UNDERSTANDING YOUR BABY’S SLEEP

Are you struggling with your baby’s sleep?

Are you worried about your baby’s night waking and not ‘sleeping through the night?

Are you one of the parents who think that their children have sleep problem?  

I ask you as an adult, do you sleep all through the night? Ironically, nobody actually sleeps through the night – child or adult. Sleep is not that simple. We don’t just go to sleep at night and wake in the morning; we move through a series of different sleep cycles and often wake in between.

Let’s look at the main two phases of sleep known as ‘Rapid Eye Movement’ (REM), or ‘Active Sleep’, and ‘Non- Rapid Eye Movement’ (NREM) or ‘Quiet Sleep’.

At the start of a sleep cycle we enter NREM, moving from a drowsy state through to a light sleep to a much deeper level where arousal based on environmental triggers is minimal. At the end of this phase we move into REM, which is a bizarre blend of deep sleep and a high level of brain activity. REM sleep plays host to vivid dreams and nightmares, whilst NREM is the host to night terrors and bed-wetting.

Non- Rapid Eye Movement Sleep

Rapid Eye Movement Sleep

 At night we move through different cycles of REM and NREM, and often wake at the end of a sleep cycle, although sometimes we may be so drowsy we don’t remember it. 

An average adult sleep cycle lasts for around 90 minutes, whereas for a 0-3years old it is around 45 minutes. This means that, on an average night, an adult has around 5 sleep cycles, whereas a 0-3years infant will have an average of 10 sleep cycles. Or better put, children have 10 chances of waking between sleep cycles at night if their needs aren’t met or something startles them.

A baby will spend between 40 and 50 per cent of their sleep in REM. For a one-year-old this figure will be around 35 per cent, and for a two-year-old, around 30 per cent. Contrast this to an adult who spends on average only 20 per cent of their sleep in REM.   Therefore having more REM sleep is beneficial to babies. Biologically speaking, it’s not a problem: its life saving! Do not force your baby to take more (deeper) sleep than he or she is biologically programmed for, there is almost always a price to pay for it.

Five steps to cope with your baby’s sleep:

1.     Reset your expectations on how long your child should sleep.  All children are different – some need more sleep, some need less. Babies and toddlers by nature are ‘poor’ sleepers; this is totally normal and certainly not an indication of any parenting failure.

 2.     Make changes in your daily routine life to cope better. Try and go to bed earlier, get some help around the house or catch up on sleep at weekends.

 3.     Children shouldn’t be put to bed too early. The average bedtime for 0–3-year-olds is around 8:30pm. This is the time scientists found works best for most toddlers. If your baby attends crèche/daycare, you must give time for the cortisol levels to fall after returning home before taking him to bed. The cortisol is the hormone that keeps us awake and active, and research shows it takes around two hours to fall. In other words, children need to be at home from crèche/nursery, winding down for at least two hours before bedtime.

4.     Remove as much light as possible from the bedroom. Electric lighting, particularly modern energy-saving light bulbs and blue/white/yellow coloured children’s night lights, inhibit melatonin – the hormone of sleep. The best option is no light source, but if you must put light, use a red bulb, which doesn’t inhibit melatonin.

5.     Be patient with your child. The state of sleeplessness won’t last forever, your child will start to sleep more as s/he gets older – and one day you will have a teenager who refuses to get out of bed before early in the morning.