By: Lindsey Barron
When someone has a sound sleep and wakes up feeling refreshed, they often say “I slept like a baby.”
However, this popular expression for a good night’s rest has little in common with how babies actually sleep, and how much rest you’ll get when you bring your little one home for the first time.
The power of sleep
Sleep is an easily underestimated but crucial part of our well being. Diet and exercise have long been regarded as the cornerstones of maintaining health, but the benefits of sleep are numerous. It helps regulate hormones, boosts immunity and moderates emotions. For babies, getting the right amount of shuteye is an indispensable way to grow and develop.
“Although we think of sleep as an inactive state—it’s not like you’re doing anything— there’s a lot going on in the brain while you’re sleeping,” said Dr. Robyn Stremler, assistant professor of nursing at the University of Toronto and adjunct scientist at the Hospital for Sick Kids.
Especially for babies. From the moment they’re born, they start taking the world in. When they sleep, they process what they’ve learned. Babies spend about 50 percent of their time sleeping in a state called rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, which is also known as active sleep. When their eyes are fluttering and their bodies twitch, their heads are growing, their brains are busy forming new synapses and they’re making new connections between brain cells.
“The theory is that babies need more time in REM sleep because there’s more development and learning, in motor learning and cognitive learning and memory, and all those important processes are taking place quite rapidly,” said Dr. Shelly Weiss, director of the pediatric neurology training program at U of T and a neurologist who has worked at Sick Kids for 26 years.
But as new parents will learn after bringing their child home, infants have very different sleep cycles from the rest of us.
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From birth to six months
New parents may chalk up their infant’s random and, let’s face it, inconvenient sleep patterns to payback for their own behavior as children or as a fault of their fledgling parenting skills. But in reality, it all comes down to biology.
“When infants are born, they don’t actually have a developed circadian rhythm,” said Dr. Weiss. “They don’t have any way of responding to light and dark or the cues that help us to sleep at night and wake during the day, so their rhythm is very random when they’re born.”
Infants up to six months old will typically sleep between 15 to 17 out of 24 hours in a day, in spurts of one to four hours. By the time they reach six months old, most babies will grow out of their five or more naps a day and begin sleeping for longer periods of time.
“There’s a very critical development between three and six months, so during that time babies go from this very random sleep-wake cycle during 24 hours to being able to consolidate night sleep,” said Dr. Weiss.
Of course, some babies come home from the hospital and have no trouble sleeping six to seven hours straight. But for an average baby, the first six months means lots of naps—and naps are prime opportunities for parents to look out for their own needs.
“I think the most important thing is to make sleep a priority. That’s easy to say but that can be hard to do,” said Dr. Stremler, who has a two-year old son and a seven-month old daughter. “It’s okay to go to bed earlier than you used to—if it’s eight o’clock at night and you’re tired, that’s probably not your usual bedtime but if you think you can fall asleep, then take that extra time.”
“It’ll just really make a difference in your ability to care for the baby. It’s overwhelming to be a new parent, so we know if you’re missing out on sleep it’s harder to cope with things,” said Dr. Stremler.
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Simple sleep strategies
When it comes to dealing with your child’s sleep cycles during the first six months, just go with the flow. “You can’t really teach them, you’re just promoting better sleep at night,” said Dr. Weiss. Both doctors recommend behavioral-educational techniques to encourage better sleep, including:
• Develop a bedtime routine, like giving baby a bath, reading a book or having a cuddle
• Dim the lights when you’re getting baby ready for sleep to cue that it’s nighttime
• Put baby to sleep when they are drowsy but awake so they don’t associate falling asleep with feeding
The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends putting infants to sleep on their backs on a firm surface, removing any blankets from their crib and keeping the room’s temperature at a comfortable level. Infants should also sleep in their parents’ room for the first six months because there’s a decreased incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
“The theory is that if a baby was having any trouble the parent might rouse. Another theory is that a baby that sleeps in your room is likely to be feeding at night, and having more contact,” said Dr. Weiss.
If parents are consistent with their child’s bedtime routine during the first six months of life and understand their baby’s sleep needs, there’s a better chance that the whole family will be happier, and more rested.
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