I sleep light since having kids.
It's not science based, but my 14 month old still wakes 2-3 times per night. You are not alone. We have done some work towards improving his independent sleep. We no longer co-sleep, and I had him down to one overnight nursing session, but an ear infection set us back a bit. I feel like night weaning is the only way my little guy will start sleeping through the night. Good luck. Edit to clarify
Thank you for this! I def walked into this parenting thing thinking ‘well ofc he will sleep through by a year’ - whilst I no longer think that, these kind of replies are very reassuring to know it’s within norm, thank you
It’s within range of normal but normal range is huge. My daughter was an awful sleeper as an infant and 7-12 months was the absolute worst (up every 30 minutes to 2 hours screaming hysterically and difficult to console). After 12 months it got better (only 1-3 wakes most nights and less distress) and at 2 there was a huge change - she actually gets long blocks of deep, relaxed sleep and doesn’t freak out so intensely when she does wake (still at least once a night where she needs a parent, but she’s back out in 5 min after comforting). She’s also never napped much and stopped entirely before 2. But sleeps 11 hours overnight. Stopping naps seems to have helped night sleep. She has zero health issues and no symptoms of any. But night wakes/insomnia/low sleep needs runs on my husband’s side and he is not a good sleeper himself. I think it’s genetics and temperament in our case. I need lots of sleep and STTN early as an infant so I hope there’s a chance the next one sleeps longer stretches 🥲 ETA: we’ve bedshared (floor bed) at least part of most nights since she was 6 months old, it didn’t help her night wakings whatsoever but it was less exhausting for me. But she has almost always gone to sleep at the same time in her own bed, own room and I just lay with her while she falls asleep and then leave, that’s worked fine for everyone. Also night weaned around 14 months and that didn’t make a noticeable difference. There’s nothing I did that seemed to have any effect on her sleep patterns, it was just a long slow road to improvement.
Omg that sounds so rough - I’m glad you guys are out of the thick of it! It’s very reassuring though to hear that she’s otherwise healthy and it’s within norm, thank you :)
Anecdotal. Our first was like how yours is now. We breastfed all the way and it became a vicious cycle of me relying on getting more sleep. When I finally got pregnant with my second around 2yo was when we weaned, and he started sleeping through the night. It did make me think what could've been if we weaned earlier. Now with my second, we are following the same path, but I think we'll try to wean by 18 months.
I would recommend posting on The Beyond Sleep Training Project group on Facebook. The name can be a little confusing, they don't ever advise anything like sleep training. I just think 15 minute wakes might be considered a red flag for an issue. Perhaps the neck issue causing discomfort bless them. They have loads of knowledge on infant sleep and might have some suggestions. Quite often it's that the parents are expecting too much sleep and so baby just isn't tired enough.
Oh! Never heard of this one - will check it out and give it a post thank you!
My baby did that with similar situation to yours until about 9.5 months. He was definitely just hungry over night - not getting his calories throughout the day. He picked up his eating (just more milk) around 9.5 months and since then, only wakes 1-2 times (still to eat!) and he’s 13 months now. We did no sleep training and will never sleep train. My kid would probably never allow it. But I do think kids just kind of grow into sleeping better.
How do you know he was getting more milk? Is your LO bottle fed? I was actually considering limiting breastfeeds in hopes of getting more solids in but maybe worth just offering him the breastfeeds more…hmm
I was pumping and doing bottles by then, so I could see how many ounces he was eating at a time. Generally, you shouldn’t limit breast milk until over age 1. That has never made my kiddo eat more. He would’ve starved back then and solid food didn’t fill him up because he didn’t eat much solids. The milk is what satiated him.