All babies can sleep through the night from 12 weeks.
I repeat all babies.
Didn’t yours get the memo?
Mine were obviously busy checking Facebook, or having kip when it came out because they certainly didn’t obey.
In fact, my turning-eight next month eldest son could be about to hit a world record in the fact that he has never slept through the night. Never.
Not once.
Every single night since the day he was born he has woken up continuously. A merry-go-round of needing breastmilk, to bottles, to sippy cups of water. An endless torment of climbing from his cot, then out of his bed and inevitably, no matter how many times, now matter where we are, after placing him back in his bed, ending up in my bed.
EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT.
His two siblings have repeated the pattern, though they have been known to occasionally sleep a little better.
So I consider myself something of a reluctant expert when it comes to sleep deprivation.
I’ve read all the books (and I mean all of them) I’ve tried all the methods. I’ve been to clinics and had sleep gurus in. Been there done that. Failed.
So it’s with trepidation that I read yet another baby expert claim that in fact "all babies are capable of sleeping through the night from the age of 12 weeks."
(Can't you just hear the whistling of Mary Poppins as you digest that little fact?)
The expert with this handy little piece of advice is baby sleep 'guru' Alison Scott-Wright.
She is the author of a new book, The Sensational Baby Sleep Plan that kindly informs us sleep deprived veterans that in fact, contrary to our own torturous experiences, all babies can sleep 12 hours through the night - 7pm to 7am - from the age of 12 weeks.
(Lickedy split!)
She says:
"It's become the accepted norm that babies don't sleep, and you get these studies saying it's natural for babies to wake up once or twice a night. But I really don't know on what basis they can state that, because babies are designed to sleep" she told The Independent.
"Babies pretty much should be sleeping 12 hours through the night by three months - not by leaving them to scream or putting them at the end of the garden, but by understanding their natural patterns."
Now far be it for me – a mere journalist, not medically trained in any way, shape, or form, to knock the words of an expert. So before I do – lets go through what she suggests.