Parents Shouldn't Worry If Their Baby Doesn't Sleep Through The Night

BOSTON (CBS) - If your baby isn't sleeping through the night yet, Canadian researchers say not to worry.

Sleeping through the night is considered sleeping for six or eight hours a night without waking up. Many parents feel their babies should be able to do that by six months of age.

If they don't they often worry that they are failures as parents or that something is wrong with their child.

A new study in the journal Pediatrics looked at hundreds of babies and found many developmentally normal, healthy babies don't sleep through the night at six months or even at one year of age.

They say there is plenty of variation in when babies begin to sleep for prolonged periods of time, just like with any developmental milestone, and the timing does not affect a baby's language, motor and cognitive skills.