Let me preface this by saying my children are both equally wonderful and sweet and frustrating, each in their own special ways. I am only comparing them because they are my only two experiences with babies and it's all I've got.
Tabby slept through the night at around 2.5 months. We could lie her down in her crib and she would happily drift off to sleep to the sounds of her music and wake up approximately 11 hours later refreshed and ready to go. If she did wake up in the night, all it took was a visit from the bink fairy to get her back to sleep. It was awesome. I will be the first to admit that it wasn't automatic, though. We had to, at least in part, work with her to get her doing this. A little bit of comforting, a bit of letting her cry for a while, etc. But the point is, we did it and it wasn't even too bad.
Then there's Ben. He has never slept through the night. Well maybe once, but it was probably a paltry 7 hours. These days on the good nights he goes down with a bottle between 6 and 7 wakes up between 10 and midnight for a bottle and then will sleep to 6 AM or so when Matt puts him in his swing and lets him watch Baby Einstein. It is doable. Not awesome, but doable, since Matt is frequently up that late and can take the late bottle. Sometimes we get a lot of good nights in a row … sometimes just one or two before we have a bad night. On bad nights Ben wakes up and stays up at 10 and then again 3 or 4 AM, sometimes for an hour. There are some intermittent wake-ups frequently as well. It.is.TERRIBLE.
I can accept that owing to his size, he may need to have a bottle in the middle of the night, though I think the need for this should be diminishing since he is eating solids now. And he hasn't really been finishing his bottles and frequently calms after just seeing us so this says to me it ain't just about sustenance anymore.
I think we've known for a while that it was something we needed to work on with him, but it has been nuts around our house lately with the holidays and the basement and the sickies. And despite Matt's intermittent threats to “ferberize his butt” we have yet to make any real attempts at teaching him to self-soothe. Also, we need to drop his crib because he can damn near climb out already being so big and fairly agile.
The day is drawing nigh. I am steeling myself for some more crying than normal and maybe a little less sleep. I'm reading up on my Baby Whisperer and maybe even checking out the man himself – Dr. Ferber. I need sleep really really badly.
My name is Jess. I'm a 30ish wife and working mommy. I love spending time with my family and friends, crafting up weird and beautiful things, cooking delicious food and running lots of miles to work it off. I love chocolate, wine, Photoshop, my Nikon and sleeping in. I do freelance design work for fun and marginal profit at 
5 Comments
Try the No-Cry Sleep Solution. Its a great book. Hope things get better.
We're going through the same thing. And it was the same with the Mini too. He was sleeping pretty much through the night, with an occasional bad night maybe once every other week or so, at about the same time as Tabby. This one? Oy. She was up from 1:45-4am the other night. We were both pretty close to standing on a corner and selling her. Or maybe paying someone to take her. It was bad. I've had to let her cry for for 5-10 minutes because I can't deal with the waking up constantly.
I used the Ferber trick on my oldest. All it took was one very painful night. The pain came because I was watching him on a video monitor and could see when he finally gave up & it broke my heart. But, we didn't have any more problems out of him and he still sleeps like a log 6 years later.
I am 100% convinced that this is the difference between boys and girls. Abbie started sleeping through the night early, with minimal work on our part. Jack woke up in the middle of the night until 9 mo, and was ready for the day at 5:30am until 18 mo. We had to let him cry it out to get over the middle of the night wakings. It was really tough and we cursed our dr for telling us to do it, and fought amongst ourselves over it being the right thing to do… but it worked. I also think the earlier you do it the better. Jackson will still occasionally cry out in the middle of the night, like his mind is still used to the schedule. I would love another baby boy, but am dreading thoughts of the first 6-9 months of sleep problems.
GOOD LUCK!!!
Not to contradict the previous poster, but Laura is much worse in the sleep department than our two boys were. Last night I was rejoicing because I was ONLY up three times with her. Usually it's once an hour.