The Baby Sleep Book: How to help your baby to sleep and have a restful night. Martha Sears

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ more vulnerable periods – more times during the night when they are likely to wake up. In addition, babies spend more time in REM (light) sleep in the second half of the night. This explains why babies often wake up more during that time.

       Bottom line: minimize arousal stimuli during vulnerable periods for night waking.

      As babies grow, their sleep cycles lengthen and the percentage of deep sleep increases. There are fewer vulnerable periods during the night when they can awaken easily. They also sleep more deeply and they stay asleep longer – a sleep maturity milestone called settling. The age at which babies settle varies greatly according to the sleep temperament of the baby. The good news is that all babies eventually settle.

      Babies’ developing sleep patterns are much like their changing feeding patterns. In the early months babies take small, frequent feedings and short, frequent naps. About fifty per cent of the total sleep of a newborn is REM sleep. This percentage is even higher in premature infants. As you can see from the graph below, as babies grow, they learn to sleep and feed more like adults. These five things happen:

       REM (active) sleep decreases

       Non-REM (deep) sleep increases

       Sleep cycles lengthen

       Vulnerable periods for night waking occur less frequently

       The total number of hours of daily sleep lessens.

      This is called sleep maturity.

      Babies are designed this way. Why are babies’ sleep patterns so different from adults’? Answer: because babies need to sleep this way. How babies sleep is one of many things throughout infancy and childhood that parents can’t control, and it may even be unsafe and unwise to try to change. Keep in mind that babies sleep the way they do – or don’t – because they are designed that way for both developmental and survival benefits.

      Babies sleep smarter. REM sleep is more than an annoying nuisance that keeps parents as well as babies from sleeping more deeply. The fact that babies’ developing brains don’t turn themselves off as well during sleep as adult brains has developmental benefits. Sleep researchers believe that REM sleep stimulates the infant brain at a time when it is growing very rapidly. Blood flow to the brain increases during REM sleep. The lower brain centres fire off electrical stimuli toward higher brain centres. This stimulation works like mental exercise to help the brain centres develop. The mental activity of dreaming helps the brain grow more neurons. This theory that REM sleep stimulates brain growth is supported by the fact that the young of highly intelligent animal species spend more time in REM sleep than the young of less intelligent species. One day as I was explaining the light sleep/better brain correlation to a tired mother of a wakeful infant, she chuckled, “In that case, my baby is going to be very clever.”

      Babies sleep healthier and safer. Not only do these immature sleep patterns help babies grow smarter, they help them grow healthier and sleep safer. Suppose your baby slept like an adult. Suppose baby slept so deeply that he couldn’t signal when he was hungry, cold, had a stuffy nose and was having difficulty breathing, or was just plain scared? Baby’s well-being would be threatened. Babies come wired to awaken so that they can let nearby caregivers know what they need to thrive and survive. What does this mean to parents? These arousals are thought to be protective arousals, and they are beneficial. Training babies to sleep too deeply, for too long, too young is not in the best interest of the baby’s development and well-being.

      Sears’ Sleep Tip: Now that you understand infant sleep, when people ask, “How does your baby sleep?” you can answer, “Like a baby”.

      There are sleep trainers who ignore these basic biological facts and insist that babies should be able to put themselves to sleep and sleep through the night. As you can see from the information in the previous pages, putting a baby down to sleep alone in a cot and leaving the baby to cry himself to sleep, and back to sleep when he awakens, is biologically and developmentally wrong. We are passionate about helping parents understand their babies’ basic sleep needs and giving them tools to cope until their babies reach sleep maturity, so we hope you’ll keep these biological facts in mind when making all decisions about your baby’s sleep.

how babies sleep at various ages

      As with all developmental milestones, the age at which babies wake up less and start “sleeping through the night” varies from baby to baby. Here are the general sleep patterns that most babies follow at various stages along the way to sleep maturity:

       Newborn period. In the first month, babies tend to sleep a total of sixteen to seventeen hours a day. They sleep in three to four hour stretches with an equal amount of sleep during the daytime and nighttime hours. At this age babies wake up mainly from hunger (which they don’t experience until they’re born, so it’s very scary for them at first).

       One to three months. Between six and eight weeks of age, babies begin to “consolidate” their sleep into shorter periods during the day and slightly longer periods at night. They sleep from 15 to 16 hours a day. At this age, most babies wake up at least once a night and need a feeding and help to resettle (many will wake up two or three times). Babies start waking up not only from hunger, but also from a need for closeness (being alone is also very scary).

       Three to six months. Babies sleep a total of around fifteen hours a day, taking two or three two-hour naps during the day and doing the rest of their sleeping at night. By six months, most babies will begin to sleep four- to five-hour stretches at night. At this age babies also begin having shorter REM periods of sleep and longer non-REM.

      babies sleep differently

      Notice how babies sleep differently than do adults and imagine what could go wrong if they didn’t.

      Infant Sleep

       Designed to easily awaken

       Designed to sleep less deeply

       Need night feedings

       Short sleep cycles, 60 minutes

       Mostly REM (active) sleep

      Adult Sleep

       Designed to stay asleep

       Designed to sleep more deeply

       Don’t need night feedings

       Long sleep cycles, 90 minutes

       Most non-REM (quiet) sleep

       Six to nine months. Babies sleep around 14 hours a day and may drop one of their naps. Most babies between six and nine months take one morning and one afternoon nap. They may start sleeping seven-hour stretches at night. Most continue to wake up several times a night, and some can self-soothe back to sleep. Developmental changes start triggering night waking at this stage. They practise their motor development, such as sitting up, while still half-asleep. Add teething pain to this list and you have a recipe for night waking even in babies who were previously “good” sleepers.

       Nine to twelve months. Babies sleep СКАЧАТЬ