Does your baby sleep through the night?
Maybe it just drove me batty because I was up half the night every night and that’s what bats do. Or perhaps I’m bitter that I don’t get as much sleep as I would have liked. Either way, I should be a rich bat with a gold-lined-cave because as the saying goes… If I had a dollar for every time I heard that!
Whilst I could go on for days about why I dislike this question, I’m going to instead tell all of you wonderful mummies why it’s ok that your baby doesn’t sleep ‘through’. And why some other babies do.
Fact: Babies who co-sleep don’t sleep as deeply as babies who sleep separate from their parents, and may wake more often. Here is an interesting article on why babies should not sleep alone.
Fact: Breastfed babies wake for feeds more often than formula-fed babies. As they are designed to do.
Fact: Babies are not designed to sleep through the night. Nor should they be forced or expected to. Some babies do naturally, and that’s fine. But most won’t. Here is a really good article written by an anthropologist who has looked at how human babies are genetically designed to live.
To quote a blog I read recently: “But you have a baby now. DEAL WITH IT”. I’m afraid baby-lifestyles are not the same as adult-lifestyles. As much as sometimes it seems that life would be easier if they were.
As harsh as this may sound, I’m afraid it is true. I have learnt that feeling sorry for myself and/or feeling tired and grumpy doesn’t help my baby – or myself. In fact, quite the opposite (if you want to know more about how your stress levels effect your baby… Read this book: Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five
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What you just read above, is a post I started in September 2011. I have just been going through my drafts folder… This question still irritates me and my heart breaks when I see the reaction to this question in other new mums.
My Evie sleeps quite well now – she still wakes on occasion when she is sad, startled, feeling lonely, having a bad dream, hungry, cold or in need of a cuddle. She is 18 months. And yes she still doesn’t sleep through the night every night. I remember being concerned when Evie was only 3 months old that she wasn’t sleeping ‘through the night’ because everyone told me she should be. I later realised that by ‘through the night’ most people didn’t mean 8, 10 or 12 hours… they meant 5-6 hours. Perspective. And she was doing that – 6 hours solid a night. UNTIL 3-4 months at which point she woke every 2 hours (and often more than that) until she was 12 months old. That was just my baby. It took me a while to realise that there wasn’t actually anything wrong with her. She was just being a baby!
Since starting this post, I read a friend of mine’s post that was on a similar topic and then I never felt the need to complete this post – she had written it so incredibly well and explained exactly what I was feeling! It was a huge sigh of relief! But when I began to re-read this post today, I thought “Maybe I don’t need to finish this post because it has already been said so well” BUT you haven’t (or maybe you have?) read the other post! So it’s time to share…. Please go and read it. Tiffany writes so very beautifully!
Enjoy!
I hear what you are saying. My first two babies slept through the night at 6 weeks, (which technically meant 6 hours from 11 or 12 until 5 or 6 in the morning and then after a breast feed until 9 or 10am). I remember feeling quite upset when my 3rd child didn’t sleep ‘through the night’ and I wondered why my clever parenting skills weren’t working anymore. I was so tired because she still wasn’t sleeping ‘through the night’ until she was 12 months old. At some point when my extreme weariness subsided I worked out she had been sleeping quite well, She was sleeping from 5pm in the evening until 11 at night when I was ready to go to bed and then waking 3 hourly for a feed ‘through the night’. While I felt pretty rung out at the time in hindsight the benefit of this was I could get my other children, who were 2 and 3 year olds, their dinner, bath them and put them to bed, then sit down with my husband for the evening.
What I wanted to say to the tired mothers out there is if someone asks you that question it is code for, How are you going? are you getting enough sleep and do you need some support? I am sure it is always other mothers who ask because they know and understand exactly what you are going through. I would also encourage mothers to accept any offers of help as I always offered my support to new mums because I understood how hard it is to be a mum 24 hours a day and was never taken up on it. Sleep tight!
So true. I have heard the words of that question come out of my own mouth a number of times before and I think that’s all I was asking… “Are you ok?!? Because I know it’s hard!!” xxxx
my small sister sleeps over 15hrs per day you can imagine how she is ..