Phases and duration of healthy sleep in infants

Features of the baby's sleep cycle

While in the womb, the child sleeps a lot - this is his main activity. The life of a newborn for several weeks follows the same rhythms: he either eats or sleeps. This continues until the baby gets stronger and begins to take an interest in the world around him.

In an adult, the cycle, consisting of a slow and fast phase, alternates 4-6 times per night, depending on the duration of rest. Each of them ends in a paradoxical type with active dreams and eye movements. In the first weeks of life and even months, an infant is immersed in paradoxical sleep most of the time . Its share decreases only by the age of two, accounting for a third of the total rest time. The figure approaches adult values ​​(23.5%) only at 14 years of age.

Stages such as drowsiness, delta sleep, and sleep spindles are absent in infant sleep. They appear after the development of certain parts of the brain, replacing fragments of the paradoxical phase. By the age of two, the child develops personal awareness, new thinking processes are launched, and the active stage begins to decrease.

How to improve a child's sleep according to age?

1. Determine what exactly the problem is. If a month-old baby wakes up 2-3 times at night to eat, this is normal. If he wakes up every hour and prevents the whole family from sleeping, this is a violation.4
2. Remember that healthy sleep for a child according to his age is a natural state, but it rarely happens on its own. According to statistics, 8 out of 10 children under the age of 6 months suffer from some kind of sleep disorder.
3. Stick to your daily routine in general and your sleep routine in particular. For more information about this, see the article Child’s daily routine. It is the daily routine that helps correlate the sleep rhythms of children with the lifestyle of their parents.
4. Teach your baby to sleep on his own.
5. Be sure to darken your sleeping area. This promotes the production of melatonin – the so-called. "sleep hormone"
6. Avoid evening overstimulation. Use massage, soothing baths and music to help your baby relax.
7. Maintain a positive atmosphere around bedtime and everything related to sleep. Read sleepy fairy tales, sing and listen to lullabies, don’t dwell on failures.
8. Use soft swaddling to reduce the risk of awakening due to involuntary movement. For children with heightened sensitivity of the nervous system and premature babies, this method can be used up to a year!

Newborn's rest

A baby's sleep consists of two periods - fast (paradoxical) and slow (calm, or orthodox). Babies spend about 76% of all rest time in the active stage, which contributes to rapid brain development. This is where their sleep begins, while an adult first goes through the slow superficial phase, or drowsiness.

As a child gets older, sleep patterns change. But the ability to doze appears only by the age of eight.

The rest of a baby in the paradoxical stage differs from that of an adult even in external signs. The baby's facial muscles actively work, creating various grimaces, arms and legs twitch, eyes move quickly, which is noticeable even through closed eyelids. If the baby is not full term, he is even more active. Often, even a doctor cannot determine what stage a sleeping child is in.

A newborn's rest without awakening can reach 5-6 hours. It is not recommended to interrupt it, even if it is time to feed. The baby has his own biorhythms inherent to his age, and the body itself knows when it needs nutrition and when it needs rest.

If such a long rest is repeated often, you should start to worry, as this can lead to dehydration of the body or talk about the development of a pathological process . In this case, you should definitely visit a pediatrician.

In addition to nighttime, an infant has several more daytime dreams:

1. Morning is a continuation of night. It occurs with vivid dreams characteristic of the rapid phase of sleep. The baby may twitch, spin, smile, or show other emotions.
2. Lunch - needed to restore energy spent during a longer period of wakefulness after morning rest. During this period, growth hormone is actively produced.
3. Evening - light and superficial. Prepares the baby for the night, providing the body with relaxation.

The NREM sleep phase is short in infants, but it increases as they grow older. The duration of the deep stage during the night's rest is reduced and by the morning it can be replaced by superficial dreams .

Children's sleep: biology

Each person has his own associations with the word “sleep”. For some, this is a viscous, serene state, full of bliss. Some will more pragmatically appreciate it as a rest for a tired mind and body. But for young parents, sometimes children's sleep attracts feelings of anxiety, excitement and even greater fatigue. Such feelings are often associated with a lack of confidence in one's knowledge on a given issue.

What is sleep? Why do babies often wake up at night? What happens in the body of a child and an adult during sleep?

Sleep phases

In the mid-20th century, scientists from the University of Chicago N. Kleitman and Yu. Azerinsky, using electroencephalographs, came to the conclusion that at night a person needs to go through 4-6 wave-like cycles of 80-100 minutes.

It all starts with a nap. This is the first phase . This dream is extremely sensitive, it lasts 5-10 minutes. Breathing and pulse slow down, muscles relax. If we turn to a person, he says that he did not sleep, but was just thinking.

It's time for stage two or slow-depth sleep , which lasts approximately 20 minutes. Consciousness turns off, but there are also thresholds of high auditory sensitivity, i.e. a person can be easily awakened by calling his name. The dream is light and gentle, but already real.

This is followed by the third and fourth stages of slow-wave deep sleep. At this moment it is difficult to wake us up. The brain is busy processing signals coming from internal organs. The body removes waste products that have accumulated in the brain during the period of wakefulness. The fourth phase accounts for 80% of dreams, but what a pity that we don’t remember them.

Here we come to the phase of rapid eye movement sleep or paradoxical sleep. This is where our behavior changes. The brain begins to work rapidly, as if during wakefulness, experiencing strong emotions. The paradox is that the human muscles are completely immobilized, atonic, only the eyeballs under closed eyelids quickly perform movements in a coordinated manner. At this moment we see the most colorful, vivid, emotional dreams that we remember after waking up. Our pulse and breathing are arrhythmic, blood pressure and body temperature increase. The brain is busy processing and structuring information received during the day. The brain adapts a person to changing environmental conditions and creates a program of action in the future. Therefore, it is not advisable to interrupt this phase of sleep, because a person’s mental health directly depends on it. It used to be thought that dreams last only seconds, but in fact we can dream for up to half an hour. This is the most mysterious, unexplored phase. Scientists especially emphasize its importance for human life.

If you combine all of these phases, you get one sleep cycle. Depending on genetic predisposition (and not at all on laziness), a person needs to go through 4-6 such cycles. They vary in the duration of individual phases throughout the night. If at first the slow-wave sleep phase predominates, but in the morning its time decreases significantly from cycle to cycle, and the REM sleep phase becomes dominant.

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Features of sleep in children

Moving on to explanations related to the peculiarities of children's sleep, a phrase from a poem by Winnie the Pooh involuntarily pops into my head: “If bears were bees, they wouldn’t care...” If babies were born with the sleep characteristic of an adult, they would lose their touching quality, we would not be able to surround them with care. Of course, children's sleep sometimes causes a lot of trouble, but you can and should adapt to its peculiarities. We can teach the baby proper sleep habits; we can become a wise and calm teacher for the baby, who will be an active participant in joint daytime fun and a guide in the labyrinths of dreams.

From the first day, the brain begins painstaking work to adapt the child to the world around him. This work continues during sleep. Conventionally, a baby’s sleep can be divided into 2 main phases: active and calm. The calm phase of a baby's sleep is the rudiment for the formation of the slow-wave sleep phase, which requires more complex neurophysiological mechanisms. Only by 2.5-3 months does this transformation occur. It is no coincidence that the expression “fall asleep like a baby” exists, because... The deep sleep of a baby is much deeper than that of an adult; if the child has entered this phase, he cannot be awakened by external noise.

The active phase of a child's sleep is similar to the REM sleep phase of an adult. We can notice different expressions on the baby’s face; the palms clench and unclench, it seems that the whole body conveys some kind of emotion (although in an adult we notice a minimum of movements during this phase). It can be assumed that children have not yet developed a system for suppressing motor activity. At this moment, the baby can wake himself up with his movements. It is useful to remember about swaddling at bedtime.

How does children's sleep change as they grow older?

The active phase of sleep in newborns takes up almost 70-80% of sleep. Literally after 2 weeks, 50% is given to REM sleep. By 4 months, the baby's REM sleep rate is 40%. By 3 years – 30%. We must not forget that during REM sleep, the baby’s brain integrates the information received during wakefulness into a holistic picture of the world.

A child's sleep cycle is 40-90 minutes, children cannot associate sleep cycles, so they wake up and cry, this is a way for them to communicate with adults. They cry and explain their needs to us. This is a way of survival.

Only by 4 months can parents begin to teach their baby how to associate sleep cycles with each other to provide better quality sleep for their baby and the entire family. The baby is growing, sleep norms are changing , and the process of children's sleep itself is becoming closer to that of an adult. The amount of sleep is reduced, periods of wakefulness change, the phase of active sleep decreases, and muscle movements during sleep become a thing of the past. Now it is useful to know how to teach your child to associate dream cycles. Believe me, the habit of sleeping through the night is a skill that children can master from 5-6 months.

PhysiologySleep PhasesSleep CycleSleep Norms

Sleeping babies from 1 to 3 months

By 2-3 months of life, the child’s sequence of replacing slow-wave sleep with paradoxical sleep and entering wakefulness has stabilized. The cycle at this age is 40-50 minutes (in adults - 90 minutes). During this same period, deep delta sleep is formed, and the child begins to distinguish day from night.

The share of the orthodox phase gradually increases, thereby reducing the time of the paradoxical one. A restructuring occurs: rest begins with a slow stage and is replaced by a fast stage. At the end of each cycle, the baby wakes up and, in the absence of irritating factors, falls asleep again. If he is uncomfortable - hot, cold, wants to eat, or a wet diaper is in the way, he will begin to sob, grunt or cry.

NREM sleep in infants consists of 3 stages:

• entry;
• surface;
• deep.

For the full formation of the slow phase, greater concentration and development of certain parts of the brain are required. This stage appears by 2-3 months of a child’s life.

Pre-vacation rituals

Once born, the baby does not understand the difference between day and night for a long time. Established rituals will help him adapt to his new life. This usually occurs at 6 months. To create a sleep schedule, you should follow these simple recommendations:

1. Try to put your child to bed at strictly defined hours. If he didn’t sleep well at night, a strong wind is blowing outside, or the baby experiences discomfort, sleep hours shift. Nothing wrong with that. The next day you need to return to your usual daily routine.
2. If you lightly stroke your baby or call him by name every morning, he will gradually begin to understand that it is time to wake up and get up. Typically, a breastfed baby wakes up early, then dozes for a while, sucking milk. You can wake him up quietly when he lifts himself off the chest and starts fiddling around and looking for it.
3. Every evening, weather permitting, you need to go for a walk. The baby will sleep through the entire walk, and a child older than 4-6 months will be happy to follow what is happening and slowly get tired.
4. Feeding before bedtime, quiet, calm play will prepare the baby for a bath, after which he will begin to yawn. Before a night's rest, massage and active games should be avoided.
5. Changing clothes at night, fairy tales, and lullabies will gradually calm the baby and prepare him for rest.

The basis of the ritual is the constant repetition of the same actions. As a result, by approximately six months the child will have developed conditioned reflexes that allow him to easily fall asleep at the same time.

After 4 months

By 4-5 months, the baby begins to show an active interest in surrounding objects, people, events, which becomes the reason for a longer period of wakefulness. A fast stage is added to the rest stages.

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The alternation of phases at this age corresponds to that of an adult. The total rest time is 15-16 hours, of which 8-10 are nighttime, and the remaining hours are divided into 3 daytime sleeps.

The baby continues to wake up at the end of each cycle to check his general condition and monitor his needs. If everything suits him, he goes back to sleep. You should not accustom your child to rocking in your arms, otherwise, with such awakenings, he will not be able to fall asleep on his own and will require the creation of familiar conditions.

Daytime rest gradually decreases in duration and frequency as people grow older. Upon reaching 3 years of age, a child can stay awake all day without rest . Parents do not need to insist on going to bed during the day. It is important that the baby gets enough sleep at night.

Physiology of children's sleep: biological cycle and internal clock

Any human life activity, including a child, is subject to the cyclical processes occurring in the body, the name of which is biorhythms. Thanks to biological cycles, a person is able to adapt to the changes of day and night, seasons, and time zones.

Even before birth, a child’s biorhythms are established, and by observing how the system of cycles manifests itself, you can painlessly build the baby’s daily routine. You just need to correctly set your internal clock in accordance with the natural biological course. Here are some recommendations:

• The process of internal time can and should be controlled. Adults should strive to ensure that the child's wake-up, bedtime, and meal times remain constant from day to day.
• Sunlight is the main coordinator of biorhythms, so on a dark winter morning you can help your baby wake up on time with the help of electric light, and, on the contrary, on a bright summer evening you can darken the room with thick curtains.
• The human body responds to its internal clock by adjusting body temperature: during the period of falling asleep it decreases, and as it approaches getting up, it increases. A child will fall asleep easier in a well-ventilated, cool room.

According to Pavlov’s teachings, “sleep has a protective and life-saving significance for the brain,” and if it is complete, then the child is healthy, gains weight well and does not lag behind in physical development.

Based on the value of rest periods, a sleep chart for young children has been developed.

It should be borne in mind that the given time is an average and may vary depending on the physical, psychological factors and temperament of the child.

Baby sleep duration

Each child is an individual. And his body cannot obey generally accepted rules and norms. If one baby needs 10 hours to gain strength, then another needs 12-14. Below is a table showing the average sleep duration for a child by month.

In children under 1 year of age, the need for the amount and duration of sleep changes significantly. And although the period of wakefulness increases, in total it does not exceed the duration of rest.

The phases in the first 12 months of life also transform: the paradoxical phase decreases and the orthodox phase begins to predominate . Adult periodicity is established only by 10-12 years.

Since children most often wake up in the paradoxical stage, infants' rest is intermittent and consists of short periods of time.

Features of sleep in children

The stages of sleep in an infant develop differently: the deep phase occurs first, then the superficial phase. During the first months of life, sleep cycles are not sufficiently expressed: they are of uneven duration and shorter. Moreover, the difference between the phases of a one-month and one-year-old child is significant.

During the first ten months after birth, the baby is able to sleep for 20-40 minutes. This cannot be considered normal, but such a duration of rest is not recognized as a pathology, provided that the baby sleeps more peacefully at night.

An adult's sleep has four phases, but an infant's sleep has two phases. In the first 12 months of a child's life, there is a typical alternation between deep and superficial. During the first part of the cycle, the boy or girl completely relaxes; in the second, as a result of increased brain activity, they toss and turn and move their arms and legs. If during this period you pick up the baby in your arms to move it, or start talking too loudly, then awakening cannot be avoided.

The calm phase lasts at least 60% of the total duration of rest, the remaining time is allocated to the superficial phase.

Over the course of two to three hours, during which the baby goes into the arms of Morpheus, the phases change each other every 20-30 minutes.

While the child is very young, the duration of the periods will be as follows:

• up to 6 months – 50 minutes (half an hour – deep and 20 – superficial, restless);
• 6-24 months – 70 minutes.

As the child grows up, other phases characteristic of adults are added to his two phases.

It is important to remember that no matter how deeply the baby sleeps, the deep phase gives way to a quick, restless one, so any rustle can wake him up. To prevent the onset of a premature period of wakefulness, it is necessary:

• create silence, preventing street noise from entering the room, turn off or muffle the sound of a working TV;
• remove bright room lighting; use a dim nightlight at night;
• During the day, it is advisable to close the windows with thick curtains to prevent access to bright sunlight.

The total duration of rest during the day depends on the age of the baby.

1. In the first two weeks of birth, the newborn sleeps 20-22 hours, waking up every 3-4 hours to feed.
2. In the following weeks, the duration of rest is reduced to 16-18 hours. Now, during the waking period, the baby not only eats, but also explores the world around him.
3. By the end of the third month, the baby sleeps 15-16 hours.
4. From the third to the sixth months, the period of night rest decreases to 8-10 hours, but its total time (together with daytime sleep) is 15 hours.
5. From the sixth to the ninth month of life, the baby's daily sleep duration decreases to 12 hours. In addition to night rest, during the day he needs a short “quiet hour”: in the morning and after lunch.
6. After reaching nine months, children rest for 10-11 hours, several of which occur per day. The regime is maintained until 1 year of age

Daytime nap

The duration of a newborn's daytime sleep should ideally be 9 hours. At night, the baby sleeps 10-11 hours and wakes up only to feed. These are average standards, since the baby may not sleep at all during the day, but at the same time not wake up at night to feed.

The infant's daytime rest is segmental. As the baby grows, the need for it decreases: at four months he sleeps three or four times; at six months of age, morning, lunch and evening rest are enough.

By the age of one and a half years, babies sleep no more than once during the day. At this stage, having overcome the rapid phase of sleep, the child can go into deep sleep and sleep for quite a long time.

Biological rhythms

A baby's sleep, like all vital processes taking place in a baby's body, is subject to a certain cyclicity. It is called “biological rhythms”.

Taking into account the current course of biorhythms, which are established at the stage of intrauterine development, it is possible to build a daily routine that is as comfortable as possible for the baby.

The recommendations will be as follows:

1. The moment of waking up and falling asleep should be timed at a certain time.
2. Sunlight is largely responsible for coordinating biorhythms. Therefore, in winter, when the sun rises late, you need to turn on the light in the room to wake up. In summer, on the contrary, close the curtains so that the rays do not wake up the baby.

This will help “tune” biological rhythms and reduce the active phase of sleep in newborns in relation to the deep one.