Sleeping baby concerns

Sleeping

As new babies grow, they spend less and less time sleeping. By the end of the first month, most babies are sleeping fifteen hours a day and are alert for two- or three-hour stretches. By six months, most infants are sleeping just twelve to fourteen hours a day.

You may find yourself frustrated by your baby's sleep patterns, but don't try to alter them. Your baby needs to set her own sleep and waking schedule, says Canadian sleep expert, Dr. Stanley Coren. If you try to change her to suit your needs, you'll risk making her pattern more inconsistent and slowing her progress towards adopting the twenty-four-hour circadian rhythm, the 12-hours-on and 12-hours-off schedule of day and night that humans naturally follow.

Infants are not born with an innate sense of circadian rhythm. Indeed, their early rhythm is based on "ultradian" cycles, anything shorter than twenty-four hours. Between two and eight weeks of age, babies are on a sleep cycle of roughly four hours of sleep followed by thirty minutes of activity, although this pattern constantly shifts. By about three months of age, the neurological systems of babies have matured enough that you can expect them to combine two sleep cycles into one period of sustained sleep. However, this cycle won't necessarily occur at night. It's not until about four months of age that a pattern of more activity during the day and more sleep at night becomes better established.

From three months of age to one year, a baby will usually require regular daytime sleep periods, lasting from one to two hours, or longer if you're lucky. Babies generally enjoy one nap in the morning and another in the mid-afternoon, although for some energetic infants, naps are forgotten shortly after the newborn stage. Left to their own sleeping habits babies begin to develop much more regular cycles and to have longer sleep episodes at night. Their sleep will have less REM (rapid eye movement) time, or dreaming, but it will generally be a sounder and deeper sleep with less frequent nighttime stirrings.

Is that the baby?

If your baby is awake and you'd rather he wasn't, check these possibilities first:

• wet diaper
• hunger
• dry air
• stuffy nose
• teething pain
• too hot or too cold