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Newborns need to sleep a lot, yet for new parents, sleep can be a real challenge. Infants either cry out when put down, refuse to nap while appearing exhausted, wake up frequently at night, or sleep all day and are awake all night. A baby’s prolonged alertness can worry parents because adequate sleep is essential for growth, brain development, immunity, heart protection, hunger regulation, attention spans, and learning. Not to mention how completely exhausted it makes all caretakers.
The truth is that a baby’s sleep is considerably different from that of an adult. They have very specialised requirements and a completely different sleep architecture.
First and foremost, newborns lack a day/night clock or circadian rhythm. This takes between two and four months to slowly grow. Until then, we are unable to put them on a day-night routine and must instead wholly take care of them, no matter how exhausting it may be for us. Any attempt to influence or assist in that process will result in an overtired, irritable, and even more awake baby.
There are just two stages of sleep for newborns: quiet and active. Babies develop sleep cycles and five stages of sleep after four months, during the infamous four-month “sleep regression”, in reality. Everyone sleeps in cycles, with the average adult cycle lasting about two hours. The stages of a sleep cycle include drowsy, light sleep, deep sleep, deepest sleep, REM sleep, and then the stages are repeated in reverse. Even adults, awaken at the end of every sleep cycle.
Adults and older children can put themselves to sleep by turning over, drawing up a blanket, fluffing a pillow, and other self-soothing techniques. Because they lack the biological capacity to do it on their own, babies and young toddlers cannot be expected to go back to sleep on their own. Parental duties include rocking, patting, or nursing the infant back to sleep so that another sleep cycle can begin. They will typically wake up during naps or night-time sleep until they progressively reach the “sleeping through the night” milestone at roughly 3.5 to 4 years old. This is biologically normal.
The next thing we must be aware of is that infants are unable to regulate their sleep on their own. When they are exhausted, they do not just fall asleep. In actuality, a child is overtired if they are awake for a prolonged period of time at a specific age (referred to as “age-appropriate wake windows”). The stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are secreted by the child’s body when it realises that sleep won’t come soon. The youngster gets a “second wind,” which causes them to become hyperactive and wake up suddenly. An overtired youngster has trouble falling asleep, which can cause sleep resistance and frequent night-time awakenings.
Also, young children do not do well sleeping by themselves. Kids seek out physical contact with a parent while they are sleeping thanks to a biological survival drive. This explains why infants frequently need to be carried during naps in the early months and why they prefer to share a bed rather than sleep in cots, which is the current trend. Also, they are easily stimulated and require a quiet, dark place to sleep in, particularly during the four-month sleep regression.
Sleep regression is a brief disruption in a newborn’s sleeping pattern brought on by possible developmental changes the baby may be experiencing. These developmental milestones take place at regular intervals throughout a baby’s growth, such as at 4 months, 8–10 months, 12–16 months, and so on. The shift from one nap to another is a significant sleep milestone that babies experience.
The main goal of sleep training is to teach a baby to “self-soothe” by separating them from their parent and letting them scream. In actuality, this is unscientific because babies cannot soothe themselves. This school of thought has produced an environment where parents are reluctant to help their babies sleep, where encouraging “independence” is seen as the key to sound sleep, and where a number of behaviours that in fact utterly contradict a baby’s biological sleep pattern are fashionable. Without any sleep training, one can have a successful sleep parenting journey by knowing biologically normal sleep, having realistic expectations of what is normal, and satisfying the baby’s needs.
(Himani Dalmia is an Australian-certified Infant and Child Sleep Specialist, and the co-author of ‘Sleeping Like A Baby’ published by Penguin India.)