Why does a 3 month old baby sleep poorly?

Features of sleep of a three-month-old baby

A three-month-old baby may wake up frequently, and his sleep can be very restless with loud sighs and sobs. This may frighten parents, but there is no need to be afraid - experts consider such phenomena to be the norm for infants.

At three months, a baby already sleeps less than a two-month-old baby. The average daily rest period has become shorter by one hour. Superficial sleep takes up most of the time; the baby continues to doze during this period. It is at this moment that parents can notice rapid movements of the eyeballs under closed eyelids, facial expressions changing from a smile to a grimace - all this is considered by doctors as a variant of the norm.

Note! At three months, the child’s sleep structure changes, when it is possible to clearly determine the change in phases that repeat at certain intervals. It is at this age that it is necessary to clearly separate night and daytime rest and form a certain routine at home.

Three month old baby sleeping in a crib

Features of infant sleep

First of all, when it comes to why a child sleeps poorly at night, you need to know the peculiarities of the regime of children under one year old and specifically at this age. Because restless sleep is not always a sign of serious problems.

According to available data, the total sleep duration of a baby up to a year, aged 1 to 3 months, is 18-22 hours a day. However, these are just numbers. And if a three-month-old child at this age sleeps somewhat less, but is still active, gains weight well and develops according to age standards, do not worry.

Because the quality of a baby’s sleep is greatly influenced by:

• intrauterine development and course of pregnancy;
• birth process;
• individual characteristics (type of nervous system, temperament).

It is also worth considering the different sleep structure of babies from adults.

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For what reasons does a child sleep poorly and what can be done?

It has been established that in children during the first time after birth, the REM (paradoxical) sleep phase occupies up to 80%. While for two-year-olds this figure is 30%.

Therefore, the motor activity of a baby in the third month of life observed during sleep, facial expressions, eye movements under closed eyelids, various sobs and smiles - all this is considered by experts as a variant of the norm in infancy.

Sleep duration of three months

The baby's stool is sandy-colored - the normal color of stool in newborns.

A three-month-old baby behaves differently than a newborn. The baby already needs to communicate with mom and dad, and also wants to explore the world around him, so his periods of wakefulness become longer.

At this age, the baby does not yet understand that he is tired and needs to rest. All parents should know the norms for the duration of rest during the day and night and take action in case of serious deviations.

The average daily amount of time a three-month-old baby should spend sleeping is about 15-17 hours. Naturally, this figure is conditional, since each child is individual, and everyone’s needs for rest are different.

Daytime nap

The total duration of daytime sleep for a three-month-old baby is 4.5-5.5 hours. The baby can sleep in fits and starts of 40 minutes or 1.5 hours and will be laid down three to five times during the day.

Baby's naps at three months

Night sleep

The duration of rest for a three-month-old baby should be about 10-12 hours. At three months, the baby, as a rule, periodically wakes up at night in order to eat. Many children at this age can wake up every 3 hours. The most persistent babies can already withstand a five-hour break without feeding. If the child is healthy, has an excellent appetite and is in a good mood, there is no need to worry.

Important! If the baby is already three months old, he looks vigorous and cheerful, develops well, eats wonderfully, sleeps three times a day and normally at night, while the duration of his rest has slight deviations in one direction or another, then this should be regarded as a variant of the norm.

The baby sleeps sweetly on his tummy

Symptoms of poor sleep in a child

Rocking cradle for newborns - electric cradle for baby

Does your 3 month old baby sleep poorly during the day? An experienced mother can immediately identify a sleep disorder in her baby and even understand the reason; young parents should know what signs will indicate this problem:

• the baby cannot fall asleep for a very long time and begins to groan;
• sleep is light, and the child can sleep for a very short time;
• restlessly spins, tosses and twitches in sleep;
• Quite often he wakes up and cries.

In addition, other symptoms may occur:

• despite the correct temperature in the room, the child sweats a lot;
• frequent shudders during sleep and involuntary twitching of the limbs appeared;
• While the child was resting, the mother began to notice changes in her breathing.

It is very important for parents to identify these symptoms in a timely manner, since they can appear not only due to the abundance of information and emotional turmoil, but also due to the onset of the disease.

The baby is crying and cannot sleep

Newborn starts in his sleep

According to many pediatricians, three-month-old babies most often startle in their sleep due to an immature nervous system. The transition from one sleep phase to another is often accompanied by twitching of the baby's arms or legs. Also, the child may shudder due to the fact that he does not feel his mother next to him, with whom he is most of the time. A natural and temporary cause of shuddering during sleep can be pain due to colic.

Baby turns his head in his sleep

This phenomenon is considered normal during the development of a child’s body. Head bobbing may be caused by sleep in which the baby has unconsciously decided to roll over.

Due to severe sweating of the head, the baby may also turn his head during sleep. Three-month-old babies may already feel discomfort and try to solve the problem on their own or call their mother for help.

If a child turns his head before falling asleep, and at the same time makes various monotonous sounds, it means that he is calming himself down and preparing for sleep. In certain cases, 3-month-old babies turn their heads because they feel unwell: they have a stuffy nose or have some kind of neurological disease.

Important! If for some reason the sleep problem cannot be resolved on your own, then the advice is to seek help from a pediatrician and neurologist.

Almost no sleep during the day at 2 months

Good evening. Our daughter will be two months old in less than a week and we are having trouble sleeping. And every day it gets worse and worse. I’ll write how we’ve been spending the last few days: getting up around 8 am, again plus or minus half an hour. We eat right away, at this time he can fall asleep, but when he finishes eating, he usually doesn’t sleep for 15-20 minutes, and then only on his arms or stomach, if he’s put in the crib he wakes up. At this time she is usually in a good mood, we lie in bed, kiss, coo, then she poops, wash, wash, change clothes. Then I have breakfast, Kira is usually with me in the stroller if dad is not there. At about 11 o'clock she begins to be capricious and it is clear that she wants to sleep, I start feeding her, she sleeps while she eats. As soon as she lets go of the breast, she wakes up, and if she doesn’t wake up right away, then I put her in bed, sometimes she wakes up immediately, sometimes she can sleep for 5 to 10 minutes. Then I start pumping her, and this can go on for a long time. He can fall asleep in his arms, maybe, if he’s lucky, he can fall asleep and sleep in bed for several hours, but lately this has become a rarity. If he falls asleep well, he can sleep until 5. Or maybe we won’t fall asleep at all, then we’ll go for a walk again and lie down either on the dresser or on the bed or on the sofa in the living room. After some time, he starts to be capricious again - he wants to eat, I feed him, he sleeps, and again he’s not in bed. Then it’s evening and the songs begin (she can also cry during the day), I think because of colic, from about 6 o’clock. At the same time, her stomach is almost always seething, but she cries a lot only from 7 to 9 o’clock. At this time we give her a bath , then drops for colic and sleep. We don’t go for walks often now; we go for walks more often in the evening after 4 p.m. When we get dressed she screams, even if she is full and looking for a tit, we give her a pacifier and she falls asleep. When we walk, he sleeps, as soon as we go home, he wakes up. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. The eldest screamed more, but she also slept more. Today I read Komarovsky, he writes that the child does not need to be rocked. But what to do with it then when Lyalya is well-fed, but does not sleep? He also writes that the child is not sleeping or because there is something wrong with his health or poor conditions. It’s not hot in our apartment, I think the humidity is normal, because the windows in our room and in the living room sweat, but there’s no mold, so I think it’s not very high. The bed is separate, the mattress is not soft, sleeps without a pillow. It turns out that almost the whole day is spent on motion sickness. For the last few days she has been crying during the day. I start putting him to bed at night at 9, and falls asleep at 10-11. He gets up twice a night, doesn’t eat for long, I keep him in a column for about five minutes and put him in bed. But after 6 a.m. she starts tossing and turning, groaning, and waking up. Those. Before the final rise, sleep is very bad. This is such a chaotic post for me. And in short, why does the child practically not sleep during the day? After 4 hours you can never put him to sleep, he even sleeps in his arms for 10 minutes..

Possible factors that prevent your baby from sleeping

How to put your baby to sleep without breastfeeding

An insufficient amount of daytime sleep leads to a decrease in the functioning of certain vital systems in the body and disruption of the proper development of many processes. During sleep, the baby’s body prepares to perceive new impressions; the lack of proper rest can provoke the appearance of mental disorders.

Reasons why a child at three months does not sleep well, may sleep very restlessly or wake up all the time:

1. Physical discomfort. A baby at three months does not yet know how to express what he feels in words, so he will cry or grunt, attracting the attention of his mother. Discomfort can be due to external irritants: loud noise, incorrect temperature conditions in the room (hot, cold, dry air), wet diapers or a dirty diaper.
2. Overexcitement and hyperactivity. The large amount of information that a baby receives throughout the day greatly affects the baby’s psycho-emotional state. As a result, the child cannot calm down and get a good night's sleep.
3. Diseases. Disturbances in the functioning of the central nervous system (CNS) and somatic diseases affect the quality of daytime sleep or lead to its absence. You can talk about neurological problems if all attempts to eliminate the above factors have been excluded, and after contacting a neurologist.

The child does not want to fall asleep during the day

Causes of poor sleep at night

If a mother has already lost count and cannot remember how many times she got up to see her baby crying in the middle of the night, we need to figure out why this is happening. In order for your baby to get enough sleep, you need to know what exactly is bothering him and how to help him.

Let's look at the most common reasons why a 3-month-old baby may have trouble sleeping:

• Many babies, whose parents put them to bed separately, often wake up during the night. This is the architecture of sleep up to 6 months - the predominance of its superficial stage over the deep one.
• Doctors consider sobbing, whimpering and even crying in a 3-month-old baby's sleep to be normal. In the first few months after the birth of a child, a whole barrage of information hits him. Its processing mainly occurs during the period of night rest. A baby’s dreams are a reflection of emotions and impressions received over the past day. Therefore, he can sob, smack his lips and whimper without waking up. It is also extremely important for him to periodically make sure that his mother is nearby. Whimpering slightly, the child checks to see if she is still there. If no reaction follows, he finally wakes up and screams in full force.
• Trembling. A completely harmless phenomenon. It arises as a result of changes in nervous excitability during the transition from one stage of sleep to another. The child may shudder and throw out his arms and legs several times during the night. As a rule, such throwing of the limbs occurs when the baby from superficial sleep plunges into its deep phase (about 20-40 minutes after falling asleep). This wakes him up and scares him.
• Well-being. Even an adult will have difficulty sleeping if he has stomach pain or teething wisdom teeth. And in a 3-month-old child, such troubles happen quite often. When colic and the first teeth pecking bother him at night, he wakes up and cries.
• After drinking breast milk or formula, the baby usually falls asleep. However, this does not in any way affect the duration of sleep. After all, the baby might not have eaten enough, but simply satisfy the hunger that was bothering him by having a little “snack.” Then literally an hour later he can wake up again and cry for more.

A child's sleep can also be interrupted because he suddenly becomes cold or, conversely, hot. To understand how comfortable the temperature environment is for the baby, you need to touch his neck. If it is cool, dress the baby, but if it is sweaty, remove excess clothes.

From time to time he wants to feel his mother's warmth. At such moments, of course, you need to be there for the sake of healthy, proper rest for your baby.

How to solve a problem

It is very important to understand and eliminate the cause of violations of daytime rest; there is no need to wait for the problem to be resolved on its own. In the absence of serious abnormalities related to mental and physical health, you can eliminate the problem of poor sleep on your own and without the help of medications. Doing this is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance for young parents; you just need to put in a little effort.

The famous pediatrician and author of many books, Evgeny Komarovsky, states that in order to eliminate problems with daytime sleep in a three-month-old child, you should follow certain rules:

1. It is very important to walk as much as possible with your baby in shaded areas in the first half of the day. These could be parks, squares, the main thing is that there are no cars nearby. After taking a walk in the fresh air, the baby will fall asleep very quickly and sleep for the necessary time.
2. If the baby does not want to fall asleep because he slept well at night, the duration of night sleep should be reduced; it is important to monitor this point for several days.
3. It is necessary to monitor the baby’s behavior during the rest period, determine the time and frequency of awakenings. Having the mother nearby while waking up will help the baby gain confidence that his closest and dearest person is always with him. In this case, the baby’s anxiety will go away on its own during rest.
4. If the baby constantly shudders during sleep, then this problem can be solved with the help of loose swaddling. If you fix the child’s body in any position, it is easy to eliminate these manifestations and prevent awakening.
5. If the child cannot sleep due to hunger, then he should be fed breast milk or given a bottle of formula or warm water.
6. If you have pain caused by colic, you can do a light tummy massage. Dill water or fennel tea will also help.
7. Create a specific daily routine in which time will be divided into daytime rest and night sleep.
8. It is necessary to arrange a personal sleeping place for the child. It is better if he sleeps separately from his mother, even in the same room, but in his own crib.
9. Think carefully about your diet. There is no need to put your child to bed on an empty stomach.
10. Alternate waking hours with your baby’s physical activity.
11. Create comfortable conditions in the room where the child sleeps. The optimal air temperature is 18-20 degrees. Air humidity should be at least 70%; if necessary, you can use a humidifier. It is very important to thoroughly clean and ventilate the room in a timely manner.
12. Carry out hygiene procedures in a timely manner - provide the baby with dry diapers, clean diapers and fresh linen.

If the cause of daytime sleep disturbances lies in the disease, then it is necessary to start treatment in a timely manner, which will help get rid of the problem and establish the correct mode of rest and wakefulness.

For a three-month-old baby, proper rest is very important not only at night, but also during the day. Thanks to a sufficient amount of rest, normal physical and mental development of the child occurs. Disruption of daytime sleep can lead to serious consequences, so it is very important for parents to promptly notice and eliminate all the reasons leading to its occurrence.