Does Your Baby Sleep Through The Night?
This has to be the second most common question that new moms are asked, the first one being are you breastfeeding? The answer over here is NO. Our daughter is now 7 months old and we still haven’t figured out how to get her to sleep through the night. In fact, she still has trouble sleeping during the day as well.
Here is the challenge with this – everyone has an opinion on the topic (whether they have kids or not) and I welcome your suggestions and opinions in the comments of course – but I want to preface this post with this: All babies are different, what worked for your baby may not work for mine (or anyone else’s for that matter).
A quick look at Amazon.com and you’ll see that there are over 350 titles under the category of “parenting baby sleep”. It’s a multi-million dollar business, that’s for certain. There are many different methods from the controversial Ferber method to the more gentle Pantley sleep solutions. And yet, I still feel like we’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work. I have a few friends whose babies have been sleeping through the night since they were only a few weeks or months old. And many other friends who, like us, still wake up several times a night with baby. None of us seem to understand why we’re not able to get our little one to sleep through the night – and we have all tried many different methods.
The thing that I find difficult is that sometime it feels like a personal attack on me as a parent when I answer that, no Céline does not sleep through the night, and I am immediately offered a slew of potential solutions. I can understand that people have our best interest at heart, but I just feel like we have tried everything that we are comfortable trying. Now, we haven’t tried letting her cry it out for hours. The few times I have tried, I am not able to get beyond 10 minutes, at that point she is almost inconsolable and often makes herself sick. For me, this is not a solution that I am comfortable with. For many parents, they can make it through this and it seems to work for them and their babies. For me, it just feels so wrong for us that I am not able to just power through it. And what makes it even more difficult is that sometimes, the routine we have established, both for naps and bedtime, works like a charm! And other times, for reasons that are unknown, it completely fails!
So, what’s the point of this post? First, for those of you who have babies that aren’t sleeping through the night, you’re not alone. For those of you whose babies do sleep through the night, count your blessings. And for all of you who have asked the question “does your baby sleep through the night?” know that it’s a very personal thing and that every baby is different. And perhaps the mom you are asking really feels like she’s tried everything to help her baby sleep and she might just be looking for support as opposed to more suggestions.
The big question is: Do we buy a new Blackberry Playbook OR hire a sleep doula? Thoughts? 
Matthew is 9 mos and never sleeps through the night. In fact he wakes up many times through the night and I have (mostly) learned to cope on a lot less sleep. His daytime naps suck and my 3-year old doesn’t nap so my days are busy and sometimes tough. I mostly laugh when people ask me if Matty sleeps through the night, and I really don’t know why that seems to be such a hot question. I even think a lot of people lie about their baby’s sleeping just because of social pressure. My sister’s little guy is a great sleeper and she and I parent almost identically. She knows that she’s lucky and not just a super-mom (even though she is a great mom, but you know what I mean!). I have learned to never judge another mon on what she does to get by…seriously. As long as you’re a loving mom, things willeventuslly work out. Oh – and I have read the full spectrum if books, and yes, we’ve tried sleep training, and it was traumatic. I just don’t have the stamina to try again until the summer and Andy is on holidays…and I am hoping to use Pantley’s methods.
great post Julie…skip the other 349 books, did you get the one I recommended (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” by Marc Weissbluth)? things like diet, feeding times, exposure to light, exposure to TV, all that stuff comes into play. Keep working with it and I’m sure you’ll find some of the results it sounds like your looking for. Also, as she gets older, that helps too
So, unless you have a time machine, just take it day by day, and enjoy the journey!
some people might recommend melatonin…if they do, ignore them.
sean
Buy the playbook AND skip the books. Celine will sleep through the night when she’s ready. I found with both Sierra and Brooke that sleeping happened when they started staying dry through the night (3 yrs). Amber occasionally sleeps through – but she has a way different temperament – she would much rather suck her blankie to fall asleep than to be rocked or nursed. I definitely cannot take any credit for that – it was just her preference. The big trick is to find a way to get her back to sleep in the night quickly – that way it’s the least disruptive to your sleep. I also found that babies sleep very well the first 5 hours of the night – so it’s helpful to go to bed early and sleep when the baby sleeps (and yes this means that I often go to sleep at 8:30 right after Amber, leaving Rob to put the big girls to bed without me – they all rather enjoy that one on one time anyways). Hugs and good luck!
Excellent, Playbook it is!
Awesome! Can I come try it out? I want either the playbook or the ipad2 for Christmas but I’d like to try each of them out before I make my decision.
You’re a fantastic, loving mom to Celine – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!!
All the best in health and fitness,
Janice
Blog: http://www.fitnesscheerleader.com
Twitter: @fitcheerldr
WHAT YOU BELIEVE, YOU CAN ACHIEVE!
Hi Julie, I loved your post! I had the exact same experience with our first son, Oscar. There was no way I was going to let him cry (I just physically couldn’t, getting all sweaty and my heart beating fast when I was hearing him cry), and nothing else we tried worked (and I also read all the books out there). One of the things I concluded from my extensive reading was that a lot of the expectations set in books (mostly written by men for women who don’t have children – because when would a mother have time to write a book? – and mostly by people from an older generation ), and most of the sleep-related advice given by our mothers and aunts, really apply best to babies who are formula-fed exclusively and started on solids earlier than is now recommended, and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. I think we are now faced with babies who are just more hungry around the 4-6 months period, and I think it is normal that they wake up around that age, not something that needs to be “fixed” at all cost. The second thing I can pass on is that indeed all babies are different, and the results do not (or at least not only) depend on what you do, but a lot on the baby. I know because our second son is very different in his sleeping habits. He still wakes up in the night, but he will go to sleep by himself for example, when the first one didn’t (still doesn’t actually!). And one last thing I feel strongly about, related to Mark Weissbluth’s book (which I do like for a lot of things, for example because it gives advice about what kind of sleeping schedule can be aimed for at different stages) and to all the other books that dogmatically prescribe that as a mother your job is to make your child sleep through the night (and for so many hours during the day, and at regular times, and to make sure they are in bed by 7pm, etc…) is that they instil this feeling of guilt that if you do not do that, your child will suffer (cf. Mark Weissbluth’s book and all is pseudo-scientific claims that less sleep or broken sleep in children causes accidents, lower IQ, obesity… when there is absolutely no proof of cause-and-effect in the studies he mentions), ergo you are a bad mother. I really resent that, and my experience is that it is untrue. Oscar was a really bad sleeper as a baby and as a toddler, but (at 3!) he now sleeps very well, and neither his weight, temper, intellect or physical achievements seem to be any different from that of his peers. I think this guilt passed on us by expectations set in books is the reason why mothers like you and me then feels defensive when asked wether our children sleep through the night. Well they don’t sleep (but they will, I hear once they are teenager we will be fighting to get them out of bed!) and we should feel really proud of all the hard work we are doing putting them back to sleep when really we’d rather be sleeping ourselves!
Ok, a positive thought to finish: No matter how bad it seems at any particular point in time, with babies sleep keeps improving over time. It’s faster for some than for other, and there are sometimes set-backs, but if you look at overall trends on the scale of a month or so, things keep improving all the time.
Sorry for rant, but you hit a raw spot!
I love that you’ve shared how you feel and your experiences. Thank-you so much for your candor. This is why I take the time to blog – to give us a place to rant when needed.
The thing is, since you are talking about it a lot, we ask the question because we care… we want to know if things are going better.
Oh mom, your advice is always welcome of course! Je t’aime!