When Will My Baby Sleep Through The Night?
An evidence based analyses from Molly at Fox And The Moon.
As a parent, few milestones are more eagerly awaited than the moment your baby finally sleeps through the night. After months of broken sleep, it’s understandable to wonder when your baby will start consistently sleeping for longer stretches. But what does the science say? When can we reasonably expect our babies to sleep through the night, and what factors influence this?
In this blog, we’ll explore the evidence behind infant sleep patterns, including what “sleeping through the night” really means, typical sleep timelines, and factors that affect when your baby might sleep longer.
What Does “Sleeping Through the Night” Really Mean?
The phrase “sleeping through the night” is often misunderstood. Different “sleep experts” have different definitions. Some claiming that a 5 hour stretch equates sleeping through the night and some defining it as a continuous stretch of about 6-8 hours. It’s entirely subjective and many study’s that have researched this use different definitions, therefore it’s generally very hard to draw a conclusion on exactly *when* a baby may be sleeping through the night.
HOWEVER, let’s think about this a little further. Even adults typically do not sleep through the night without some level of disruption. While we often think of “sleeping through the night” as a continuous, uninterrupted block of time, sleep is more fragmented than it may seem. Therefor when we are striving for a baby to “sleep through the night” we are actually striving for them to go through the night without signalling for us.
Why do we not truly never sleep through the night?
The main reason being normal sleep architecture and structure, the way sleep cycles work is transitioning throughout various stages, from light sleep to deep sleep to REM sleep. During the night, it’s normal to briefly wake up between sleep cycles. These awakenings are usually so short that we don’t remember them, but they do occur we also gave to consider environmental factors: Noises, temperature changes, or uncomfortable sleep positions can cause brief awakenings. As adults, we can make these adjustments to soothe ourselves back to sleep (adjust our pillow, pull the duvet up, take a sip of water) often doing these things without fully waking or even realising. A baby cannot do these things themselves…
So now we can understand that we never actually sleep through the night, its easier to understand why a baby may signal us through the night:
- They may be cold
- Too warm
- Scared of the dark
- Thirsty
- Hungry
- Dry mouth
- In an uncomfortable position
- Lonely
- Awoken by a loud noise and unable to settle
- Blocked nose
- Have an itch
- & so much more!
When considering this list it makes sense why expecting a young baby to sleep through the night might be entirely unrealistic. A baby’s ability to cope with these things depends entirely on their temperament. Even as adults, some of us are less sensitive to our sleep environment and can fall asleep anywhere. Where as some of us need optimal sleep conditions to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep. Put simply, some babies are more sensitive and need us more. This isn’t anything you’ve done, its just who they are.
Sleeping Through The Night Is Not Actually a Milestone…
Many many things can occur in the first few years of your baby’s life that may make sleep harder at certain times. Often clients will tell me their baby slept 6+ hour stretches at night as a newborn but then it went downhill. Babies go through intense periods of separation anxiety at different ages which is an imperative part of attachment development, this can make sleep really tricky. Babies can experience night time discomfort due to illness or teething which can mean they need more comfort a night. Babies go through HUGE cognitive and physical developmental phases throughout their first few years, which again, can impact sleep and is generally responsible for the famous “sleep regressions”. Babies can have mega growth spurts which means they need to feed more at night through certain periods. Infant sleep is not linear. It really will go up, down, left and right. Sleeping through the night is not a milestone or a definitive thing.
What Do The Statistics Say?
One of the most reliable studies investigating sleeping patterns is a 2014 study “Trajectories and Predictors of Nocturnal Awakenings and Sleep Duration in Infants”
This study concluded that 80% of babies age 6-18 months woke AND fed 1-3 times per night. This study included a sample size of over 55,000 babies.
Another study – Longitudinal Study of Sleep Behavior in Normal Infants during the First Year of Life analysed the sleep of 704 babies at age 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months and reported that because of so many fluctuations in sleep we only see “stability” from 12 months.
There aren’t really any reputable studies documenting when a child “should” be sleeping through the night and as explained above, each study has a different definition of how many hours actually counts as sleeping through the night. According to a study in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics (2013), about 50-70% of babies can sleep for 6+ hours continuously by 12 months of age.
When Should You Be Concerned?
All babies will eventually sleep through the night without any intervention. However, at Fox And The Moon we help validate “very frequent night waking”. If your baby is waking hourly then we are asking WHY. There may be a reason. And although waking at night IS biologically normal, waking every hour and displaying other symptoms that could be contributing to disrupted sleep may mean there is room for improvement and some investigating to be done. One of the biggest cause of disrupted sleep in infancy is the way a baby is breathing. You can read more about the impact of mouth breathing here.
Optimising Sleep To A Baby’s biological Capacity:
At Fox and The Moon we by no way promise to get your baby sleeping through the night. This may not be age or temperament appropriate. However, our gentle and holistic approach to optimise sleep is extremely successful. Whether this is investigating something underlying, simply tweaking timings, assessing and optimising wake windows, establishing a bedtime routine, adjusting sleep environment, optimising feeding, there may be things that can be done to improve sleep. The best way to access information on all of these things is our extensive and comprehensive sleep e-books for your baby or child’s age. These books will tell you everything you need to know on how to optimise sleep and overcome common sleep challenges.