When Will My Baby Sleep Through the Night

Not getting enough sleep at night is extremely draining both physically and mentally. Your body feels like it doesn’t want to do anything and your mind doesn’t want to think. You’ll have less energy, and just feel completely wasted overall.

Having a baby who doesn’t sleep through the night is challenging. It’s pretty incredible that parents are able to deal with a not-sleeping baby, and still somehow function day to day. Give yourself a pat on the back, and really reward yourself for doing something that is extremely difficult. Having to go to work the next day, take care of other kids, or work around the house are hard to do when getting little sleep.

If your child still isn’t sleeping through the night, you’re likely asking when they are going to start. Unfortunately, the answer is not simple. Some kids take a couple of years before they’ll sleep through the night. While that’s generally not true, you may find that it takes quite a long time before your child sleeps completely through the night. There’s no way to know for sure.

There are several ways that you can encourage and help your child to sleep through the night, but they won’t always work for everyone. Every kid is just a little bit different, and if your child has health problems, or other potential issues, then sleeping through the night may not be something that comes easily or naturally to them. It’s going to take you a little bit longer to get there than for others.

If you’re lucky, your child may start sleeping through the night by four to six months old. They can start earlier than that as well, but it’s more common that your child will not be sleeping through the night that early on. Once your child starts eating more solid foods, and taking bottles with rice, you’re more likely to see your baby sleeping longer stretches of time at night. That doesn’t mean that your baby will sleep through the night once they start solid food, but it will usually help.

By one year, most kids will sleep through the night on some type of more regular basis. That doesn’t mean that they’ll always sleep through the night, or that you’ll never have to get up with them, but generally you’ll have at least a couple of nights a week where you should feel like you’re getting a full night’s sleep. If your child is over 18 months, and still doesn’t ever sleep through the night, make sure to talk to your doctor. While it doesn’t necessarily mean that your child has a problem, there is certainly a chance that there is, and your doctor will be able to help you assess what issues there may be.

Finally, if you’re able to take turns with your partner getting up with the baby at night, it may become less of an issue as to how soon your child sleeps through the whole night. If you’re able to get a full night of sleep, while your child is only sleeping in 4-5 hour chunks, then you may feel energized enough throughout the day for it to be worth it.

Wondering when your baby will sleep through the night is normal. Knowing when that will be is basically impossible to say for sure. Do your best to get them to sleep through the night, but realize that it will take several months before you’ll likely see a full night’s sleep.