What you Should Know About Baby Sleep Patterns
One of the commonest questions first-time parents ask in advance is “how long will my baby sleep at night?”.
As more experienced parents will tell you, there’s no real answer to that question!
In what follows, we’ll be speaking about babies in the age range 1-5 months.
The basics
Most babies will sleep for about 14-18 hours per day in the first few weeks of their life.
If that sounds great, unfortunately, it’s a little more complex. That’s because babies will tend to sleep in random bursts that are often unpredictable. So, they’ll doze for an hour here or 30 minutes there. It might add up overall to 14 hours but to new parents, it’ll seem more chaotic and much less than that!
These sleep patterns arise because your baby has just spent a lot of time in the womb. It isn’t used to light and just doesn’t understand the concept of “night-time is for sleeping”. It needs to learn that.
So, the reality is that the baby’s sleep patterns are likely to be highly irregular and unpredictable in the first few months. They’ll sometimes be wide awake at night for feeding but at other times just because they are, then they’ll be seemingly sound asleep for most of the day.
Coping
This is the legendary ‘sleepless nights’ phase.
There is no easy answer to this. Usually, around month 5-6, your baby will have developed the adult tendency to sleep at night and be awake more through daylight.
You’ll need patience in the early days. Exhaustion is a potential risk but there is some evidence that mothers produce hormones that allow them to compensate (partly!) for disrupted sleep by being able to nap more easily in sync with their baby through the day – though that assumes they have the opportunity to do so.
However, if the primary care provider to the young baby is the mother, she will still need support from her partner or others during those early weeks of disrupted sleep.
The sleeping environment
You can help, in part, to reduce middle of the night disruptions by:
- keeping your baby’s sleeping area to a steady temperature of around 18-20C. Overheated rooms are likely to make your child uncomfortable and they may also be a factor in increased risks from SIDS;
- young babies should feel the comfort of clothes around them but try to avoid the excessive use of swaddling layers that are too tight and heavy, which might lead to overheating;
- if you can, have your baby in the same room as you during the early months – but in a separate cot rather than your own bed. This will minimise the disruption to your sleep if you need to get up to attend to them;
- don’t rush to pickup your baby in the night if they’re just cooing to themselves contentedly. Check them but they may be fine and if left alone, will happily go back to sleep.
Summary
It is a fact of life that new babies almost always bring with them the prospect of some months of disrupted sleep for their parents and others in the house.
Some may be more inclined to night-time disruption than others and some may take a lot longer to settle down into regular sleep patterns too.
On the whole though, by around 5-6 months things should be showing a lot of improvement.
Good luck!
