Preemies
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sleeping through the night
How old was your preemie when he/she began sleeping through the night? Our babies are 6 weeks old, 37 weeks gestation. One baby is home with us. I know I hear typically babies start STTN around 2-3 months, but what about with preemies? I'm not expecting it anytime soon of course I'm just curious how it differs. Right now, he's on a feed on demand schedule and eats about every 4 hours, overnight he did go 5 hours. My daughter is still in the NICU and eats about every 3 1/2 -4 hours.
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Re: sleeping through the night
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Totally depends on your definition of STTN. We didn't get to 11 hours of straight sleep until about 12.5 months actual, 9.5 months adjusted. For the first 2 weeks at home (3 months actual, newborn adjusted) we had to wake him up to eat every 3 hours. For the 2 weeks after that, the pedi said we coudl go to 4 hours, and then once he had been home a month, she said he could sleep as long as he wanted. He slowly increased that time to about 6 hour stretches. By about 8 months actual, 5 months adjusted he slept for 8 hours (8p-4a) and everyone (pedi, neonatologist, developmental therapist, ect) said we couldn't ask for more. He was waking up after 8 hours because he was hungry, so we would feed him and he would go back to sleep fairly easily. We probably continued on that path longer than we would have with a full-term baby because we've been so focused on catch-up growth and getting him full of calories.
Also, our developmental therapist said that sleep patterns become habit by the end of 3 months adjusted. So if they are in a routine of waking up to eat overnight at that point, it will likely continue for some time after that. My son had MSPI, so we had feeding issues/bloody stools/diarrhea/etc to work through during that time - which made trying to enforce a feeding/sleeping routine next to impossible. Good luck.