If you are pregnant, you may be interested in how much your baby will sleep when it comes into the world. If you already have a newborn baby, you may have realized that their sleep pattern has nothing to do with that of adults or older children. Newborn babies when they arrive in the world have their internal clock uncontrolled and sleep indiscriminately both during the day and at night.
Therefore, in addition to knowing how many hours a newborn baby should sleep , it is also important to keep in mind that it should be helped to understand when it is day and when it is night and when it is time to sleep more hours in a row (at night). evening). At first it will seem like an impossible mission and that is that your little one will wake up at intervals of two or three hours because he will be hungry or to change his dirty diaper, and he will not care if it is day or if it is night and you are peacefully asleep / to.
THE HOURS THAT NEWBORNS SHOULD SLEEP
Newborns sleep many hours, although not in a row. The normal thing is that they sleep between 16 and 17 hours a day (indistinctly between day and night). But most babies will not be asleep for more than two hours at a time. Some babies can sleep up to 4 hours at a time during the first weeks of life.
The baby sleeps many hours but with a totally irregular schedule … This will make it totally exhausting for you. You will have to get up at night several times to feed, change the diaper or just to comfort the baby. This can certainly take its toll on you during the next day and make you very exhausted due to your lack of sleep.
Baby’s sleep cycles are shorter than in adults, but they spend more time in REM, which is essential for their brain development. All of this doesn’t last long, although the first three months of a baby’s life can seem like an eternity to sleep-deprived parents.
THE CHANGE IN THE NEWBORN BABY’S SLEEP PATTERN
When the baby reaches the sixth week (although it is the sixth to eighth week) of life, he begins to sleep for shorter periods during the day and longer during the night. Although the vast majority of babies will still wake up during the night to be fed. They will also begin to have shorter periods of REM sleep and longer periods of deep sleep.
After three months, most babies are able to sleep about 8 hours at night, others more, some less. There are babies who at 6 weeks are already able to sleep 8 to 12 hours at night, but other babies do not get to this until they are 6 months … And some can continue to wake up even after the year.
If your baby sleeps fewer hours than the neighbor’s baby, don’t worry because there are babies who sleep much less than ‘normal’ for babies their age and this does not mean that there is a problem with their health. Obviously, there will be a problem for you, because you will be more tired than normal because your baby will wake you up at night for longer. But if your baby is healthy, gains weight and has normal development … If he sleeps a few hours, he only gets what he needs. No more no less.
But it is very important that parents establish routines and sleep habits from the moment babies arrive in the world to gradually balance their internal clock. In this way they will learn that at night is when they should sleep more hours.