Maybe some parents could weigh in on what that looks like when they are trying to get their little ones to sleep?
Something to keep in mind is that “sleeping through the night” = 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep, broken sleep the “rest” of the night, and most kids don’t only sleep at night until somewhere between 2yo & 6yo (1-3 naps a day... and thank every star in the sky for them. I cried like a lost thing when my son dropped a nap the first time. And I don’t cry, as a rule. It’s literaly one of the 7 times I’d cried in my adult life until just recently.).
Sleeping like a baby =
Miserable sleep. Up every 2 hours, screaming bloody murder, covered in your own sick, soaked through with pee, or diahhrea half up your back (sometimes all the way up to your hair). Every new parent I’ve ever met gets a kick out of that phrase. I can’t quite decide if it’s stuck around just
because new parents think it’s so funny (and there are always new parents) or if “not a care in the world and a tit in your mouth” is really so appealing (it
sounds good, I suppose? Sort of like sex on the beach sounds romantic*ntil one encounters sand in delicate places = no.)
All babies are different... but for the ones in my life that meant (approximately)
- 9 months of asleep for 2 hours, up for 1 hour.
- 6 months of asleep for 5 hours screaming bloody murder for 10 hours (colic).
- 18 months of asleep for 2 hours, up for 20 minutes
- 12 months of asleep 4 hours, up 2 hours
- 9 months of asleep 2, up 1 // sleep 6, up 4.
- Slept through the night almost from day 1 <<< This is a lot of people’s first kid. And then they have their 2nd and realize all their friends are NOT the terrible parents they thought they were :bag:
And a pretty key thing with the above is that every 2-3 months? What “worked” no longer does, for most kids. You have to completely change things around in order to get them “back” to the “decent” sleep they had before. Instead of up aaaaaall night with them absolutely miserable and inconsolable. There’s always a reason, teething or sitting up or whatnot. But it changes how you have to approach things when their mouth hurts, or they get stuck (or smash their face into the bars of the crib, and then
that hurts), or thenmoment you lay them down they spin around like a top and are on their feet with a leg over the rail (noooooooo), or, or, or. It’s still your kid, so you can figure it out pretty quick (everyone becomes experts in their own kids really fast, and you’re still up a creek)
...but they sell billions of “sleep method” books for a very good reason... babies sleep for crap and new parents are almost universally both utterly exhausted and completely desperate.
