Sleeping pattern of a newborn baby.
What are the sleep requirements of the newborn baby?
How much baby needs to sleep is completely dependent on the age of the infant. A newborn baby sleeps much of time in the day but the sleep of the baby is segmented in short duration of time. With the increase in the age of the baby, the length of day sleep decreases but the duration of nighttime sleep increases.
The newborn baby tends to sleep about 8 to 9 hours in a daytime and 8 hours at night. Generally, babies don’t sleep more than 2 hours straight. Baby learns to sleep 6 hours straight at night at the age of about 3 months and up to 6 months baby start sleeping at night for about 8 hours straight. The baby also starts to differentiate into day and night at the age of about 6 months. Look at the change in the sleeping pattern of your baby. If your baby is suddenly awake or crying this may be a sign of ear infection or any other problem. Do speak to your doctor about it.
Keeping the milk bottle to the mouth of a baby while being on the bed is a bad practice. This may lead to choking or internal infection in the baby such as ear infection.
What are the different Sleeping cycles of an infant?
Infants have different sleeping cycles than adults. They have different stages and depth of sleep. The body movement of the baby depends upon the stage of their sleep. He or she may be actively moving or stay very still.
In total hours of sleep, baby spends less time in REM (random eye movement ) while adult do it more.
Non-REM sleep baby may be in any of these 4 stages:
o Stage 1: baby may feel drowsiness, dozing eyes droop, may open and close eyes.Overall baby is preparing himself or herself to sleep or feeling sleepy.
o Stage 2: stage 2 of the Non REM sleep is light sleep. Baby may be awake or stimulate with the sudden sound.
o Stage 3: in this stage baby is in deep sleep, he or she becomes quiet.
o Stage 4: in this stage infant is in very deep sleep, quiet and does not move at all.
A newborn baby enters stage 1 of the Non REM cycle first at the beginning of the sleep cycle, then moves into stage 2, followed by 3, then 4, then again back to 3, then 2, then to REM. This cycle may run several times during sleep. There are chances that baby may be awakened from going stage 4 to stage 3 and have difficulty to go back to sleep in first 3 months from their birth.
Here parent helps them to fall asleep again.
Signs that inform you that your baby is ready to sleep :
You can tell when your baby is sleepy and help them to fall asleep. The sleep readiness sings of the babies is as follows :
- Rubbing eyes
- And looking away.
Alert states after the sleep of a baby :
Once the baby is awake it has 3 alert states.
- Quite alert phase – in this state baby awakes. He or she is staying still and observing the surrounding environment.
- Active alert phase – in this phase baby moves actively and attentive to sound and sights.
- Crying alert phase – in this state baby becomes upset cry a lot and sometimes reject the feeding as well.
What are the signs of newborn sleep problems?
Baby may develop separation anxiety, in this baby generally awakens during the night and start to cry or have a problem too back to sleep. This is a normal part of development baby doesn’t understand that the separation is temporary
The newborn sleep problems are as follows:
- Baby start Crying when you leave the room.
- Baby Refuse to go to sleep without a parent nearby him or her.
- Newborn start Clinging to the parent at separation.