A long day of parenthood is finally drawing to a close. You abandon your plans to fold that last load of laundry, heading for bed instead. You no sooner fall into a deep sleep than you’re awakened by the only member of your family who seems to be getting enough rest: your baby.
If you’re feeling a bit frazzled and exhausted by your baby’s erratic sleep patterns, you’re not alone. Dr. Richard Ferber, author of “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems,” said newborn babies typically sleep 16 or 17 hours per day, but rarely for more than a few hours at a time.
Fortunately, babies’ sleep patterns evolve. “During the first few weeks of life, a baby’s patterns are erratic,” said Dr. Deborah Lin-Dyken, a developmental pediatrician at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. “By age 3 to 6 months, however, most babies have switched to a circadian rhythm in which they sleep more at night than during the day.”
It’s at this point that most babies are ready to start sleeping through the night. Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician in San Mateo, Calif., said babies can make this transition more easily if their parents have helped them learn how to differentiate between night and day during their first weeks.
To help young babies learn the difference between night and day, Greene suggested, parents should expose them to normal household noise during their waking hours and engage in plenty of direct eye contact, something that babies find particularly stimulating.
“The most powerful wake-up activity is direct eye contact. When your baby locks eyes with you, it’s almost like she’s drinking a double latte. Her heart beat speeds up, her blood pressure rises a bit, and she becomes more awake.”
Greene also suggested that parents stroke their babies’ feet during the daytime because this stimulates the pineal gland that helps in the regulation of the body’s circadian rhythms. At night, the amount of stimulation should be kept to a minimum, and parents should rely upon a series of pre-bedtime rituals designed to cue the baby to the fact that the sandman awaits.
While some babies start sleeping through the night largely on their own, others seem determined to resist. While it can be exhausting to have your sleep disrupted night after night, not everyone sees a night-waking baby as a problem. Some parents, particularly ones with other children who demand their time and attention by day, may actually cherish a few stolen moments alone with their baby in the wee hours of the morning.
Some parents (especially those in dual-working or single-parent households) may have a strong need to encourage their babies to sleep through the night as soon as possible.
“For Joshua’s first six weeks, Shannon was on maternity leave, so we were able to get up with him and she could catch up on her sleep during the day,” said James Tew of Elgin. “As she reached the end of her leave, we tried to get him adjusted more to our schedule by putting him down to sleep at certain times and not picking him up if he woke during the night. That took some self-discipline, since our first instinct was to go quiet him or give him a bottle, but we stuck to that. It actually only took a couple of nights before he slept through the night.”
Other families come up with different methods of coping with their night owls. Biological anthropologist James McKenna of the University of Notre Dame said many parents take their babies to bed with them because it lets them get more sleep. Because there is a taboo about the “family bed,” McKenna said, many parents are unwilling to admit that they sleep with their babies even though such arrangements are the norm for the vast majority of babies worldwide and there are many proven benefits to both mother and child. “We’ve been mis-schooled as to what is normal and beneficial for babies.”
Mary Lynn Carver of Dallas said her decision to sleep with her son Ryan during his first months was good for their entire family, but she stressed the importance of having both parents committed to the idea.
“Both the husband and the wife must agree about the sleeping arrangements or it will cause problems. I was very lucky in this regard as my husband, Jeff, and I both enjoyed the extra sleep as well as the chance to get to know our baby. When we started putting Ryan in his crib at night, it was great to have our bed back, but Jeff said he missed holding hands with the baby as they went to sleep.”
If a baby isn’t sleeping through the night by the middle of his first year, the problem of night-waking can become urgent.
“Parents may begin to wonder if the rest of their lives will be like this,” said Dr. Edward Stepanski, the clinical director of the Center for Sleep and Ventilatory Disorders at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Many parents choose the Ferber method of teaching their babies to sleep through the night. This method involves responding to a baby’s nighttime crying at timed intervals (5, 10, 15 minutes) and minimizing nighttime interaction between parent and child.
Suzi and Joe Prokell of Richardson, Texas, relied on such a technique to teach their 8-month-old son, Jacob, how to sleep through the night. “The rewards were immediate. He’s slept through the night ever since and he’s been much happier during the day.”
Most parents see a tremendous improvement in their child’s sleep patterns within a period of days when using the Ferber method, but not everyone sings its praises.
Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatrician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and the author of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Children,” is one of its most outspoken critics. He argued that it makes more sense to leave well enough alone, and he encouraged parents to respect, rather than attempt to alter, their baby’s emerging sleep patterns. “Parents can’t change the evolving rhythm of a baby’s sleep patterns any more than they can change the seasons,” he said. “What’s more, parents who artificially interfere with their child’s sleep patterns risk doing more harm than good.”
Most sleep experts agree that any attempts to encourage a baby to sleep through the night should be left until the child is at least 6 months old. “Prior to that time, a child’s brain and nervous system are simply not sufficiently mature to enable him or her to sleep through the night,” explained Dr. Charles Pohl, director of the Pediatric Sleep Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
While your first solid night’s sleep following the birth of your baby may be a long time in the making, eventually it will come. In the weeks and months that follow, you may find yourself surprised by a sudden aching to be pacing the floor by the light of the moon with a precious newborn infant cradled in your arms.
