Time and time again parents tell me stories of frustration following many attempts at differing methods of encouraging their baby to sleep.
These processes include so called extinction methods, known as ‘cry it out’ or measured elimination such as ‘controlled crying’ and ‘controlled comforting’ or methods thought to re-align the current cycle, such as ‘waking at 7am, settling at 9am, waking at 11am, settling at 1pm....’ to name a few.
Parents often come away from any of the above experiences exhausted, confused and angry. They feel that either they have failed or that their baby is ‘stubborn and wilful’ or perhaps their child is ‘just not a sleeper’ and this is their lot in life.... I challenge this thinking.
We all need to sleep and we know that everyone has a sleep cycle. That is, they move from light (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep where they are active, often dream and breathing is more rapid. We then move to deep (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) sleep where there is no movement and the body is quiet. Adults have a sleep cycle of approximately 90 minutes long but babies sleep cycles are much shorter at 30-50 minutes long, providing more REM sleep and thereby more opportunity for babies to wake.
There is much talk by healthcare professionals of sleep associations. That is, something specific that is required to settle to sleep each time. I would like to point out that not all sleep associations are unhelpful, as once believed. Whilst it’s not ideal to feed your baby to sleep every time, as this may be difficult to uphold with your baby not necessarily requiring a feed when it is time for sleep or if the breastfeeding mum is absent during settling sometimes. Some other sleep associations may be helpful. For instance, the use of a sleep sack or soft toy/ favourite blanket each time may signal to your baby it is time for sleep. So often I see babies begin to relax as their sleep sacks are zipped up, once they begin to identify that familiar containment with their opportunity to sleep. Utilise helpful sleep associations to your advantage.
Your baby, like all of us, needs to learn to down-regulate prior to being expected to settle to sleep. In the early days and/or if your baby is particularly dis-regulated (ie. crying hard, unwell, etc.) they will need you to help them to down-regulate with a cuddle, a soothing voice or some skin to skin contact. Remember to utilise these when needed, but ease your baby into self- settling by putting them down awake from the down-regulated (but awake) state whenever possible. All good things take time to learn and babies are no different.
Remember your baby doesn’t know that insufficient sleep will make them tired and irritable, cause them difficulty making the most of each learning opportunity, interfere with appetite, make co-ordinating effective sucking during feeding and completing a feed satisfactorily difficult, interrupt their growth and make it all the harder to settle to sleep again next time. It’s therefore important for YOU to give your baby opportunity to sleep regardless of whether your baby thinks it’s time or not...be the bigger, stronger and wiser person. Your baby is relying on this. Keep half an eye on the clock and, if your baby has been up around 1 hour, start to think about settling them again soon. But, get in earlier if needed by watching for tired cues. Here are some ideas. Look for:
persistent grizzle
loss of interest in eye contact with you ! clenched fists
jerky movements, irritable, back arching ! hiccups
‘chatty’, noisy
rubbing eyes
rubbing face/ears
red around the eyebrows
dark circles under eyes
clingy/ wanting to be held constantly
Now have a think about the total amount of sleep your baby is having in 24 hours. The Australian Sleep Health Foundation has recently (2014) collated data from 312 studies over the last decade and released these guidelines:
- NB’s (0-3mths): 14-17 hrs/day
- Infants (4-11mths): 12-15 hrs/day
- Toddlers (1-2yrs): 11-14 hrs/day
- Preschoolers (3-5yrs): 10-13 hrs/day.
How does your baby measure up? They may be sleeping 10 hours at night, so are we being unreasonable expecting them to sleep most of the day too? Or they might enjoy sleeping during the day, but feed 3-4 times overnight. Think carefully about the TOTAL amount of sleep your baby is currently having and not just that you want them to sleep through the night- this may be an unreasonable expectation if they are already sleeping well at other times.
Frequent Periods of Night-time REM Sleep Has Developmental Benefits...Sleep researchers believe that infant sleeping patterns are a “smarter” way to sleep than typical adult sleeping. They theorize that light sleep helps the brain develop because the brain doesn’t rest during REM sleep. In fact, blood flow to the brain nearly doubles during REM sleep. (This increased blood flow is particularly evident in the area of the brain that automatically controls breathing.) During REM sleep the body increases its manufacture of certain nerve proteins, the building blocks of the brain.
Learning is also thought to occur during the active stage of sleep. The brain may use this time to process information acquired while awake, storing what is beneficial to the individual and discarding what is not. Some sleep researchers believe that REM sleeps acts to auto-stimulate the developing brain, providing beneficial imagery that promotes mental development.
During the light sleep stage, the higher centres of the brain keep operating, yet during deep sleep these higher brain centres shut off and the baby functions on their lower brain centres. It is possible that during this stage of rapid brain growth (babies’ brains grow to nearly seventy percent of adult volume during the first two years) the brain needs to continue functioning during sleep in order to develop.
It is interesting to note that premature babies spend even more of their sleep time (approximately 90 percent) in REM sleep, perhaps to accelerate their brain growth. As you can see, the period of life when humans sleep the most and the brain is developing the most rapidly is also the time when they have the most active sleep.
This is useful to keep in mind when trying to align baby’s sleep cycles with those of the adult. Whilst parents would like to have an uninterrupted sleep overnight, perhaps it is worth remembering, that to optimise your baby’s developmental progress, the infant brain needs to remain more active in sleep than the adult brain. This period of parent sleep deprivation will pass....
Copyright Louise Shalders.
