How long should a child sleep?
Almost the entire time that the baby was in his mother’s belly, he slept. With birth, the child’s sleep structure begins to gradually change, but this does not happen immediately.
- In the first 2 months, the newborn does not distinguish between day and night, waking up from hunger at approximately equal intervals during the day. After eating, the baby stays awake for only a short time and then falls asleep again. In total, at this age the baby sleeps from 16 to 18 hours a day.
- The daily routine “grows up” starting at 3 months. The duration of uninterrupted sleep at night gradually increases, and during the day the child does not close his eyes longer after waking up. By six months, total sleep time decreases to 15–16 hours a day.
- The process of normalizing the sleep schedule continues and by the time the baby is one year old, he sleeps 9–11 hours at night, without causing any trouble to his parents. During the day he falls asleep only a couple of times, and the rest of the time he stays awake and explores the world. At the age of one year, the total duration of daytime and night sleep is approximately 13–14 hours.
It is important to understand: the figures we have given are averages. Don't assume your baby is sleeping poorly if their sleep schedule is different. Each child has its own individual characteristics, and the key criterion for good sleep is the baby’s well-being. If the newborn is healthy and alert, everything is fine. If your baby often wakes up, groans and tosses and turns in the crib, is capricious and cries, this is a reason to talk to a specialist and discuss the problem.
Why does a 1-year-old child sleep poorly at night?
Just recently the little one was lying and crawling, but now he has started walking and he needs to touch and try everything in order to study? Is he actively learning to walk and trying to chat incessantly in “his” language, but at the same time he sleeps very poorly at night and is capricious?
Don't worry! Your baby has matured, he already does a lot on his own, and therefore needs more support from his mother or another significant adult. He needs to feel that he is safe when he is learning something new, and now it is much more interesting to do this now that he has felt his mobility.
WHY DID THE DREAM SPOILERED?
At the age of 1 year, children explore space and the objects around them with great interest. Sometimes the unknown is scary or dangerous. At this moment, the child wants to receive support from the most caring and close person to him.
The baby may ask to be held, “stick” to his mother for a long time in order to reduce his anxiety, gain confidence in safety and “go” further to explore the world.
If we do not now consider the medical reasons for the influence on the baby’s sleep and sleep conditions, then most often a year old child sleeps poorly at night due to the fact that he is faced with an age-related crisis of one year, also known as a developmental leap or sleep regression. So, we are talking about difficulties with sleep, which arose suddenly and are very clearly manifested not only in poor sleep at night, but during the day, affecting the condition and behavior of the baby.
HOW DOES 1 YEAR SLEEP REGRESSION MANIFEST?
Children usually encounter the next crisis from 9 to 18 months. If you notice one or more signs from the list, then most likely this is a crisis of 1 year:
- Whims and hysterics appeared, the baby became difficult to control.
- The baby requires more attention than usual, constantly follows his mother, often asks to be held, and an increased need for affection and tactile contact can also be noted. The child, to a greater extent, already perceives the mother as an object separate from himself, and this is partly where anxiety arises.
- Appetite increases: children learn a lot of information and skills, which requires a greater influx of calories during the day.
- A sharp reaction to any prohibitions - tears, screams, protests, aggressive behavior.
- Contradictory behavior: asks - refuses, reaches out - pushes away.
- The child sleeps poorly at night, it is difficult to put him to bed for both daytime and nighttime sleep.
HOW TO HELP YOUR BABY IN A 1ST YEAR CRISIS?
In psychology, such a period in the life of a little person is called the 1-year crisis. What is this? This is a normal, logical stage in a child’s development. Deterioration in behavior and sleep during this period is also normal.
When learning new skills, and at this age the most basic ones are walking and speech development, the nervous system works in an increased mode, which is why children’s sleep and behavior suffer.
The nervous system is so excited that if the baby has had too much fun or is overexcited, it is very difficult to calm him down, much less put him to sleep. Therefore, the most important rule during a crisis period is not to over-walk the little one and put him to bed on time at night!
After all, the baby needs a lot of effort to learn new skills, as well as time for quality sleep and rest. Pay attention to daytime sleep and early bedtime before 20.30 - this is the time that best suits children’s biorhythms. Also, most often from 18.30 to 20.30, you can track his signs of fatigue and determine the “sleep window” - the most favorable time when the child falls asleep faster and better.
IF THE BABY DOESN'T LEAVE MOM FOR A STEP
Remember that the child will want to play independently only when the mother spends at least half an hour with him, but in active joint activities: dancing, games, modeling, finger gymnastics, etc. And now, having had enough of communication with his mother, the baby will be distracted with interest by something without such active participation of an adult. This can just help the mother allocate personal time for herself or household chores without much protest from the child.
Remember that the mother’s voice helps the baby calm down and understand that the mother is nearby, even if she has moved away a little or is in the next room/bathroom: you can, for example, hum a song, talk to the baby, tap a melody so that he hears that the mother is nearby.
To reduce the fear of separation from the mother during this crisis period, it is better to be close to the baby, surrounded by unfamiliar or rare guests; be prepared for the fact that the child will not immediately go into the arms of anyone other than his parents.
If mom needs to go somewhere, leave him with a close friend and be sure to assure the baby that you will return soon: here, for example, an hourglass will do for the time of absence or a lamp that changes color on a timer.
Remember that it is important for your baby to be safe during regression in order to move on to a new stage of development! And he gets this confidence next to his mother.
DREAM – SEPARATION FROM MOTHER
The same thing happens before bed. Children perceive sleep as separation from their mother, which is why it is so important for them to spend more time in contact with their mother before bed in order to sleep better at night: hugs, kisses, stroking, light massage of the body, heels, and palms.
If your baby doesn’t sleep well, think about what kind of tactile contact is pleasant for him before bed? What helps him relax when he falls asleep? It is likely that during regression, the child will need more time before bed to spend time with his mother and get enough contact and communication with her.
It is important to pay attention to rituals for falling asleep and preparing for bed: spend a little more time than usual with your baby, remember the pleasant moments of the past day, make a “magical” dream, read your favorite fairy tale... Think about what activities before bed are pleasant for your baby? Try creating a sequence of repetitive and relaxing activities before bed - and within a few days you will notice the results!
If your baby is restless and can’t lie down before going to bed, but constantly crawls, gets up, and explores everything around him, help him: give him time to “master the territory” and only then try to provide your support.
ACTIVE AWAKE TIME = GOOD SLEEP
The child sleeps worse if there is no sleep during the day. It is normal that children at this age move a lot - it is important for them to practice new motor skills.
At one year old, children imitate adults very much, so they strive to do everything like their parents, to repeat their gestures and actions. Take advantage of this feature and provide your child with things like toys, like adults, to spend their waking hours more intensely: for example, for girls - a set of dishes or a cosmetic bag like mom’s, and for boys - a set of tools like dad’s.
If the baby protests too stubbornly and no matter what you do (kids in the sandbox, a tower of blocks at home), he tries to destroy and drill everything, then exhale - this is normal for his age! Right now, children are studying the physics of the process and learning to understand that the whole consists of parts. Therefore, such “destruction” is part of the developing moment.
Introduce prohibitions wisely: if the mother says “no” to almost every child’s action, then he will simply stop reacting to this word.
YOUR BABY'S INDEPENDENCE
And only after the child survives the crisis of 1 year, he will be able to calm down and “let go” of his mother. Remember that the baby is growing, maturing, and can already do something without active help. How often do you give him this opportunity? Do you think it is important for his age to already cope with something on his own?
Sometimes adults, for their own psychological reasons, hinder the independence of their child, and, accordingly, the child’s growth. For example, a mother wants the baby to need her to the same extent, the desire to feel still needed... or such strong closeness with the child helps to overcome difficulties in relationships with a partner... or the mother is afraid of the child growing up and his independence.
Is it really important to help a child grow up and become more independent? How can this help him in the future? Is this important to you as a mother?
Think about what you yourself gain at the moment when the baby becomes more mature and no longer requires such close attention and active help? Think about whether you really consciously allow your child to grow up? Are you acting out of habit, as at an earlier age: also frequent latching to the breast, the same constant rocking before bed, or the nipple at the first squeak? Stop and try to consciously analyze the situation of your communication with your baby, games and interaction with him, your reaction to his requests and protests. What helps and what prevents him from being more independent? Try to help your baby when he asks for it. After all, after a year, it is important for a baby to master some actions without the active participation of an adult.
Give your baby more freedom to explore the space and express his independence. But remember about safety: remove dangerous or valuable things that are in plain sight to avoid the baby’s interest in them and subsequent protests when prohibited.
Remember that at this age the baby can be distracted by something interesting and unusual, switch attention to a new toy, “agree” (emotionally affectionate words), but do it in a playful way. Motivating tasks and rewards in the form of small surprises for your baby are very suitable for this age.
“Why is there so much about independence and growing up, when the question is about the baby not sleeping well?” - you might think. But a dream is a reflection of how the fidget spent the day. Did he have enough physical activity to practice the motor skill of walking? Was communication with your mother enough to satisfy the need for tactile contact with a close and emotionally significant adult?
Frequent Waking Up Mode Self-Falling Sleep By Age
PsychologySleep ParentingSleep RitualFalling AsleepWaking Up Lack of SleepWakefulnessSleep TrainingSleep
How to put your baby to sleep correctly?
Teach your baby to a certain daily routine. Each child’s evening should end the same way, according to a clear ritual. For example, if the baby gets used to being bathed at the same time, then given a massage, then read a fairy tale and immediately put to bed, this sequence of actions in itself will set him up for a sound sleep.
If a newborn does not sleep well, mothers often resort to rocking. Rhythmic movements and the quiet voice of the person closest to you in the world are great for falling asleep, but in the future this can become a problem. The day is not far off when you will have to stay late at work, go on a business trip, or go to visit relatives in another city. Even if you are one hundred percent sure that nothing like this will happen, in just a few months it will become physically difficult for you to carry a grown child in your arms for a long time.
Try not to form habits in your baby that will affect the quality of his sleep. If a child, falling asleep, sucks on his mother's breast or pacifier, then waking up for a moment during the REM sleep phase, he will not be able to fall asleep without it.
What should you do to wean your baby from this habit - just put him in bed without nightly rocking? Not an option: a baby, deprived of an important part of the bedtime ritual, will be capricious and refuse to close his eyes. Usually in such a situation the baby cries for a long time and then sleeps poorly, tosses and turns in his sleep, and often wakes up.
There is only one way out - the ritual of motion sickness must be replaced by another, and a special soft toy can best cope with this. Buy your baby a bunny, bear or other soft friend and do not use it for play during the day. The child must understand that this talisman always comes only at night, and gradually learns to quickly fall asleep by placing a hand on his fluffy side.
Most likely, on the first day of falling asleep according to the new rules, everything will not go as smoothly as we would like. You put a sleep toy in the crib, talk to the baby, pat him on the head, leave the room - and almost instantly hear the baby crying. Don't come back right away, wait one minute and only then come back. When the baby calms down, leave the room again. If the crying repeats a second and third time, wait longer - three minutes; for the fourth and subsequent returns, increase the wait to five minutes.
On the second day, instead of 1, 3 and 5 minutes, the return intervals should be increased to 3, 5 and 7 minutes, on the third and further - to 5, 7 and 9 minutes. In a few days, the child will forget about motion sickness and learn to fall asleep with his new night friend. By the way, don’t forget to come up with a nice name for him.
If your baby doesn't sleep well and cries constantly, is it colic?
Quite possibly. Colic is one of the common reasons why a newborn does not sleep well - up to 40% of babies worldwide suffer from it. Infant colic begins at a very early age - at 2-3 weeks of a baby’s life. At about 6 weeks they reach a maximum level, then begin to slowly decline and usually stop completely at 4-5 months.
It is almost impossible to miss or not understand that a child has colic. Symptoms of this condition in a healthy baby include bouts of crying lasting more than three hours, repeated more than three days a week. At the same time, the baby’s tummy becomes tense, he draws in his legs and starts screaming, from which his heart bleeds. Colic usually begins in the evening and, of course, you can’t count on a newborn’s quiet sleep on such evenings.
What should parents do in such a situation? There is no clear answer to this question. The fact is that medicine does not yet fully understand why colic occurs, and therefore cannot offer one hundred percent working methods to combat it. If your baby is constantly crying, pediatricians recommend trying to calm him down in the following ways:
Motion sickness
Take the baby in your arms, walk and rock him. This helps some babies - after a while they relax and fall asleep.
Massage
If your baby has a colic attack and is crying, gently massage his tummy and back.
Quiet, rhythmic sounds
Relaxing music, the gentle sound of the surf, the calm beating of a mother’s heart - in some cases, sound therapy can be the answer to the question of how to put your baby to sleep.
Mom's warmth and care
The following exercise can help calm your child. Dim the lights in the room, then lie on your back, hold your baby to your chest and talk quietly to him, rocking slightly from side to side.
Vibration
You may have come across cradles, chaise lounges and swings with a vibration mode on sale. If your baby is having trouble sleeping, these devices can help. Also, some parents note that the child quickly falls asleep in the car - all because of the same vibration.
Proper diet
With mother's milk, some undesirable substances can enter the baby's body, aggravating the course of colic. It is advisable for a nursing woman to avoid coffee, chocolate, onions, garlic and other spicy foods.
Which of these methods will help in your case? It is unknown, so doctors recommend trying them all one by one and choosing the one that suits your baby.
Having learned that your child is crying due to colic, some friends may recommend folk remedies - various herbal teas and dill water. The effectiveness of these methods has not been proven, and before using them you should definitely consult a specialist.
What should you do if your newborn sleeps poorly at night but does well during the day?
For some mothers, the child continues to seem small, even after he has already had his own children and built a successful career. For the same reason, they consider the baby to be a newborn up to a year or more. If you are now talking about a toddler who is crawling or even starting to walk and who has confused day with night, most likely the problem is related to insufficient physical activity or overstimulation.
Officially, a child is considered a newborn only 1 month of life, more precisely - 28 days from birth.
If your older baby is having trouble sleeping, try these methods. They can usually correct your sleep-wake schedule in just a few days.
Help your baby get tired
Play, walk, motivate your child to constantly move. Before you feed and quickly put your baby to bed, take him for a walk in the fresh air for half an hour.
Adjust your diet
Do not feed your baby rich food during the day, which makes him sleepy.
Limit your nap time
If your baby falls asleep during the day, let him take a nap for half an hour, and then wake him up. There is no need to experience mental suffering - now this is only for the benefit of the baby.
Eliminate causes of overexcitement
If the baby is not sleeping, perhaps something at home is helping to increase his tone. This could be a TV that is constantly on, adults communicating in a raised voice, long emotional conversations on the phone, loud music, etc. Because of these irritants, the child becomes too excited and then cannot fall asleep, tosses and turns in the crib and often wakes up.
In a truly newborn child, i.e. baby in the first month of life, there should be no differences in the structure of sleep during the day and night. If a newborn only sleeps poorly at night, the cause may be colic, which usually begins in the evening and prevents the baby from falling asleep. No colic? Then try to understand what goes differently at night than during the day. Maybe you turn on the heater and your baby gets hot? Maybe you're swaddling too tightly? Maybe the baby is afraid of the dark and needs to turn on the night light? Find out what's wrong and you can restore your baby's restful sleep by eliminating the causes of the problem.
If your newborn has trouble sleeping for several days and you cannot figure out why this is happening, contact a specialist.
Causes of sleep disturbances
There can be many reasons for poor sleep in newborns at night: overwork, improper sleep schedule, and overexcitement. It is worth keeping in mind that sometimes deviations are an individual norm, because there are children who are calm in the first months of life. Some people are restless from birth and have short sleep.
“Having listened to friends whose children sleep more, mothers begin to put their babies to bed more often, thus disturbing the sleep balance. When children are awake, the so-called sleep pressure increases, and it decreases when falling asleep. The child “gets enough sleep” during the day, and this pressure decreases. At night, sleep becomes superficial, intermittent and restless, says Yulia Domanova. - Pay attention to how much the baby sleeps and how he feels after different durations of sleep. Children should sleep and stay awake at their own individual norm.”
In addition, physiological changes that occur intensively in the body of young children can affect sleep. For example, immature intestines cause problems with gases and colic.
Eternal baby. After what age should a child not be breastfed? More details
Are there other reasons for poor sleep?
Most of the reasons why a baby has difficulty falling asleep and often wakes up are associated with physical or psychological discomfort:
- Malaise
In addition to colic, a child may also experience other unpleasant sensations, such as ear pain, skin irritation from diaper rash, or allergic itching. Usually it is not difficult to localize such problems: if the baby’s hands are free, he pulls them towards the sore spot.
- Reflexive shaking of the hands
The baby does not yet have full control of his body. Sometimes at night his arms begin to move reflexively, and he wakes up. Loose swaddling (in no case tight) will help to slightly limit movements during sleep. In general, this is a temporary phenomenon - it will disappear on its own by 6-8 months.
- Overfilled diaper or wet diaper
The child must be changed in a timely manner, otherwise he will be rightly indignant. Huggies Elite Soft diapers have a special moisture indicator, with which you will immediately understand whether it is time to change clothes or the problem is something else. In any case, change diapers at least every 3-4 hours.
- Is your baby hot or cold?
Many mothers are always afraid that their baby will freeze, and they wrap him up very tightly. However, overheating causes even more discomfort for the child. If the baby's face turns red and sweat appears under her clothes, it means that you have overdone the insulation.
- Stress
Did guests come to you, and everyone took the baby in their arms? Have you traveled somewhere with your baby? Are your neighbors doing renovations and making a lot of noise? It is not surprising that the baby tosses and turns and often wakes up. This will pass, but you may need to get up and comfort your baby more often tonight.
If your newborn begins to sleep poorly, look for the cause and eliminate it. If this does not work, consult your pediatrician. In the vast majority of cases, sleep problems are easily resolved or disappear as you grow older, and you will soon forget about them forever. In the meantime, we wish good night and sweet dreams to you and your child!
Periods of sleep at night in a child under four years of age: normal mode
0-3 months
Babies from 0 to 3 months sleep for 30-50 minutes at night, going through the stages of shallow and deep sleep. At this age, shallow sleep prevails over deep sleep. Your baby will wake up after finishing one sleep cycle and often need help getting back to sleep.
3-6 months
By 3 months, the beginnings of a sleep-wake pattern appear. Children sleep up to 3-4 hours straight at night. This reduces the number of awakenings.
6-12 months
By 6 months, your baby is sleeping through his longest stretches of sleep without waking up during the night. Going to bed for the night is between 18:00 and 20:00. It takes your baby less than 30 minutes to fall asleep. Provided that there are no problems with sleep and the child is not overtired. At night, a child can sleep up to 6 hours. Sometimes more.
Almost two thirds of children wake up only once at night for feeding. But there are also babies who still wake up about 3-4 times.
1-2 years
After one year, children can sleep peacefully all night and do not need additional feedings if their diet is adjusted and there is no food-sleep association.
2-4 years
At this age, night sleep is already stable.
In the first hours after going to bed, children sleep in the deep sleep phase. Therefore, it is difficult to wake them up. In the second half of the night, babies sleep more superficially and shallowly. At this time, it is easier to wake up the child; night awakenings occur more often during this period.
But if the baby has problems sleeping, then even in the first half of the night he may wake up often.
The sleep cycle lengthens as the child gets older. By 3 years it reaches 60 minutes. By age 5, children have the same sleep cycle as adults—90 minutes.
