You will probably hear other parents say, ‘Our child is already sleeping through the night!’. You can perhaps only dream of this at the moment. Do not be unsettled by such statements.

“Sleeping through” is misleading when it comes to babies sleeping behavior: “Sleeping through” means that your child will be able to sleep for about 6 hours or more at night around the age of 6 months. If you put your child to bed at 19.30, he or she may wake up for the first time at about 1:30 (after 6 hours). It is unlikely for you as a parent to talk about “slept through” at that point. For your baby, however, this is a normal behavior and part of its normal development.

Developmental psychology studies have shown that all babies wake up regularly during the night. The majority of children fall back asleep on their own after a brief nighttime awakening, so parents assume that their child has slept through the night. However, there are also children who need their parents’ help and will make themselves known after waking up.