We know that the fact that a baby and young children do not sleep at a stretch is most normal, but It is also not strange that a baby sleeps all night from a certain age.
This does not mean that we should look for “remedies” if the baby does not sleep all night, since not only the awakenings are natural but also healthy. We have already talked about it often on the blog.
But does a baby who sleeps all night have a lack? Should we wake him up? Surely you will be surprised to ask me these questions, when the usual thing (or what is heard most) is to ask the opposite: do you wake up so much because something is missing? What could I do to make him sleep best?
Given this, parents worried about what is not a problem, there comes a time when it gives a certain "shame" to say: My son sleeps like a lil. It's like politically incorrect. Before questions similar to "And how do you do it?" One does not know what to answer. We do not do anything.
You also read in different forums that the cases of small babies who sleep through the night are very exceptional, those sleepy babies are little less than “weirdoes”, which are sure to be victims of some behavioral method, which moves them away from parents, that they "bait" them with a bottle or are abandoned to their fate and that is why they sleep so much.
And in this sense, this post is a little claim of babies like any other, healthy, cared for, loved, who share a room with their parents, who are breastfed, who naturally sleep many hours in a row. And that they are nothing weird.
Worry because a baby sleeps all night
And the opposite effect can also occur: when in your environment you know the case of babies and children who wake up often, knowing that it is normal, I worry because the baby sleeps all night thinking that it is not “normal "
It seems that you are waiting for the baby to wake up because he is hungry, because he needs to suck, because he wants contact, to know that we are there together watching over him. But none of that wakes him up and the hours of peaceful sleep go by.
I explain why I stop at this point: my daughters have been very sleepy, at four months they already slept normally all night at a stretch, and this at some point has come to "worry", to be interested in sleep patterns, to look for negative effects of sleeping for so long.
And what was the result? Well, I have come to the conclusion that it is normal for babies to establish more stable and lasting sleep patterns by four months, sleeping "at a stretch", as if they continue to wake up during the nights over the years.
In fact, when babies are one year old, most of them, more than 70% according to different studies, such as the one we see below, will sleep through the night. However, yes there could be some inconvenience for babies who sleep through the night, as we will explain in an upcoming installment about this topic.
Results of the study on children's sleep “Sleep all night”
A study we talked about a few months ago, published in the journal "Pediatrics", conducted by researchers from the Department of Psychology and Health Sciences of the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), concludes that the fastest consolidation in the regulation of Children's sleep occurs in the first four months.
That is, if the baby tends to increase the minutes of sleep during the first months, this increase is much faster in the first four months, becoming slower after that age.
He also notes that most babies sleep through the night at two and three months of age, regardless of the criteria used. And according to the study data, at five months more than half of the children sleep through the night, the same time as their parents, from approximately 10 pm to 6 am.
The study is titled “Sleeping Through the Night: The Consolidation of Self-regulated Sleep Across the First Year of Life” (“Sleep all night: The consolidation of self-regulated sleep throughout the first year of life”) and also indicates that at the end of the first year of life, 73% of babies slept those eight hours "on the pull".
The research analyzed data on sleep patterns of 75 full-term babies (the results could not be extrapolated to premature babies), during the first year of life, six days of each month. The reports written by the parents of these babies were checked by videotapes of the children's sleep.
The authors point out that their study has certain limitations, such as that it was not sufficiently representative of different ethnicities and social classes, or that there were some parents who stopped participating in it. But their results approximate other publications about childhood sleep patterns.
Do these results mean that children who are out of that time have a problem? I will not get tired of repeating no, that it is normal and healthy to continue waking up for a long time. In addition, with the passing of the months a child who slept through the night may stop doing so, and it is also normal.
And on the contrary, can these babies who sleep all night present a problem? That is, did my concern have any basis? We will see it next in an upcoming entry.
Photos | bfhoyt and surligirl on Flickr
More information | Pediatrics
In Babies and more | The continuous waking of midnight, The phases of baby's sleep, It is healthy for babies to wake up at night (Part One), When do babies sleep all night?
