I am certain that every parent has been through times when their baby won’t sleep. Perhaps you are a new parent and are wondering whether your babies sleep habits are normal? Let me start by giving you some average figures so you can determine if you really have a problem.

As a rough guide, a full-term infant (not premature) will sleep on average, for about 14-16 hours per day. At first, your newborn baby will have quite a chaotic sleep cycle and each sleep period can last between 30 minutes and 3 hours, with a complete sleep cycle about every 50-60 minutes.

This means that your newborn is invariably in light sleep and can wake up many times a night. Don’t worry though, this stage does not last forever and after about 6 weeks a more predictable pattern will start to establish itself. By age three to four months, your baby will start to sleep for shorter durations during the day and for longer durations at night. At this point about 75% of babies will be sleeping 14-15 hours in a 24 hour period with a 6-8 hour chunk at night.

If you feel your baby won’t sleep to the point where something is wrong, you may wish to consider some of the following points:

  • Are you baby’s physical needs being met? Before laying your baby down to sleep make sure that your baby is well fed and dry and is a comfortable temperature. Newborn babies are not very good at regulating their own temperature, so you should be careful not to overheat them. Use your common sense and if the room is a comfortable temperature, do not wrap your baby in multiple layers of bedding.
  • In the first three months, it will help your baby establish his or her biological clock if you can expose your baby to as much natural light during the day and as little artificial light in the evening or night.
  • There is a window of opportunity when it is an ideal time to lay your baby down to sleep. If your baby gets overtired then your baby will be more likely to sleep poorly and will usually not sleep as long. Try and get used to observing the signals that your baby gives when getting tired. This may include, yawning, eye rubbing, ear pulling and arching.
  • Make sure that you don’t overstimulate your baby just before bed.
  • Try to develop a consistent bedtime routine. Studies have shown that a properly developed bedtime routine increases the quality and duration of sleep. The routine need not be long but it should provide consistent cues for sleep. These should take into consideration, location, sound, smell and lighting.
  • It may be that your baby has come to rely on external help to get to sleep. This may be a pacifier (dummy), driving around the block, being nursed to sleep or other similar sleep prop. Unless you can consistently provide this external help, you should remove it.
  • If your baby falls asleep fine but can not go to sleep without assistance if he or she wakes at night, then you will need to teach your baby to self soothe. This does NOT mean that you should use “Cry It Out” style techniques.
  • Finally, if you hear her during the night, don’t rush in to her straight away. I’m not suggesting that you ignore the cries of your distressed baby though. Just try and wait for a couple of minutes if you can.

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Filed under: General Sleep Information

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