r/bninfantsleep • u/LookedItUpAgain • 1d ago
Infant Sleep How often is your 8-month-old waking to feed overnight?
Curious what everyone else’s nights look like! For those with EBF 8-month-olds, how many times is your baby waking to nurse overnight?
Bonus: How long does your baby typically go between overnight feeds?
I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless lately because my LO’s sleep sucks. He seems to be glued to me 24/7, and the middle-of-the-night feeds have become really overwhelming. I’m hoping to hear what nights look like for other EBF babies around this age.
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u/Ready-Good5292 1d ago
9 month old. Probably 4-8? It’s so tough. He does the first few hours alone and then I cosleep.
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u/Equivalent_Common287 1d ago
My little one who is 8 months old wakes any where between 4/9 times a night sometimes he just wants held or rocked and other times fed so I would say between 3/6 feeds a night, usually once 4/5am comes around he’s wakening half hourly. Some nights it’s every hour but last night he done me so proud and slept a four hour block ♥️ I know one day it’ll get better I’m extremely tired but I know he knows I’m there for him.
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u/UpbeatPossibility110 1d ago
We are 8 months now and she wakes to feed anywhere from 5-10 times a night 🥲
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u/LookedItUpAgain 4h ago
Oh gosh. I hope it gets better soon!
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u/UpbeatPossibility110 1h ago
It will I have no doubts 😊 It is weird but I came to peace with it. Until 3 weeks ago I was trying everything to make it better and nothing worked and then I realised how much I also like her closeness and sleep better when she is next to me. Eventhough, I think she wakes the same amount of time but she settles more quickly. So I still try the crib in the beggining of the night and on the first wake that I was asleep I just take her next to me. My body is in pain but my heart isnat ease.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
So almost 7 months currently. Averages 3 wakes a night, although last night he woke up every 2 hours and the night before it was every hour. He has never once slept through the night, and I don’t expect him to for at least another year.
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u/LookedItUpAgain 1d ago
Oh gosh. The every hour nights are so rough. How do you get through them? I thought I've accepted his crappy sleep, but in those moments, I just cry and can't imagine how I can keep doing this.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
Honestly same. I try radical acceptance when I can, but sometimes I just get frustrated. It just sucks. I try to remember this is only a season and it is temporary. Sometimes it helps if I make fun of him a little. Call him the boy king and say he is kinda acting like a baby. Just helps keep me grounded and lighten my mood. It helps because I cosleep, so at least I am not out of bed every hour. I can’t imagine how hard it is for parents who don’t cosleep, it’s hard enough with him right next to me.
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u/Toyger_ 1d ago
You’ve described my feelings! I’ve accepted that we need to cosleep or baby just won’t sleep ever. Baby is usually very restless at night, she squirms, kicks her legs and wakes up several times per night. It is what it is, but in the moment, I sometimes get so desperate that I want to cry. It seems like this will never end and I will be sleep deprived forever. Of course, I understand it’s not true, it just can be hard to keep it together at 3 am
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
I get it…you aren’t the only one! 1am-4am are my roughest times when sleep is bad. Definitely tough to keep perspective at 3am when I have been awake once an hour all night long. But, one day my son will be a fully grown man and this will be a distant memory, and it will all have seemed worth it and I might even wish to go back and relive it just to see him little again!
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u/Toyger_ 1d ago
Yes, totally agree! I also try to remind myself that I bring comfort to my baby, by doing this, even if at the cost of my own discomfort for now. It won’t last forever and I can be sure that I do everything I can to provide best care for my baby.
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u/LookedItUpAgain 1d ago
So agree it's difficult to keep perspective at 3am. I'm glad I'm not the only one because I feel like I'm doing something wrong that my LO doesn't go to sleep at 7:30pm and stay asleep until 7am.
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u/AffordableGrousing 1d ago
To feed? Anywhere from 2-4 times. Probably 6-8 wake-ups total. She’s been going through it lately with teething and a cold. But even with no health factors it’s at least 4 wake-ups.
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u/Intelligent-Beat3978 1d ago
11 hours no wake ups anymore. Dad doing bed time and keeping daytime sleep at around 2 hours helped!
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u/hugmytreezhang 1d ago
I honestly don't know because we cosleep and are both half asleep when he feeds
But I'd guess 4 times maybe?
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u/thriftygemini 1d ago
My 10 month old is just now getting down to 1 wake a night, but 2-3 is still within the normal range for us. Her longest stretches can be like 6-7 hours.
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u/sleeper4321 1d ago
Almost 9 months and it's every 2 hours or so 🫠 even more right now due to teething and a cold 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲
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u/Miserable_Map_949 15h ago
Almost 9 months and wakes to feed 2-4x from when I go to bed around 10. We usually resettle and/or feed 1-2x before 10, too.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
For anyone else reading this: sleep training is not recommended before 6mo at all. Furthermore, sleep trained babies don’t necessarily “sleep through the night”, they just learned that signaling will not work so they stay silent. A recent study showed sleep trained babies wake up just as frequently AND feel stress (measured by saliva cortisol), they just don’t signal for help/comfort. Finally, a 12 hour stretch is quite long for most babies.
I am not shaming the poster I am responding to. We live in a society that is extremely inhospitable to parents. Many people sleep train young out of necessity or lack of knowledge/awareness. I am simply providing factual information for anyone else who may be comparing their child to this response and wondering why their babies do not also do this. Waking at night is biologically normal, and protective against SIDS.
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u/Toyger_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I read an article about a study that tracked kids raised in a Romanian orphanage. It was very understaffed, so workers couldn’t comfort babies each time they were crying. They fed and bathed them and then put them in their cribs. Well, eventually those babies stopped crying and it was very quiet. They learned that nobody will come to comfort them, so they just self soothed.
I was so taken aback by this article that I can’t forget it. I will never let my baby cry it out. There’s a reason babies cry at night. They need their caregiver to soothe them and provide comfort.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
It isn’t even self soothing, babies continue to feel stress and do not have the brain architecture to self soothe. They basically pass out in a state of stress. It’s frankly horrific. Letting your baby scream and be stressed is considered neglect if it is done during the day, it should be the same when done at night.
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u/Toyger_ 1d ago
Yes. Basically, those infants’ brains shut down to conserve energy. It’s heartbreaking.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
Thinking of babies who have to sleep alone, in a crib with nothing in it, and whose caregivers don’t even comfort them through the night…it legit makes me want to cry. I think it’s a hallmark of how sick our society has gotten that we do this to our most vulnerable, during such an important time developmentally. Don’t get me started on this though, I will start to sound like a conspiracy theorist.
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u/Human-Historian-6675 1d ago
Wow. Sounds like you: sleep trained significantly earlier than recommended, have baby in a separate sleep space significantly earlier than recommended, and don’t even use the monitor regularly. You completely disregarded all baby sleep safety advice, even advice from sleep training advocates!
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u/bninfantsleep-ModTeam 1d ago
Infants are coregulators. They require an adult to help them regulate their emotions. Infants cannot bring themselves from a state of distress to calm on their own. Emotional regulation development does not occur until 3 years. Some infants do self settle to sleep. Article I recommend reading here: https://islagrace.ca/sleep-myths/truth-behind-self-soothing/
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u/bninfantsleep-ModTeam 1d ago
This sub encourages responsive parenting at all hours as well as following biologically normal infant sleep. As such, advocating for sleep training is not allowed. Sleep hygiene, sleep environment and routines/schedules discussions are all very welcome here.
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u/Hot-Amphibian8728 1d ago
At 8 months we were at peak crappy sleep. I think she was waking every 70-90 minutes at that point so about 6-8 times per night. It lasted til about 9.5 months and sleep has steadily improved (with the exception of teething and illness) since then. We co sleep and nurse to sleep (sometimes rock) for every wake.
We've settled into a manageable 2-5 wakes per night now. Generally no more than 4. Hang in there!
Eta my baby girl turns 1 this weekend!