Infant sleep patterns

A newborn's dreams
Human beings dream right from the start. Indeed, when a baby is first born, she dreams more than she'll dream later on. In the first week or so, she might dream during 30 to 60 per cent of her sleep time, compared to the 25 per cent of sleep time that adults spend in a dream state. Premature babies, in particular, spend most of their resting state in REM sleep, the stage of sleeping characterized by rapid eye movement and during which dreaming occurs. During REM sleep, a newborn does not exhibit the same physical stillness as do adults. It's not at all uncommon for a dreaming baby to stretch or make sucking motions and facial twitches.

How rapidly a person goes into a dream state depends upon body size, so your baby passes through her dream cycles much more quickly than you do. An adult lapses into the dream state every 90 minutes. No one knows for sure the duration between cycles for a newborn. But, says sleep expert Dr. Stanley Coren, author of Sleep Thieves and a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, "It happens very quickly. It's not unusual for the newborn infant to enter a dream state every 20 minutes or so, but it's changing so rapidly, that's just a snapshot."

The shorter sleep cycles that babies experience mean that their periods of light sleep occur more frequently than do those of adults. In fact, newborn babies have almost twice as much light sleep as adults do, which is what makes their sleep so easily disturbed.