Sleep schedule for a baby: tips for parents

... and then the parents

From the maternity hospital - home

Elena Baibarina, chief neonatologist at the Russian Ministry of Health, talks about how the first days of a newborn at home should go.

After a few weeks, the baby can suck more milk at one time, which means he stays full longer.
The interval between feedings increases to 2.5-3 hours
.
These changes in routine give mom more free time. First of all, it should be used for relaxation. After all, even taking into account night feedings and caring for the baby, a woman should sleep at least six hours
a day. Rest will help you avoid overwork and related problems: worsening mood, depression, and a decrease in the amount of milk produced.

SLEEP MODE OF A NEWBORN BABY

Until four months it is difficult to talk about any clear sleep and wakefulness schedule for a newborn baby. In the first 4 months after birth, the child experiences neurological “growing up” and the adjustment of “sleepy” processes.

The sleeping pattern of infants is approximately this:

In the first few weeks of life, a newborn can sleep 17 to 20 hours a day. It is important to monitor your baby's waking time, that is, the time between sleeps. This includes feeding, getting ready for bed and putting her to bed. Up to two months, waking time is no more than 75 minutes.
From 2 to 4 months, sleep is reduced to 14-16 hours a day. And the waking time, on the contrary, increases to 90 minutes. Even a 5-10 minute walk can cause short sleeps and frequent awakenings in the child.
Up to 3 months, daytime naps can last 20-30 minutes or, conversely, 2-4 hours. In every case at this age this is the norm. The baby's daytime sleep segments will begin to lengthen to 40-60 minutes after 3 months, and their number will decrease to 3-4.

Prolong your newborn's sleep by rocking, breastfeeding, pacifier, or walking in a stroller. It is advisable to alternate each method of calming the baby so that the habit does not develop to one of them in the future.

If the previous sleep was still short, the time of wakefulness before the next sleep should also be reduced - by at least 15 minutes.

To adjust your newborn's internal clock, expose him to bright daylight more often and dim the lights at night. In the future, this will help to establish the baby’s sleep and wakefulness patterns.

Good night!

At the age of several weeks, the baby can already be “explained” what the difference is between day and night. Before putting your baby to bed at night, follow a certain ritual
. Choose the time at which you put your child to bed based on your family's habits. If you go to bed late, plan the time so that the baby sleeps until the first night feeding on his own, and then falls asleep with the whole family. Give your baby a bath before bed. If your child gets too excited from bathing, it is better to reschedule it for an earlier time. Then the baby will have time to calm down, eat and fall asleep soundly. Talk to your baby, sing him a lullaby or play calm music. Your child may fall asleep better next to a musical toy that plays a tune and lights up dimly for a few minutes.

How to organize a newborn's daily routine

Accustoming a child to a schedule is a very delicate process, largely dictated by the individual characteristics of the baby. To begin with, just watch him. You will notice that the baby already has his own routine. He performs all his actions at approximately the same time.

If you cannot determine the system in his routine, think about what could be preventing him from sleeping and eating at the same time? You may need help from a pediatrician.

What you need to do to quickly establish the regime:

Develop the habit of falling asleep quickly in your newborn. To do this, you need to put him to sleep in the fresh air (on the street or by ventilating the room 10 minutes before bedtime), rock him to sleep for 3–4 minutes, and sing a lullaby.
Avoid overtiredness (it is better not to play active games before bedtime).
Walk in the fresh air (from 8 to 10 months you need to be outside not only during sleep, but also while awake).
Organize feeding correctly (do not interrupt the baby’s appetite, do not overfeed, synchronize complementary feeding with adult meals: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner).
During the day, make sure that the lighting is bright, and at night, strive for silence and dim light so that the child gets used to the fact that night is for rest.

Breastfeeding helps maintain sleep patterns and strengthen the baby's nervous system. Therefore, it is better to preserve it for as long as possible.

Saturate the baby’s life with active activities (visiting, getting to know the outside world, getting involved in everyday activities, games (including with water), classes, gymnastics and massage, swimming pool).
Observe rituals (eating with other family members, a bedtime story, bathing and walking at the same time, a favorite toy for visiting).
Follow the regime with the whole family (it will be easier for the child if everyone in the household eats and goes to bed at the same time, convenient for him).●\tAdhere to the schedule every day: make sure that the child sleeps, eats, plays and walks at the same time and the same time. It is better to tell him in advance about what will happen during the day.

Typical mistakes to avoid:

Keep your child awake. If the baby is not yet six months old, then he should sleep every 2 hours. Otherwise, the baby will become overtired and capricious.
Go radically against his natural rhythm. If a mother tries to accustom a child to a routine who previously had no routine at all or one that was radically different from the new one, then most likely she will not succeed, and the baby will be stressed.
Start accustoming yourself to a routine during travel, moving or other changes. In the first two weeks, when you introduce a routine, you need to make this task a priority, and adapt all other plans to the child’s new daily routine.

Good morning!

In the morning, be sure to open the curtains to let in daylight.
Encourage your baby to play, turn on quiet but energetic music. First transport

Even the baby must make his first trip in his life - from the maternity hospital home - in a car seat. Learn how to select and use a child restraint correctly.

Take your baby with you to the kitchen or another room.
He should hear ordinary household sounds: the noise of pouring water, a boiling kettle, adults talking. However, remember that the kitchen is a potentially dangerous place
! Never place your child where he can reach a stove, hot kettle, or foods not intended for him. Never eat or drink tea while holding a baby in your arms: one careless movement and the baby will get a burn!

Sleep in children of the first year of life (2 months-12 months)

What can parents expect?

Normally, infants sleep at night from 9 to 12 hours a day and during the day - from 2 to 5 hours. By 2 months, babies sleep 2 to 4 times during the day and by 12 months - 1 or 2 times. Factors such as illness or a sudden change in your daily routine and bedtime can lead to sleep disturbances. Major developmental events such as crawling and standing in the crib may temporarily lead to shallow sleep and frequent awakenings during sleep.

By 6 months, most babies are able to sleep through the night without interruptions for night feedings. However, 20-50% of all children continue to awaken in their sleep. When this happens at night, it is very important to understand that short awakenings that do not affect the quality of sleep occur with a frequency of 4 to 6 times per night. Children are able to “soothe themselves” and after a short time fall asleep on their own without the help of their parents (“self-soothing” children). In contrast, excitable children (“signalers”) are children who wake their parents at night and need reassurance. Most of these children go on to have various problems related to sleep and these children can be difficult to calm down. This often happens to those parents who have accustomed their child to motion sickness and to sleep in the parent’s bed. On the other hand, children may become accustomed to parental assistance when falling asleep and demand the presence of parents when waking up with an insistent cry. Despite the absence of problems associated with sleep, such children can create difficulties for parents when trying to sleep.

Practical recommendations for organizing sleep in children of the first year of life

Place your baby on his or her back during nighttime and nap times.

Place your baby on a firm mattress with a well-protected support structure and no more than 5 cm of slats between them.

Make sure your baby's face is not covered by a blanket or diaper and remains uncovered while sleeping. If a blanket is used, make sure it covers the baby's legs and is no higher than chest level. The blanket should be tucked under the mattress.

Try to protect your child from tobacco smoke.

Avoid overheating your baby at night and keep your baby's room at a temperature that is comfortable for adults.

Remove all toys from the baby's crib, especially around 5 months when baby begins to reach for toys.

How to help your baby sleep well

Learn to recognize the signs your baby gives when he's sleepy. Some tired babies become restless or cry, others rub their eyes, stare at their mother's face, and roll their eyes. Your child will fall asleep much faster and easier the moment you feel that he is tired.

Determine where your child will sleep. Try to decide on this issue at least by 3 months of age, since the child’s reaction to changes in environmental conditions will be the more difficult, the older he is at which the change of place will take place. For example, if your baby is used to falling asleep in a stroller, move him to a crib by 3 months. If your baby continues to sleep in bed with you, decide whether to continue.

Stick to a strict daily schedule. The child sleeps better if the time of falling asleep and waking up is strictly observed. Please note that reducing daytime sleep or interrupting it for various reasons leads to overwork and poor night sleep.

Use simple toys when playing with your child for the child’s safety. Make sure that soft toys of small sizes, T-shirts and shirts that are not tied in a knot at the neck, loose and light blankets can provide complete safety for the child.

Stick to a nightly schedule. Set a solid daily routine and stick to it consistently. The regimen should include calm and pleasant games, as well as bathing procedures and telling stories before bed, which you can start reading in the 2nd year. The mode also includes turning off the lights before going to bed. It is recommended to reduce and even avoid night feedings for children after 6 months of age.

Set a regular sleep routine. Make sure that the conditions for falling asleep and maintaining sleep are always the same for the child (for example, turning on and off the lights in the child's room). A child sleeps best in a cool, dark room, in a calm environment.

Put your child to bed sleepy, but not awake. This will help your child get used to soothing himself and, when waking up spontaneously, will learn to quickly fall asleep without assistance.

Try to sleep when your baby sleeps. Parents also need sleep. Try to take a nap when your baby sleeps. In an ideal situation, rely on someone around you to watch your baby while you sleep. It is especially important for nursing mothers to get enough sleep.

Contact your doctor if you are unable to formulate a daily routine for your child. Children who are especially agitated and restless may have diseases such as colic, gastric reflux (return of stomach contents into the esophagus), rickets or iron deficiency anemia. Skin diseases accompanied by itching always disrupt sleep in newborns. Problems associated with breathing disorders (features of the anatomical structure of the upper respiratory tract with a decrease in air flow during sleep) require polysomnographic examination and treatment by specialists.

Daytime activities

During the day, the baby will sleep after feeding. But, unlike at night, give him the opportunity to be active during his waking hours. Play with him, massage and exercise, show him toys and objects in the apartment. Organize time for walks. It is better during the day after feeding - this provides about three hours of full sleep. Usually, during a walk, the baby sleeps better and longer. You can also take a walk in the evening with a child who does not fall asleep very well - before bathing and feeding.

When a newborn appears in the family, young parents try to monitor the healthy development of their child: they monitor the amount of food eaten, record weight gain, measure monthly growth, and dress according to environmental conditions. But, unfortunately, few people think about the norms of sleep and wakefulness of a child under one year old.

Sleep is the main component of a child’s full development. The importance of sleep cannot be overestimated, and often quality sleep is the key to good appetite and standard weight gain.

In the first year of a person’s life, the most intense growth occurs: babies literally turn before our eyes from curled up sleeping lumps into running toddlers. Such drastic changes are easier if the child receives the necessary rest in a timely manner, which can be properly organized by the norms of sleep and wakefulness for a child up to one year old.

Given the fact that the number and duration of a child's sleep is rapidly decreasing in the first year, and the time he is awake is also rapidly increasing, parents need to be flexible in organizing the rhythm of the day. An important guideline in organizing the rhythm of the day is the sleep and wakefulness norms of a child up to one year old.

Sleep and wakefulness norms are average norms that can serve as a guideline in organizing a comfortable rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. But you should not force the child to fit into these norms; it is necessary to take into account the individual developmental characteristics, current state of health and the characteristics of the baby’s wakefulness.

Sleep and wakefulness norms for a child up to one year:

1. In the first month of life, babies mostly sleep, interrupted by short periods of wakefulness. While awake, babies suckle at the breast or bottle with their eyes closed, and it seems as if newborns do not wake up at all. But that's not true.

A newborn's waking time can be up to 60 minutes. Some babies cannot withstand such a long period without sleep and stay awake for no more than 40 minutes. This may be due to the characteristics of intrauterine development, the complexity of the birth process, the state of health of the baby, or simply be its individual feature. In both cases, the specified wake time is the norm for a newborn, unless there are problems with sleep and excessive moodiness.
The number of daytime dreams of a newborn ranges from 3 to 6-7 episodes, and is directly related to their duration. One period of a newborn's daytime sleep can last from 1 to 3 hours. But you should not let your baby sleep for more than 3 hours in a row - this can disrupt the diet. If your newborn's nap lasted less than an hour, it may be worth shortening the wake time that follows.
A newborn's nighttime sleep lasts from 8 to 10 hours. At night, the child wakes up several times to feed, but if the child receives a larger amount of calories during the daytime, then he is quite capable of sleeping without awakening for up to 5-6 hours.

2. The baby is one month old, and the first developmental leap has occurred: all systems of the baby’s body, from internal organs that form metabolism to sensory organs, are experiencing rapid maturation. Such changes leave an imprint on the baby’s sleep and wakefulness:

The waking time of a one-month-old baby reaches 1 hour and 15 minutes. But some babies still may not be able to withstand such a period without sleep. If there are no visible problems with sleep, the quality of night sleep does not suffer, it is quite possible that the baby is not yet ready to stay awake longer.
During the day, a month-old baby sleeps for about 6-8 hours, which are divided into 4-5 periods of sleep with a break for wakefulness. The duration of daytime sleep ranges from 40 minutes to 3 hours. The recommendation not to sleep for more than 3 hours in a row during the day remains the same.
A one-month-old baby's nighttime sleep lasts from 8 to 10 hours, with breaks for 2-3 feedings. In just one day, the baby sleeps about 17 hours.

3. By the third month of life, a more or less orderly rhythm of sleep and wakefulness is created:

The baby may not sleep for more than an hour and a half at a time.
During the day, the baby sleeps no more than 4 times. The duration of daytime dreams reaches 2.5 hours, but can last 40 minutes.
Night sleep can last up to 11 hours.

4. Closer to 4 months, the baby’s sleep is reorganized: like an adult, sleep cycles appear, which are divided into phases of deep and shallow sleep. All life processes of the baby are subject to internal biorhythms, the child already knows how to distinguish day from night.

The number of daytime sleeps is reduced, and the process of transition to 3 daytime sleeps occurs. It is important to ensure that at least one nap lasts at least 1.5 hours, the rest can last from 40 minutes. Morning sleep develops, which can be fixed in time, at 9-10 o'clock.
The duration of night sleep increases to twelve hours. Ten hours of sleep a night is also normal.
Daytime festivities last up to 2 hours. Babies who are awake significantly less than the specified time should be gradually helped to prolong wakefulness by 5-7 minutes every 2 days.

5. By 6-7 months, the child becomes much more mobile: he learns to crawl and sit. In addition, the baby becomes more aware, he finally begins to navigate in space.

Many children switch to 2 naps during the day. Afternoon sleep develops between 12 and 14 pm. Parents should already work on eliminating short naps during the day, and build a rhythm of the day taking into account the duration of each nap of an hour or more.
Night sleep lasts up to 12 hours, but not less than 10. The duration of night sleep depends on the overall positivity of daytime dreams. You should not prolong daytime sleep at the expense of nighttime sleep. Many babies can already do without night feedings, but 1-2 feedings per night may be the norm.
The waking time can already reach 3 hours. The minimum waking time for a healthy baby is 2 hours. 45 min. If your child stays awake significantly less, give preference to quiet games and try to gradually increase the duration of wakefulness.

6. At 9-10 months, babies’ mobility increases even more: they learn to stand up and walk with support. The child begins to understand more about the world around him and his emotions. Speech skills develop intensively, and the baby explores the world around him.

Kids can calmly explore the world for up to 4 hours without sleep.
There are still 2 naps during the day, and they are very important for the baby. Children of this age are already able to live according to a schedule; it is quite possible to assign all daytime dreams to a certain time.
It is important for babies to sleep at least 10 hours at night. In artificial dieters, the need for night meals disappears. Breastfed babies may still wake up in the middle of the night. If the child receives adequate nutrition during the day, waking up at night may provoke a strengthening of the association associated with falling asleep.

7. At 12 months, babies go through a new stage of development: they become more independent, learn to find their own strategies for solving various problems. Motor skills develop more and more, and babies begin to walk. The only thing that remains unchanged is the need for quality sleep.

One-year-old children are ready for one nap during the day. For some children, refusal of a second nap can last 2-3 months, or it can go away in a week. Now this is the baby’s only opportunity to rest during the day; an hour and a half nap can restore the child’s strength and help him survive until the night without overwork.
The duration of wakefulness reaches 4.5-5 hours. Parents can already plan things while the baby is awake.
A good and long rest at night is important. A child needs at least ten hours of sleep at night to start a new day with new strength. If your baby is still waking up several times during the night, reconsider your daily routine or work on eliminating the negative association with falling asleep.

The specified norms of sleep and wakefulness will help parents more easily adapt to the changes that occur with babies during the first year of life. But they will not help eliminate all sleep-related problems. You can learn more about ways to improve children’s sleep in the “Sleep PASSPORT” and “BABY’S SLEEP.MOTHER IN RESOURCE” courses, or in a personal conversation with a sleep consultant. Write your name and phone number (with country code) - we will select a convenient format for work.

Author: Tatyana Kremneva.

The baby does not sleep: sleep characteristics of newborns up to 1 month

You have a baby. The first emotions subside, and you begin to get used to your new role as a mother, getting to know your precious child. Everything is new, any question concerning the baby seems extremely important to the mother, something worries her, and something even scares her. For example, the child is only 2 weeks old, but it seems to her that he already sleeps little or poorly.

It is a generally accepted fact that sleep for an infant, especially in the first year of his life, is extremely important for growth and proper development. Already in the first month after birth, many mothers are faced with the fact that their newborn baby does not sleep well. Indeed, practice shows that difficulties with falling asleep begin in some children already from the first days of life.

Is your newborn having trouble sleeping or is this normal?

Of course, every baby is different in their own wake and sleep rhythms.[1] Many mothers complain that their baby does not sleep well at 2 or 3 weeks of birth. Let's try to figure out if this is true. It is believed that babies wake up every three hours to feed. But each child has his own norm.

To say unequivocally that a newborn baby does not sleep well at night would not be entirely correct, since he is not yet able to distinguish between day and night. And he certainly doesn’t know that the night is for sleeping, and the day is for being awake.[2] A newborn does not sleep at night when he wants to eat or experiences discomfort: he is hot or cold, the diaper is full, the diapers are wet.

A baby in the first month of life does not sleep for 4-6 hours and is able to spend 16-18 to 20 hours a day in a state of sleep, interrupted by short wakefulness to eat and communicate with the mother. However, babies' sleep cycles can vary. The periods of time when the newborn does not sleep or, on the contrary, rests, can line up and replace each other during the day in completely different ways.

Baby sleep stages

In newborns, as in adults, the stages of sleep are divided into slow (deep) sleep and fast sleep, when we dream. But they are completely different in both duration and sequence. Active (rapid eye movement) sleep in a baby precedes slow sleep, unlike in adults.

Scientists have proven that babies are able to dream while still in the womb. We can observe these touching moments of a newborn’s experiences and daily impressions by the trembling of loosely closed eyelids, moving pupils, fluttering when it seems that the child is sleeping poorly or not sleeping at all.[3] In fact, its motor mechanisms have not yet been fully formed.

All this happens at the stage of REM sleep, which is replaced by slow sleep. It is deep and calm, during this period the tone goes away and the muscles relax. This stage can last from 3 minutes to 3 hours. At the same time, a newborn often does not sleep at night, not because he has problems, but simply because it is convenient for him, such are his biorhythms for now.

Sometimes a mother, exhausted by lack of sleep and fatigue, gets confused about the periods of sleep and wakefulness of her baby and begins to panic. It seems to her that her newborn baby is not sleeping at all. She turns to her pediatrician for help. However, do not be afraid and forget that there are periods when your baby really does not sleep in order to latch on to the breast or just look at the world around him and communicate with you.

Reasons why newborn babies do not sleep or sleep poorly

So, a newborn baby begins with a rapid phase of sleep, which turns into slow sleep. At the same time, the baby mainly (this is 70-80% of the time) remains during the day in the stage of active sleep.[4] It is at this phase boundary that difficulties often arise when a mother believes that her newborn is not sleeping well.[5]

REM sleep is very light. At this time, the baby’s brain processes a huge flow of information and perceived impressions about the world. This flow is huge. Of course, the brain of such a small child is still imperfect, it is difficult for him, often he cannot cope with such volumes. That is why the slightest discomfort can make a newborn wake up, and the mother worry that he is not sleeping as she thinks he should.

Pediatricians often hear the following complaint: “My baby is a week old, sleeps poorly, wakes up at the slightest noise or when being transferred from hand to crib, has difficulty falling asleep, barely dozes, or his sleep is extremely restless.” If we exclude neurological problems and colic, then problems with falling asleep and restless sleep are not uncommon. So, the reasons include:

general overexcitation from new impressions and information, when a newborn baby does not sleep, experiencing difficulties in the transition to falling asleep;
discomfort in the REM sleep stage from hunger, cold, heat, wet diapers, fear, sudden need for contact, disturbing dreams;
difficulties with the transition from REM sleep to deep sleep, which are caused by imperfections of the psyche and immaturity of the processes occurring in the child’s brain before 1 month of life.

The transition from the initial phase of sleep to deep sleep will be more painless if you initially try to eliminate all external stimuli. The baby should be well-fed, dressed in dry clothes, he should be comfortable and warm, but not hot. The air in the room should be fresh, but drafts must be avoided. In addition, the drug Dormikind, developed specifically for children from birth, can help a newborn who sleeps poorly fall asleep peacefully.

The drug acts very gently. Dormikind is easy to use. It is approved for use in children from 0 months. The undoubted advantages of this drug include its focus on the physiological characteristics of a child’s sleep. It is able to correct restless sleep, calm, relieve irritability and anxiety, and eliminate problems with falling asleep, precisely based on knowledge about the nuances of the baby’s sleep stages.

The creators of Dormikind took into account the differences between the sleep of a child and an adult, focusing on the difficulties of falling asleep and restless sleep in children.
And they created a drug specifically to help mothers solve the problem when the newborn does not sleep due to the above reasons. Read the instructions

Sleep by the hour: norms for children of different ages

Each baby has his own individual sleep norm and the examples below are recommendations.

Note to moms and dads:

Observe your child for three days and record in a notebook his times of falling asleep and waking up, down to the minute. This way you can derive his own “sleepy” norm.

In the first weeks of life

Newborns sleep about 19 hours a day, most often 4 hours. Sleep is briefly interrupted by phases of wakefulness - during this time, parents feed the baby and swaddle. If the baby sleeps for more than 4 hours, then pediatricians advise gently waking him up: just take him in your arms and offer him to eat. It is important that the baby always has strength, even in his sleep.

Babies from 4 to 5 months

With each month of life and up to a year, the sleep norm decreases by about half an hour. So, by 4-5 months the baby is supposed to sleep up to 17 hours a day: on average 12 hours at night and 5 during the day. During this period of life, children are actively adjusting their internal clocks and over time, long night sleep will be replaced by frequent awakenings, and the active phases will become longer.

From six months to a year

From 6 to 12 months, children are recommended to sleep for about 10 hours at night and 2 times during the day for 1.5 hours.

If your baby sleeps longer during the day, it is better to gently wake him up so as not to disturb his biorhythm. Yes, he may be capricious, but at least he will sleep soundly at night.

In the second year of life

Up to two years old, children need to sleep up to 12.5 hours a day - 10 hours at night and 2.5 hours during the day. The baby is getting used to the fact that now he only needs to sleep once during the day.

In the third year of life

Some babies at this age completely refuse daytime sleep - and this is normal, because as the child ages, he needs less and less sleep. The norm for children is to sleep about 12 hours a day.

Child's waking time

In this article we will talk about the daily routine, or more precisely, the waking pattern or the maximum and minimum waking time.

How is the daily routine structured?

Probably, every young mother in the first month of her baby’s life experienced a feeling of fear, whether everything was fine, whether the child was sleeping enough . After all, at first the period of wakefulness was equal to the feeding time: the baby would suck and immediately fall asleep.

The waking hours grow with the baby, it's true. Mothers are afraid that very soon the child will play and walk more and more, which means that they need to come up with all sorts of exercises and tasks that will develop the baby. And some mothers sadly compare the disappearance of another daytime nap from the daily routine with the theft of that very little respite in the series of worries about the baby.

Every day the child poses new challenges, riddles and puzzles for the mother, and the main riddle is when is the best time to organize the child’s sleep. Is it time or not time to sleep? That is the question! And, indeed, guessing the right time that the baby needs to be active, and not missing the right time for his sleep, can truly be considered the pinnacle of maternal skill and intuition. But even this height can be overcome if the mother has an idea of the basic principles on which the day and sleep routine is based, and also has an idea of how long, according to age, her baby can be cheerful and active.

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Lessons about sleep for babies from 0 to 7 years old

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Changing daily routine and waking hours

Often, in the first year of life, it is not possible to establish a strict sleep schedule Depending on the weather, the baby’s health, mood and life circumstances, the baby’s sleep time will vary slightly. And in these cases, it is easier for the mother to focus not on the exact time of the regime, but on how much the baby was active before bedtime.

Importantly, the shortest time of wakefulness usually occurs before the first morning sleep, while the time of wakefulness before sleep at night is the longest.

But if you create too much wake time before bedtime, you may experience restless sleep throughout the night and your baby will likely wake up earlier in the morning. At the same time, if you try to put your baby to sleep at night earlier than the time when he is really tired and ready to sleep, you will end up with too long a bedtime, periods of wakefulness are possible at night. In such a situation, the baby tries to exhaust himself so much that he gets tired, in order to accumulate that very fatigue that is not yet enough in the body, besides, he protests and experiences a negative attitude towards all actions around sleep. As a result of this process, the child may develop a dislike for the crib, fear of the dark, and anticipation of negative sensations that will accompany the process of falling asleep. Thus, you have correctly determined the bedtime if the child falls asleep in 15-20 minutes, sleeps well at night, and there are no protests against all the actions that precede sleep.

Waking time for babies from 1 to 6 months

Do I need to wake up my baby in the morning?

Another thing is waking up in the morning. What mother would refuse to sleep those minutes that fate gives her with her baby in the morning? Especially if the night's sleep was difficult. But, no matter how cruel it sounds, you cannot allow yourself to do this in order to maintain your daily routine. For children, and for adults as well, staying awake during daylight hours is no less important than sleeping at night. And if you replace the most suitable time for active games in the morning with sleep, you may be surprised to discover how the child makes up for that most active time at nine or ten in the evening, playing and staying awake without any signs of fatigue.

Babies are extremely sensitive to the balance of wakefulness and sleep. Adults can force themselves to sleep on a day off or be cheerful when it is not intended by nature. Kids live in accordance with their internal clock, they cannot deceive nature, cannot force themselves, and it is extremely difficult to adapt to the incorrect change of sleep and wakefulness.

Wake time for babies from 6 months

The requirements for maintaining sleep, feeding and wakefulness patterns especially increase by the age of six months.

Our task is not to organize the regime in a way that is convenient for us, adjusting it to the work, tasks, clubs and training of all children in the family, but in a way that is dictated by the baby’s internal circadian rhythms, as his body requires for the benefit of health.

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