When babies are able to sleep through the night and when they actually do are often very different things. Some infants as young as 3 months old can snooze for six to eight hours at a stretch. Others won't sleep this long until they're 12 months. But most babies (70 percent) do sleep through the night by the time they hit 9 months, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
Not that "sleeping through the night" means a full night of uninterrupted sleep for you. "'Through the night' is defined as from midnight until five o'clock in the morning," says Judith Owens, a pediatrician and director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
You may have heard that bigger babies and babies who eat solids are better sleepers — but it's not true. Your baby's ability to sleep through the night is related to age, not size or diet.
There's no research to prove that adding rice cereal to the evening bottle, for instance, will help your baby sleep better or longer. In fact, this practice is a choking hazard, and offering solids too early can deprive your baby of the necessary nutrients in breast milk or formula. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies be exclusively breastfed for the first four to six months.
You play a big part in your baby's sleep habits. "Put her to bed drowsy but awake by the time she's 4 months old," says Owens. "This will help her avoid developing a dependence on you to fall asleep and make it easier for her to fall back to sleep on her own when she wakes at night."
