What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night – Part I
After you’ve read 1 or 8 books on baby sleep you may be rightfully confused about why your 8 month+ baby is still up all night. And while I’ll admit that there are a few reasons why this may be happening 99% of the time there is one single reason why older babies, toddlers, and even preschool kids are still waking up multiple times each night. If you’re ready to sleep through the night you need to understand why they’re waking up and what to do about it.
Teaching Baby to Fall Asleep
You’ve been teaching baby to fall asleep since the very beginning, usually through some combination of nursing and rocking. When they’re younger than 4-6 months nursing, rocking, bouncing to sleep is effective and totally reasonable. While some babies this young will figure out how to sleep through the night most will wake up 2-3 times a night (newborns may wake up 4-6 times but this usually settles down within a few weeks). You feel tired and develop a substantial coffee habit but this is what being the parent of a baby requires and so you do it.
But you are hoping for the night your baby delights and surprises you by sleeping all night long. I mean REALLY all night long (not the crazytown “4 hours in a row” that many sleep books talk about).
Your baby also hasn’t yet mastered how to fall asleep on their own. She still needs to be rocked, nursed, etc. and complains loudly when you deviate from this routine. Some babies are champion sleepers who figure out how to fall asleep on their own. How delightful it must be for these lucky parents of easy babies. These babies sleep often and easily, establish predictable nap schedules, rarely fuss, and poop unicorns.
Most babies are not so easy.
When to Put Baby Down Awake?
For the first 3 months you are welcome to nurse, rock, bounce, etc. your baby to sleep guilt-free. No you don’t want to let your baby become overtired and yes various soothing techniques/use of swings will HELP her fall asleep. But the truth is that you have enormous flexibility to help your baby sleep however and wherever it works best for everybody for the first few months.
The easiest (this, of course, is a relative term) time to work on teaching babies to fall asleep on their own is ~3-6 months of age. If you are the parent of a 3-6 month old you may be thinking, “Um…this isn’t easy at ALL!” For some babies it’s NEVER easy. So maybe you could consider that 3-6 months of age is a time when it will likely be less horrible to teach your baby to fall asleep on their own?
6-9 months is less ideal. Why? Because most babies are starting to get teeth and this brings it’s own night challenges into the equation. Because some babies start developing separation anxiety around this time (8-12 months tends to be the peak) and this can complicate your efforts to put her down and leave the room.
But most importantly, if you haven’t gotten your baby to fall asleep on her own by 6-9 months you are likely to find that your baby who was waking up 2-3 times a night while a newborn has turned into a 6 month old who now wakes up every 45 minutes all night long and if this continues you will willingly shove bamboo shoots up your own fingernails because this would be preferable to another long night of waking up every 45 minutes.
Why You Need to Put Baby Down Awake
Read this carefully. Don’t skim it, ACTUALLY read it. What I’m about to tell you is the single most important thing you need to know about why 99% of babies older than 6 months are crappy sleepers. What I’m about to tell you is the answer to every post on every desperate new-baby forum where desperately exhausted parents are asking questions like:
- My baby used to sleep great and now is up all night. I think he’s teething – help!
- My 8 month old is hungry all night long. I’m afraid my milk is drying up. What can I do to increase milk production?
- 7 month old used to sleep great in the crib but now will only sleep while being held. My back is killing me. How do I get her back into her own bed?
- 9 month old is having terrible separation anxiety and now demands that we come back into his room and rock him all night long. We’re soooo tired. Anybody know when things will get better?
- How do I get my 14 month old baby to sleep through the night?
The answer to all of these questions/challenge is actually THE SAME. The following 2 pieces of information are the missing links that most parents don’t understand and that fundamentally hinder their ability to help their child sleep through the night.
#1 Object Permanence
Most babies develop a new skill around 6 months (give or take a month) called object permanence. Prior to this for babies, out of sight LITERALLY meant out of mind. Now they can remember things, people, etc. exist even when they can’t see them. This is closely linked with stranger/separation anxiety which occurs because now your child actually remembers that you exist when you aren’t physically present. For the first time they are capable of missing you. Which is really sweet but often hard to enjoy. It also means that they are now capable of remembering that you were THERE when they fell asleep but are MISSING when they wake up.
Many of you will know EXACTLY when your child mastered this skill. It was the day your once decently-sleeping baby became a short-napper who wakes up all night long.
#2 – Baby Sleep is Fundamentally Different from Yours
Most nights adult sleepers will wake up ever so slightly ~4 hours after they fell asleep. Usually you fluff your pillow, roll over, and aren’t even really aware that it happens. Unless you’re pregnant in which case this is probably when you make your nightly trip to the bathroom.
Babies wake up all night long. Sometimes they may need your help or a quick meal to fall back asleep. But I promise you that between bedtime and morning your baby wakes up far more often than you know. Beyond the times when they wake YOU up they also cycle into light sleep far more often than adults do. This is roughly how your baby sleeps from 0-6 months of age:
Babies who have not yet developed object permanence can be happily rocked, bounced, or nursed to sleep without issue. They’ll wake up 2-4 times each night to be fed and/or rocked back to sleep. It’s not the most fun thing you’ve ever done but it’s to be expected of newborn babies. So you clutch your coffee with white-knuckled hands and dream of the day your baby sleeps through the night. But putting your baby down 100% asleep will seem like it’s a winning strategy. For now.
But once your baby develops object permanence putting baby down while asleep will almost always blow up on you. Now your baby remembers that when they fell asleep you were there. When they move into light sleep where they used to simply fall asleep on their own, they wake themselves up fully. Because you were there, and now you aren’t. Worse, they’re generally pretty upset. In their own baby world they’re yelling at you saying, “Hey! Where did you go! What happened?”
Let’s put this in perspective. Imagine going to bed in your bedroom. A few hours later you wake up on your front lawn. Would you simply roll over and go back to sleep in the grass? Or would you stand up and start screaming? Would you demand loudly to be let back into the house so that you could sleep in your bed? Do you think you would be freaked out by the mysterious force that somehow carried you out to the lawn?
Your baby is reacting to the surprise of finding out that the circumstances they observed when falling to sleep is no longer the circumstance they are finding when they wake up. There are lots of different surprises that can result in a baby who wakes up all night long.
- Putting baby down 100% asleep
- Pacifier use – fell asleep in mouth, wake up not in mouth
- Mobiles or other timed devices – on when fell asleep, off when wake up
- Music used at bedtime but not played all night long
- Mommy/Daddy stay in room till baby falls asleep but then sneak out
Now you and your baby are up all night. Even worse, their longest window of uninterrupted sleep probably occurs before you even go to bed so now you are literally up all night.
Thus, in children, the first three or four hours of the night are spent mainly in very deep sleep from which the child is not easily aroused. Parents are often aware of this fact, because the period of lighter sleep that follows, with more frequent wakings, may begin at about the time they are going to sleep themselves.
-Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems Dr. Ferber
That Way Madness Lies
Most people don’t understand these two things. They don’t understand what a fundamental shift object permanence is in their baby’s perception of the world. And they don’t understand how different sleep for babies is from our own. So they continue to rock, nurse, etc. baby to sleep. Things are getting worse but they’re desperately clinging to the hope that it’s just a temporary sleep regression. Maybe it’s a tooth that has yet to erupt. Perhaps they just started daycare and are hoping that everybody will settle into the new routine and things will get easier.
They won’t.
If you continue to surprise your baby by changing the circumstances after they fall asleep, you’ll find yourself with a baby who starts to fight falling asleep. They become hyper-vigilant at bedtime because they know that you’re trying to sneak out. Some babies will fight sleep desperately trying to keep an eye on you so you can’t go anywhere. The baby who used to cuddle and laugh with you at bedtime is now agitated and anxious.
Imagine the scenario where you woke up on the front lawn. How many times would this have to happen before you started to struggle to fall asleep in your bed? Before worry about the mysterious alien force that was moving you in your sleep kept you from sleeping AT ALL?
This hypervigillance is completely understandable from their perspective, isn’t it?
So now you’ve added bedtime battles to list of fun things you’re dealing with at night. You’re probably dealing with it during the day too as the surprises that are waking your child up all night are making their naps short during the day. The 4 month old who used to take a 2.5 hour nap is now a 9 month old who never sleeps longer than 45 minutes. And she wakes up miserable and is generally inconsolable for half an hour every time she sleeps.
Of course now that her naps are significantly shorter and she’s getting poor quality sleep at night (because she’s constantly waking up) she’s a lot less fun to be around. As are you, because you are morphing into a bleary-eyed troll who can’t remember where she put the car keys and is so cranky the mailman is afraid to deliver packages to your house.
Ah….good times.
When Does it End?
This ends when you stop surprising your child when they sleep. When you stop rocking them to sleep. Stop nursing them to sleep. Stop cuddling them to sleep and then sneaking out the door. When you stop using any timed device (mobile, music, etc.). When you stop using pacifiers at bedtime.
Your child wakes up many more times a night than you do. The scene they find when they wake up needs to be IDENTICAL to the one they saw when they fell asleep.
No this is not the ONLY reason why older babies and toddlers wake up at night. But this is the MOST LIKELY reason.
When you’re ready to stop shuffling around like a sleep-deprived zombie, you’re going to need to come up with a plan to teach your child to fall asleep in such a way that there will be no surprises throughout the night. You and your partner need to commit to that plan. And put it into action.
The series continues so keep reading!
What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through The Night – Part 2
What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through The Night – Part 3
Anybody have any experiences with this they would like to share? Lessons learned? Happy success stories?
{photo credit: Paul Sapiano}
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- What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night - Part 2 | Troublesome Tots
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Hello! I just posted about my daughter in the swing section of this site but I have a question about putting the baby down awake. She will be 3 months old in a week. At night she sleeps in her cosleeper and can usually go down awake with a few tries, although she needs to be shushed and rocked a little first in order to calm her and my husband also sometimes rocks the cosleeper back and forth for a few minutes while shushing her after she is in it. Does this count as putting the baby down awake? I know that ultimately we will want to wean her off shushing and rocking and jiggling the cosleeper, but I figure at least she knows that she is in her cosleeper when she falls asleep. She goes down around 9 pm wakes 2-3 times at night to nurse, and wakes up for the day anytime between 7:30 and 9:15ish.
Hi Alexis,
I have been dealing with sleep issues with my beautiful son since literally the day he turned 4 months old (he’s just about 9 months now). Until that point, he was sleeping 7 – 9 hours at night and I was convinced that I was the best mom ever (haha, I was sooooo wrong!) At 4 months it was like he flipped a switch and became a horrible sleeper. I read everything I could but somehow kept missing your site. Then 2 weeks ago, after lots of crying and praying, I found your site and read about object permanence. That night I tried putting him to sleep awake rather than nursing him to sleep and BOOM, slept through the night for the first time in ages! This worked for a week, one bad night, then worked for a week again. Now all of a sudden, his sleep is worse than ever….any thoughts?! Let me just say, I love your site and your blog…full of helpful information and comic relief! Thank you!! Honestly, the second I found your site, it was like my hope was restored that someday this gorgeous, happy all the time but when I want to sleep baby, will sleep again!
I’d go to Kellymom.com for this one. Your child is likely too young for object permanence. At four months, your child all of a sudden notices the world, and is likely popping off the breast every time someone walks in the room or the tv gets turned on. This constant distraction is cutting into his nursing. He is trying to make up for that at night. The best thing you can do is make sure that his nursing sessions are sufficiently long and distraction free. http://kellymom.com/parenting/nighttime/4mo-sleep/
I am so thankful I found this website/article. My daughter is 7mo today. She has woken up many times a night since she was born and I am exhausted. She was able to be laid in her crib and go to sleep every nap and each night. I could not figure out why she would wake up during the night if I was doing it right. We started to feel more and more that we should wean her off of her pacifier. I figured that she woke up because she needed to eat, she wanted me or she wanted her pacifier. I had a hard time deciding to do this. I was even on the phone with the doctor just yesterday and he confirmed that she did not need to eat during the night at this age and that the sooner I get her to learn to sleep better, the better. So last night I had every intention to gradually wean her of her pacifier as this is the only thing she is needing throughout the night that she goes to bed with. My husband cut the tip off too much so we ended up basically getting rid of it cold turkey. The first night she cried for a half hour. Yes it was hard. Yes I hated it. She slept 11 hours straight; the first time ever. The second night (tonight), she went to sleep without so much as a peep. She didn’t use her pacifier all day today. I hope my success (even though short lived thus far) can give you hope. My biggest piece of advice is to lose anything that prevents your LO from putting him/herself back to sleep. Teach your child to fall asleep. Follow this article, it works!
This has literally made my day. I’m sat here bleary eyed feeling resentful at my 7 month old son who is currently finding miserable mummy and lack of conversation very funny while smiling and cooing at me. I’m finding some hope at last that me and my husband can at some point (with a lot of work) finally get our nights back (and our strength) and share the joke with our little lad that finds everything so funny because at the moment he’s the only one laughing!
This post saved my life! I used to rock my baby to sleep and hold him to sleep during the day. He hated his cot, I’ve been trying to make him nap there since he was 2 weeks old and just couldn’t do it. At night I would rock him and put him down asleep and it was fine. Tried the baby whisperer’s tips, CIO, but it was hard. He could cry for 2 hours non stop. I had a routine since he was 2 months old and when he was around 7 months he started waking up every hour at night. This lasted about 2 weeks and it was horrible for me and my husband. I read loads of books and ended up here. Everything made loads of sense and I decided to let him fall asleep in his bed. My strategy was to undo what I was doing slowly. First I rocked him to almost asleep and put him in bed. Then I just held him a bit then put in bed. After I just had to put him in bed. It wasn’t easy, but I was persistent and since he was 8 months old he sleeps 10-11 hours a night. That was when I cut feeding him at night too. Now he is one, has 2 naps a day and sleeps through the night.
Thank you very much!!!
my son is 6 months and needs to be rocked to sleep.He also wakes up every 2 hours.I would like to try a similar strategy as yours.What would you do when he woke up? Im scared that not picking him up quickly enough and rocking him would mean that he is wide awake and would make me start the cycle from scratch.He has also been teething now and we have been letting him cosleep for the last 3 weeks.Im subconsciously comforting him all night as I don’t want him to wake up.Ive just made it worst for myself now he wont sleep in his cot.
Neha recently posted..Eat Play Sleep Fail
Hi Neha! Is your son sleeping in your bed during nap time as well? If he is sleeping in his cot during the day, then there’s a proof he can do it. Even if not, you can change this and believe me, the sooner the better. I rocked my baby to sleep but whenever he woke up at night I used to feed him or give him his dummy. There’s a sleep regression around 7 months that is hard, maybe you are in this stage. My son is now 13 months old and hasn’t got any teeth so I can’t give you advice about teething, although some of my friends say it’s 2-3 nights of bad sleep and a grumpy baby during the day.
I would stop cosleeping, after 3 weeks is well into his system. From experience I realised that a new routine takes 3 days to work, gradually getting better. The secret is to be consistent. I’m not going to lie, first time he woke up and I didn’t feed him he cried for 40 min but then the following day was only 20 min, and so on. Make him sleep in his cot during day time and night, rock him to almost asleep but put him down awake. He will cry but he will be tired. I used to leave the room and come back every 2 minutes to reassure him (no eye contact, dummy in his mouth and leave the room again). I thought it would never work, but after 30 min he fell asleep. I found that the easiest time to start was the first nap of the day. Keep doing the same thing, he will learn. After about a week I just put him in bed without rocking then left the room. That was the hardest, but eventually it worked.
I was so tired that I thought the situation had to change. A couple of days or even weeks of exhaustion are worth the months to come of enough sleep.
Hope I can help and keep me informed!
Can you please explain something I’ve never understood about object permanence and sleep training?
I’ve read frequently on message boards that sleep training is a bad idea prior to 6 months because babies who haven’t developed object permanence don’t understand that their parents will come back for them. I just read a letter in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that says the same thing (Price, Hiscock, & Gradisar, Early Hum Dev, 2013). Similarly, your explanation of the need for sleep training suggests that babies who have developed object permanence are the most vulnerable to sleep problems that can be fixed by sleep training, which implies that sleep training is good for babies at this stage.
At the same time, I’ve also heard that 8-9 months is a bad time for sleep training because of separation anxiety, which as I understand it results from object permanence. Also, saying that prior to object permanence “they can’t understand that their parents will come back for them” has never made sense to me. In order to worry about whether their parents will come back, don’t they need to remember that their parents exist, which is precisely what happens when they acquire object permanence? It seems to me that, in fact, before object permanence, what they don’t understand is precisely the opposite — that their parents could leave them and not come back!
Know what I mean? So what’s the deal? Can you clarify?
I don’t usually comment on websites but I wanted to say thank you for the simple, easy-to-understand advice and the repetition to believe in this ‘put-baby-to-sleep-drowsy’ thing. Starting around 6 months, my daughter (who was previously a decent night sleeper at 3 months.. 1 night feed only) was starting to wake up 2-3 times a night. I was getting tired and even though I read all the books, and *knew* i was supposed to be putting her down drowsy, I started letting her fall asleep in my lap after nursing, because it was easy. To my surprise, last week, I laid her in the crib one night barely awake and she didnt protest! I jetted out of the room and she settled in after 20 minutes of squirming. The direct correlation was obvious: that night she slept from 730p-6a with NO interruptions. The next 3 nights have not been as smooth, she has cried loud for 20 min, 12 min, 10 min, but every time has put her self down eventually, and has slept at least 10 hours. I read this site at exactly the right time because it’s easy to blame it on teeth, hunger, etc. Thanks for the encouragement.
I’m so glad I read this because I was at my wits end, I’m so sleep deprived and just figured it was his teething. This object permanence is exactly what he is going through. Thank you so much for this helpful and insightful article. I do need some advice on how to make my baby’s routine the same every night with out surprises, if I try to let him fall asleep by himself in his crib on his own do I just put him in and leave the room? If I keep going in to comfort him will that be a surprise to him, which will cause him to keep waking up? He has never went to sleep on his own, he will scream at the top of his lungs till he starts coughing and even gagging to throw up because he is so wound up, I need advice on how to start this process, I’m so exhausted and can’t keep going on like this.
Thank you
Our son is a micro preemie who will be a year the end of the month (9 months adjusted). He’s not always been the bet sleeper, mostly due to his not caring for the oxygen at night (who would) and then as luck would have it he started teething. Not just teething, but it’s pretty painful for him 24×7. He goes to bed at 7 and was going well (maybe one wake up), about a week and a half ago he stated waking up at 4 am bright eyes and ready to go. I’m not sure what to do to get him back to sleep. He doesn’t cry, he just lays there wide awake. So far the only thing that does work is a bottle, does that mean he’s not getting enough during the day?
OMG! What is happening to my 8 month old! We did the CIO around 6 months and it has worked wonders! She was sleeping through the night from 7:15 – 6 or 7 am! She would occasionally wake up for a bottle and go right back to sleep. Even when she was teething, it wasn’t that bad. NOW…since exactly turning 8 months old, I feel like I have a newborn again! She goes down no later than 7:30 but lately has been waking up 2-3 times. For example she woke up at 3 last night, took a 7 oz bottle and then would not go back to sleep until 4:30! Then she was up at 6:15 and at 7 had another 6 oz! This has been happening for the past week! I am so tired and hoping this is a phase. I am a first time mom, so I am not sure if it’s a growth spurt or she also has started to crawl. Will that make her sleep schedule different? Any advice will help!!! Do I just go with the flow and let it ride or is there something I can do?
Same thing is happening with our 8 month old. He knows how to fall asleep on his own through CIO but last night he woke up an hour after bedtime screaming and then wouldn’t go back to sleep until 10pm. Then he woke up at 1, put himself back to sleep but woke up again at 2am screaming and we were so tired we brought him to bed with us but he was so restless. The night before last he slept 9 hours in a row without a peep and we didn’t do anything different. I don’t really have any advice and no one really has any advice for me since I don’t want to listen to hours of shrieking all night.
Lena, Well things actually got a lot better the past couple days. It was horrible thursday night and we were at our wits end and finally we ended up putting her in her room by herself. We would room share and I think she knew I was there and would soothe her and to be honest, since we put her in her own room, she is back to sleeping on her own all night!
What we did was put a lovely and a glow in the dark paci in her crib and we would would just do our normal routine and lay her down and hopes that she would be comfortable with the lovely and paci. and it seems to have worked! I also slept with one of her crib sheets so my scent would be on it and put that in her crib. My ped did say that around this time, it’s normal to have separation anxiety as well as if they reach a milestone, they usually are sleepless. He said it would pass in a couple weeks and it did (well at least for now). Good Luck!
we are having the same issues with our 7 month old the last month. not sure if that could be separation anxiety that early?? she wakes between 4 or 5 am and just talks to herself for almost an hour every night! there usually is no crying so we don’t go to her because that seem to wake her up more. i thought about trying wake to sleep or giving her a dream feed but not sure if its a good idea. any thoughts?
Hi,
I actually sleep trained my boy when he was about 8 weeks old and things were going well until the 12week (3mths) growth spurt. Before the growth spurt, he will sleep at 6 plus in the evening, I’ll pick him up at 10-11 for a dreamfeed and he will wakeup at 4 for a feed and then 7am for his first feed of the day. After the growth spurt, he is back to waking up every 3-4hours.
I put him to sleep on his tummy since he was 5 weeks (yes i do know the risk of SIDS by doing so) and now he only know how to sleep on his tummy. This posed as a problem in re training him to sleep through the night as he would flip from tummy to back, get startled and then awake. I have to tend to him cause when left on the back for too long, he will completely wake up.
People have asked me to ride it out until he learns to flip from back to tummy. Is there a solution to this? I do want to retrain him as he is 4 months old now.
Thank you. We’ve just started CIO – 2 nights in and I already want to invite you to our sons 1st birthday party. He was sleeping well on his own, then got an ear infection at 8.5 months. We rocked him to sleep for a week and then experienced everything you talk about here. We’re beginning to get back on track and I couldn’t be more thankful for your site. I never leave comments- but just wanted you to know how much I appreciated this info!
My son goes to sleep in his own bed during the day and at bedtime but once he wakes during the night (usually around 10pm), nothing in the world will persuade him to go back to sleep in his own bed. So into my bed he comes and we have a night of waking for a quick feed every 2-3 hours.
My question is, what do you do with night wakings? I think read somewhere on this site that CIO is not the answer (and I can’t use it anyway as my flatmate would strangle me). So what to do when he wakes at night?
So I put a sound maker (the ipad with a sound maker app) on for my 5 month old daughter last night and miracle of all miracles, she slept ALL night! We still had some issues getting her into the crib at the start of the night but once she was down she stayed down! Tonight we will see if it was a fluke lol! Thank you for all of the help