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Infant Sleep
HOW INFANTS SLEEP
From "The Baby Book" and
"Nighttime Parenting", William Sears, M.D. & Martha Sears, R.N.
(parents of eight!)
No one sleeps through the
night. We all cycle in between stages of sleep; REM (light or
active sleep) and non-REM (deep sleep). Adults can pass into
non-REM sleep pretty quickly. Babies, however, spend more time in
REM sleep before cycling into the deep sleep stage. Infants enter
deep sleep through a period of REM (light) sleep usually lasting
about 20 minutes. If you nurse and rock your baby to sleep but try
to place him in his bed before he has passed through the REM
state, he is likely to wake. Wait at least 20 minutes. Pick up an
arm or a leg; if it drops tonelessly, baby is probably in the deep
sleep stage. If baby jerks or twitches, wait a bit longer.
Remember, too, that co-sleeping babies and mothers often share
sleep cycles, making it less likely that baby will wake mother
from the deep sleep stage.
In addition to entering the
deep sleep state differently, babies have shorter sleep cycles
than adults. Adults spend an average of 90 minutes in the deep
sleep state before rousing into the lighter REM state. Babies
enter this lighter sleep state twice as often as an adult,
sometimes as frequently as every hour. Babies are vulnerable to
stimulus during this lighter sleep phase and that's when night
waking occurs.
Furthermore, babies have
twice as much light sleep than adults. There is a very good reason
for this; the biological survival of the infant. If babies slept
as deeply as adults for long periods of time they could not signal
their needs. Babies are designed to awaken easily so they can feed
frequently, so their breathing isn't compromised, or if it is,
they can signal their parents by crying. Some researchers have
theorized that SIDS may be linked to an infant being so deeply
asleep that he cannot rouse himself (apnea). Sleep researchers
also believe that light sleep stimulates brain development.
Remember, that light or REM sleep, is the stage where dreaming
takes place. It is believe that the visual images of dreams
provide stimulation of the baby's brain, enhancing it's
development. If REM sleep is chemically suppressed in newborn
animals, they show sleep and brain dysfunction as adults. When
humans are deprived of REM sleep for a time, the percentage of REM
sleep increases in the following nights.
In the first three months of
life, an infant's sleep is much like his feeding: small, frequent
meals followed by short, frequent naps. Most infants do not sleep
more than four hours without needing a feeding. In a breastfed
baby, this interval may be as short as two hours. Take heart,
though; as baby grows and matures, the periods of light sleep
become less frequent and deeper sleep more common. By age two,
most children only spend 25% of their sleep time in the REM state.
QUICK FACTS ABOUT INFANT
SLEEP
Babies enter sleep through
REM sleep; they need help to go to sleep.
Sleep cycles are shorter for
babies than for adults, with more light than deep sleep.
Babies have more vulnerable
periods for night waking than adults; they have difficulty getting
back to sleep.
The medical definition of
"sleeping through the night" is a five hour stretch.
Babies usually awaken two or
three times a night from birth to six months, once or twice from
six months to one year, and may awaken once a night from one to
two years. Babies' night waking habits and parents' perception
of what constitutes a "sleep problem" vary so widely that
"average" or "normal" amounts of night waking must be stated as
ranges rather than in exact figures.
Babies' sleep habits are more
determined by individual temperaments than parents' nighttime
abilities. It's not your fault baby wakes up, nor is it his.
Giving babies solids before
bedtime rarely helps them sleep longer. Starting solids before 4-6
months of age is not recommended.
It's all right to sleep with
baby in your bed. In fact, sharing sleep works better than other
arrangements for many families and may be more "normal" than baby
sleeping separately in a crib.
You cannot force a baby to
sleep. Creating a secure environment that allows sleep to overtake
baby is the best way to create long-term healthy sleep attitudes.
The frequent waking stage will not last forever. |
