This is how your baby can learn to sleep through the night
Your baby can’t sleep through the night? This is normal up to the age of six months, but after that he should slowly get used to sleeping through the night. We have put together some useful tips and hints to help your baby sleep better.
From when and for how long can your baby sleep through the night?
At first, newborns cannot sleep through the night. As a rule, they only sleep three to four hours at a time – both during the day and at night. After six to eight weeks, your baby will be awake more often during the day and will sleep for longer periods at night. It usually takes a few months for a sleep rhythm to develop and for your baby to be able to sleep through the night.
Many parents ask themselves what “sleeping through the night” actually means? We usually speak of sleeping through the night when your baby skips a nighttime meal for the first time. Example: If your child is usually hungry every three hours at night and then for the first time after six hours. If your baby no longer wakes up from hunger, it can theoretically sleep for several hours at a time. If it still wakes up very often, this can have various causes. We explain here what they are. You will also find many tips here on how to get a good night’s sleep.
1st option: Unfavorable sleeping habits
According to many sleep experts, sleep habits can determine whether a baby stays asleep or stays awake after a short waking period. This is how the book authors Kast-Zahn and Morgenroth (“Every child can learn to sleep” – click here for the guide) and Elizabeth Pantley (sleep instead of crying – click here for the book) based on the thesis that your child automatically “checks” during these waking phases whether everything around them is still the same as it was before falling asleep. So if your baby can’t sleep through the night, wakes up more often and cries, you can check in a first step whether it might be due to unfavorable sleeping habits. Examples of habits that could disturb a child’s nightly sleep include:
- The baby only falls asleep with physical contact with the parents or when being carried around.
- The baby doesn’t fall asleep at night anymore because it lost the pacifier and is still too small to find it again by itself. Find out more about this in our article “ Baby can’t sleep without a pacifier ”.
- The baby only falls asleep during breastfeeding or bottle feeding .
Basically, these habits are not bad and do not cause problems for all babies. However, if you notice that they disturb your baby and thus you too when sleeping through the night, you can change them so that no serious sleep disorders arise in the long term. Elizabeth Pantley presents a particularly gentle way in her book “Sleep instead of screaming”.
Get rid of bad sleeping habits
In order for your child to learn to continue sleeping in their own bed at night without your help, you should first be able to distinguish exactly whether your child is actually waking up or is perhaps only making sleeping noises. It is often the case that a child is picked up from the bed to offer comfort, even though it is not really awake. If it hadn’t been picked up immediately, it probably would have stayed asleep. If you know this difference, it may be that the awake and thus consolation phases are automatically reduced.
For the remaining nocturnal waking phases, it is then necessary to shorten your already routine calming process step by step. In terms of phases, the path to staying asleep alone after your child wakes up in the night and craves you might look like this:
- Phase 1: Do what you always do to guide your child back to sleep. Just before he falls asleep, gently place him in his crib. If they don’t accept this, pick them up and comfort them. Repeat this until your child falls asleep in their crib. Break off if you lose patience and let it go to sleep as usual. Try again the next night.
- Stage 2: Once the procedure after Stage 1 has become routine, move on to not taking your child out of bed as soon as he or she is awake. Instead, pet or rock him in his crib and talk to him gently. If your child does not want to fall asleep or cries after several repetitions, go back to the procedure from phase 1.
- Phase 3: If phase 2 has been successful, then leave out the touching in bed. Speak gently to your child, preferably already established signal words to fall asleep. Go back to phase 2 or 1 if your child starts crying.
- Phase 4: If phase 3 also works, you can dare to verbally comfort your child from a distance, for example from the door frame.
In small steps you will get your child used to falling asleep without your presence. Of course, this requires a lot of patience and can take several days or even weeks. Ultimately, however, it will be worth it and bless you with good nights sleep.
2nd option: Nocturnal meals prevent you from sleeping through the night
At the age of six months, babies are usually sufficiently developed physically to recognize the night as such and to be able to sleep through or continue to sleep without eating. If your child is still asking for one or more meals at night after six months, this can have two causes:
- The child is used to sucking. It actually no longer drinks from a feeling of hunger, but because it is used to falling asleep on it. So if you find that your child drinks very little at night or only sucks, you can skip the meal immediately. In the evening you should feed your child at least half an hour before going to bed. There is a clear temporal separation and your baby will no longer associate falling asleep with food intake. The methods presented in our special “How your baby learns to sleep” show what can help your baby sleep through the night and how you can change your baby’s sleeping habits.
- The child has learned to be hungry at night and eats a lot accordingly. It probably didn’t satisfy its hunger sufficiently during the day. If so, you should slow down the weaning process. To do this, reduce the time you breastfeed your baby by one minute night after night. If he gets the bottle, decrease the amount by ten millimeters at a time. After a week you should have weaned him off the nocturnal meal.
3rd option: disturbed sleep-wake cycle
If you can rule out bad sleeping habits as a reason for your baby being awake late at night, then your baby probably hasn’t internalized that the night is for sleeping. For example, if you find that your baby is awake for more than an hour at night on average and does not fall asleep again quickly even with your help, your baby seems to have a disturbed sleep-wake cycle. In order to steer this in the right direction, it is first of all important to take a close look at how long your baby sleeps. Keeping a sleep log or the checklist “Is your child a good sleeper” can help you with this. In our article “This is how children’s sleep develops”You will also find information about the average sleep duration of babies and children.
An important rule that many experts recommend adhering to is bedtime = sleeptime. According to this, a baby should only spend the time in bed sleeping. So use the sleep log or checklist to determine the total number of hours your baby actually sleeps during the day and night and when. Then compare the number of hours your baby sleeps (sleep time) with the time he or she usually lies in his cot (bedtime). For example, if your baby spends 14 hours in his bed, but only sleeps 11 hours because he regularly lies awake for three hours at night, then you should better adjust bedtime to bedtime.
- For example, if you determine from the sleep log that your baby sleeps a lot during the day, you can shorten the daytime naps or, especially with babies, skip the morning nap.
- You can also put your baby to bed later if you see that it is taking a long time to fall asleep.
- Also, don’t be afraid to wake your baby up in the morning if he’s sleeping too late and you’d rather get him used to an early bedtime. It will quickly adapt to these times.
After a few weeks, the rhythm should have stabilized and give both you and your baby a good night’s sleep.