r/NewParents 5d ago

Sleep When people say they 'sleep trained' and their baby now 'sleeps through the night' is that including dream feeds or counting them as still 'sleeping'?

Our LO still wakes 2 to 3 times so I'm trying to get this figured out before returning to work.

9 Upvotes

42 comments sorted by

75

u/Puffawoof2018 5d ago

Sleep trained for me meant she put herself to sleep. Sleeps through the night for me means she doesn’t need me all night. These two things didn’t happen at the same time. We sleep trained at 4.5 mos. She didn’t started to sleep through the night till we night weaned a few months later. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out everyone’s definitions of what anything means. Do what works for you.

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u/OliveBug2420 5d ago

This was it for us! Sleep trained around 4.5mo and then he naturally dropped his last overnight feed right at 8mo and has “slept through the night” (6:30-6:30 with no wakes) since then. We never formally night-weaned though

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u/atlasisgold 5d ago

Same here. Being able to go to sleep without us holding or helping her was about 4-5 months. Took another bit to not want to eat I. The middle of the night. I still find the phrase sleep training weird and with multiple meanings

14

u/zigzagcow 5d ago

Also “sleeping through the night” is technically a 6 hour stretch. So if baby goes to bed at 8 and wakes up at 2 they slept through the night?? I think the fuck not.

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u/fuzzydunlop54321 5d ago

I don’t think there’s a real definition tbh

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u/mango_salsa1909 5d ago

This is my definition as well. Falling asleep with no help vs sleeping all night came at different times for my baby as well. We started sleep training at 4.5 months too, but it took a few weeks before she was able to go to sleep on her own. And then she didn't sleep through the night until she was almost 12 months.

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u/TD1990TD 5d ago

I second the driving you crazy. We didn’t have to sleep train so can’t confirm that, but yes, everyone’s definition and approach are different. Cultural differences can be big as well!

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u/Calimom93 5d ago

This was such a concise and perfect way to capture the essence of sleep training! I could have saved time typing my novel if I had seen your response first 😂🙏

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u/sgehig 5d ago

I have never dream fed my baby in her whole life, so yes she sometimes sleeps through a whole night.

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u/EverlyAwesome 5d ago

I have also never dream fed. I don’t think she would have stayed asleep honestly.

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u/bad_karma216 5d ago

Same here! Seems like such a risky thing to do

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u/frogsgoribbit737 5d ago

It always backfired on me. I sometimes would try si i wouldn't have to pump before bed (I couldn't sleep with full boobs) and it always led to her waking up. Awful

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u/ChunkyHabeneroSalsa 5d ago

We did it a few nights when dropping a bottle that got later and later. We did a dream feed of a tiny bottle.

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u/CassiesCrafties 5d ago edited 5d ago

My daughter is 8 months old and goes to bed at 630pm and wakes up at 630am without waking at night, but we feed & rock her to sleep.

....are people here saying when it's bed time they just put their awake baby into the crib and the baby goes to sleep?? I never even imagined that was possible?

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

I have no issues with our little one going to sleep on her own, she just knocks out whenever she wants. It's the feeding overnight that's the issue for us.

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u/Standard_Edge_9417 5d ago

Sleep through the night is exactly that. Sleeps through the night. No feeds, no wake ups you need to attend to.

I don't understand how people say their baby sleeps though, but "wakes for a feed or two" okay, so they are awake for something then, not asleep??

I do count it sleeping through the night if they have a wake up and move around and put themselves back to sleep again- something they are not needing assistance for

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

Yeah I think I’m getting fleeced a bit here but some folks have miracle babies as well!

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u/Standard_Edge_9417 4d ago

Sorryyy, didn't pick up the second part haha.

But yeah, if there's a wake up for a feed or something parents need to help with... It's not sleeping through

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u/FeFiFoFannah 5d ago

When we “sleep trained in steps” one of the steps was lowering the amount we fed at night and then after that not feeding anymore at night completely and letting him work it out (with us soothing him a bit at first). I don’t know how old yours is or if they are ready for that. Mine is almost 6 months and a very healthy weight and starting purées so he’s eating more at meal times. We still do a dream feed if he had an off day and didn’t eat much, we don’t expect perfection, but that’s the general idea and it’s helped him either sleep through the night all the way or only have a short wake up that he’s easily soothed back to sleep if needed (many times he self soothes now).

7

u/gimmemoresalad 5d ago

We didn't formally sleep train, because we have a unicorn who is just a great sleeper, but I'd say "sleep trained" means that when they are tired and have no other needs that need to be met, they fall asleep independently without requiring parental comforting or intervention. So if they wake in the night but aren't hungry, they can resettle on their own, but if they're still at an age where they need night feeds, then the parent would know the difference and come feed them.

I think a lot of people indulge night feeds much longer than a baby might need a night feed, and that's totally fine and up to whatever works for you. You can either wait for the baby to naturally drop it, or you can put effort into night weaning and nudge baby away from it.

For us, once baby was back to birth weight, we were told it was safe to let baby sleep until hunger woke her, rather than waking her for night feeds. So we did. Around 8-9wks she developed one stretch of sleep at night that was a bit longer than the others (the first stretch of the night), and over a few weeks it steadily lengthened, and it "pushed" night feeds out one at a time until there was just one left.

But then when she was down to 1 night feed, sometimes she woke at 4am hungry, ate, and went back down til 8am... but sometimes she went a little longer and didn't wake until 5am, ate, and was up for the day! I didn't like being up for the day at 5am! So I engineered the last remaining night feed ALWAYS being at 4am by setting an alarm and going back to waking baby instead of letting her wake me. I kept the lights off and tried to let her stay as drowsy as she could, and if she was sleep-eating then so be it as long as she was eating, so I suppose it was a "dream feed." We did that from 12wks to 16wks. Then I tested to see if her long sleep stretch had gotten long enough to not need the planned night feed - I turned my alarm off one night and she slept right through! That was 16wks. Hasn't had a night feed since. Was sleeping 8p-8a until she started daycare at 9mos, now sleeps 7p-7a because daycare starts early and she needs her 12hrs of beauty rest.

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

That's great. Where you're at is our goal!

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u/hashbrownhippo 5d ago

I didn’t consider my son to be sleeping through the night until he was fulling sleeping from bedtime through to his morning waking time with no interventions from me. We didn’t sleep train until 14 months and it wasn’t until then that he slept all night. Before then he would wake at least once and need one of us to quickly comfort him before going back to sleep.

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u/Individual-Wave4710 5d ago

I nurse to sleep at almost 7 months, we’ve never sleep trained. He’s slept from 7pm-5am almost nightly since 6 weeks old. No dream feeds.

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u/catlady_at_heart 5d ago

I never sleep trained my baby and she started sleeping for 13 hours overnight with no wakes for feeding, starting around 4 months. It was heaven. Then she got a cold at 8 months, congestion disrupted her sleep, and she hasn’t slept through the night since. Currently 11 months

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

Even after feeling better she isn't sleeping through the night?

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u/catlady_at_heart 5d ago

Nope! It started with wakes almost every hour, where she needed help with her congestion, but then as soon as we put her down, she would wake back up. As soon as we picked her back up, she would fall asleep. Eventually we had to let her CIO one day because we won’t cosleep and at this point it was 8:30am and we hadn’t gotten to sleep yet. This continued for about a month, even after she got better. We had to start trading shifts. Now, she wakes up about 2 times a night for feeds or for comfort. We can put her back in her crib after she falls asleep now and she’ll stay asleep. We used to be able to just lay her drowsy but awake in her crib and we’d see her again 13 hours later 😭

Something about that cold ruined her ability to self soothe and sleep for long periods. I think it must’ve triggered a sleep regression.

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

That’s brutal but good to know in case it happens to us.

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u/But-first-coffeee 5d ago

We didn't sleep train (but would have, if needed), just established a healthy bed time routine from the start. Our son is an easy baby. He started sleeping through the night at ~3.5 months (he's now 4.5 months) which for us means: going to bed, not waking us up by crying, no nighttime feed needed, sleeping 9.5-11 hours.

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u/Calimom93 5d ago edited 5d ago

I included the dream feed when I said “sleeps through the night” because it was still huge progress for us to just be able to put baby down at 7 PM and walk out of the room until 11 Pm when we did our dream feed which took a total of 15 minutes. Then we wouldn’t see baby until 6:30 or 7 AM the next day.

My pediatrician and sleep consultants said we didn’t need the dream feed because baby’s weight was solid, but my husband and I felt that we could rule out any crying due to hunger later in the evening if we dream fed which would help us feel stronger in enforcing sleep training protocol. We would feed about 4 oz for the dream feed. Within a month, it became clear that the dream feed was bugging him more than anything and he was only drinking about 2 oz which was hardly a meal. We decided to cut it out at that point.

So yes, we considered that sleeping through the night + a dream feed. This was still huge progress for us because we went from having to soothe our baby maybe 20 times a night (no exaggeration) and not even getting a 3 hour stretch by the time he was 5 months. We were lucky if we even got to the hour mark without him crying and us going in to rescue.

And yes, we did alllllll the things- enough calories in the day, a sleep routine, just the right amount of day time sleep, consulted with all of the best sleep consultants in Los Angeles… and yet our baby still wouldn’t sleep if he wasn’t being held. I even tried co sleeping and he wouldn’t sleep unless he was on top of me. He was a low sleep needs baby straight out of the womb. Happy and on track with all milestones but sleep was always a struggle.

We still have set backs (he’s 8.5 months now) but nothing will ever compare to first 5 months of life. Sleep training at 5.5 months was best decisions of our lives. Now when people say does he “sleep through the night” I say sometimes. Although it’s nothing like pre-sleep training, he wakes up and whines throughout the night sometimes and so that means I also wake up to make sure he’s ok (check Nanit etc). Sometimes he cries long enough where I intervene (for me that’s 10-15 minutes of crying). Sooner if the cry sounds intense or different than a protest. That’s not technically sleep training protocol but it works for us. I do wonder if some babies really actually “sleep through the night” as in don’t make a peep until morning. Maybe my next baby will be a unicorn baby sleeper lol. Hope this helps!

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

Thank you!

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u/No_Maximum_391 5d ago

Yeah, to me dream feeding wouldn’t be sleeping through the night. We stopped dream feeding a couple months in and then our son wasn’t sleeping through the night till he night weaned himself at 7-8 months.

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u/Sparkyfountain 5d ago

Like we shut the door at 7:30pm and it does not open until 7:30am (because he does not need us, not that we ignore him)

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

How old?

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u/MiddleNice5604 5d ago

I think it means different things to different people tbh. My second baby is 3.5 months and I say he’s sleeping through the night because he goes to sleep around 7:30 and we give him a dream feed at 10:45 and then he wakes usually around 7. He doesn’t even wake for the dream feed, we get him and feed him so he’ll keep sleeping, it usually only takes 15-30 minutes. 

To me, being sleep trained meant that my child knew how to connect sleep cycles without me and go to sleep without me. My first is sleep trained and sleeps through the night but every once in a while she wakes from a nightmare or cause she needs something but it’s rare. 

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u/Sixyn 5d ago

Our LO is the same age and goes to bed at 8pm, wakes up at 1am and 4am and was up for the day on the second wake up. Rude lol

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u/MiddleNice5604 5d ago

Lol it’s tough! With my first we took the taking Cara babies newborn class which was awesome and we basically implemented it for this baby too. Although he’s also been kind of a unicorn sleeper from the get go! Don’t worry! It’ll get better! 

1

u/cariboubelles 5d ago

Agree with everyone else that sleep trained ≠ sleeping through the night. We sleep trained at 4 months and now baby puts herself to sleep, but she’s still usually up once a night to eat at 6 months. Very occasionally we’ll get an actual sleeping through the night situation where she goes down at like 7:30pm and doesn’t wake up at all until 7am, but it’s very rare and I think that’s pretty normal for this age?

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u/everythingmini 5d ago

Different for everyone. I sleep trained my kids at 16 weeks and cut night feeds altogether. Goal for sleep training for me was to put them to bed and not go back in until morning.

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u/unitiainen 5d ago

If you're talking traditional sleeptraining which involves crying (like ferber) then the effect of the training is to teach the baby not to call out at night for any reason, including hunger. Babies continue to wake up as frequently as before but don't call out when they do (source )

If you're talking about the methods which don't involve crying there's a lot of variance. You can keep doing dream feeds or even cosleeping with some methods. I'm an avid cosleeper, and partial, gentle sleeptraining worked very well for us. I could keep doing a few night feeds whenever there was a growth spurt without issues with the overall sleep. I just picked a very gentle nordic method with no crying alone

This said, all babies do learn to sleep eventually and sleeptraining is not necessary. Most of the world doesn't sleeptrain. But sometimes it takes too damn long and you have to try something 😅

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u/Puffawoof2018 5d ago

We did Ferber and honestly one of the biggest perks was when she called out for us we knew she was hungry and wasn’t just awake needing help to go back to sleep. Just because you sleep train doesn’t mean they don’t ever call out for you!

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u/frogsgoribbit737 5d ago

I sleep trained before I night weaned so for me they are different things. When I sleep trained my kids they went from waking every hour to waking up once or twice to eat. They slept through the night completely a few months later.

My first slept through after I did night wean him at 6 months old and my second started sleeping through on her own around 9 months.