Will baby sleep soundly at six months? Dream on!

RED-EYED and weary, new parents often hang on to the hope that their baby will start sleeping through the night once it is six months old.

Many are left feeling inadequate when their child then fails to snooze for the expected eight hours.

But research shows that it is normal for babies to continue to have a broken sleep pattern beyond six months.

Some never manage to stay asleep all night, while many do so only rarely. This is because they do not suddenly ‘achieve’ sleeping through the night but progress slowly towards it, changing their slumber patterns from day to day, a study found.

Canadian researchers asked 44 mothers to track the sleep of their six-month-old over 13 days. In that time, only one baby managed to sleep eight consecutive hours every night.

On average, mothers reported that their infant woke 2.3 times a night, sleeping six hours consecutively for about five of the nights and eight hours unbroken for about three. Half never slept eight hours consecutively and one in five didn’t once manage six hours.

Almost three-quarters had highly variable sleep patterns.

Breastfed babies and those who slept with their mother achieved a lower number of nights – where they snoozed for six or eight hours straight.

Experts previously suggested that babies start to sleep through the night – between six and eight hours unbroken – at around six months.

The lead author of the study, Dr MarieHelene Pennestri of McGill University in Montreal, said: ‘Although previous research has shown that infants start sleeping through the night at different stages of development, l i ttle i s known about individual sleep patterns night after night.

‘Parents are often exposed to a lot of contradictory information about infant sleep. They shouldn’t worry i f their baby doesn’t sleep through the night at a specific age, because sleep patterns differ a lot in infancy.

‘One important piece of the puzzle is understanding parents’ perceptions and expectations of infant sleep.’