Infant sleep development
There are probably more myths and misconceptions about infant sleep than any other aspect of raising a child – and you can’t believe everything you hear! In fact, as many as one-third of parents admit to lying about their babies sleep patterns in an effort to conform with societies beliefs about what is normal!
Everyone warns you about losing sleep once you have a baby but somehow the reality is still a shock to most parents. Babies wake often at night to feed and sometimes need a lot of support to settle back to sleep, only to wake again unbelievably soon. And there are some nights where periods of sleep are few and far between, with the baby needing to feed constantly and not settling at all. For at least the first three months – and usually much longer – your baby knows no difference between day and night and just feeds and sleeps as needed, around the clock.
Where do babies sleep?
Night feeding is as frequent as daytime breastfeeding in the early months and for some time to come. Room-sharing is recommended for all newborns and for at least the first six months of life. Babies should sleep in the same room as their mother, on a clear, flat sleep surface.
Bed-sharing is a form of co-sleeping suitable for full-term breastfed babies whose parents are non-smokers and are not affected by drugs or alcohol. Intentional bed-sharing is practiced by families around the world but as many as a third of babies will be brought into the parent’s bed in the first three months of life, so knowing how to safely share a sleep surface with your baby is important for all parents.
Babies are at increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUDI) when adults fall asleep with them places not designed for sleeping - like couches, sofas and armchairs. Breastfeeding mothers who have be warned not to let their baby sleep with them are at risk of sitting up to feed in the living room or nursery and falling asleep holding their baby during feeds or while settling. Bottle feeding fathers and mothers face the same risk. Watching or scrolling screens will not keep tired adults awake.
Reducing SIDS risk is important for all parents. Breastsleeping and bed-sharing for breastfeeding mothers and babies is associated with lower rates of SIDS. Even babies who have received any breastmilk receive some protection.
Does how babies are fed change how they sleep?
Breastfeeding is sometimes blamed for babies waking often at night. Those supporting you might suggest introducing infant formula well make your baby sleep longer and allow their parents to do so as well/ Some might even tell you to offer solid foods or add cereal to your milk in a bottle at bedtime. These practices are risky and should not be undertaken lightly. Research has actually shown that very deep sleep in young babies might increase the risk of SIDS. Human infants are not designed to sleep deeply alone for long periods of time and maternal presence might regulate breathing and stages of sleep.
Even more important to know is that the evidence to support formula fed babies sleeping more than breastfed ones and their parents experiencing less sleep disruption is not supported by research. In fact, the one difference appears to be that formula feeding parents believe they get more sleep, even when this is not supported by data collected to measure their sleep! Other research has revealed a difference in how easily mothers return to sleep after feeding their baby. Formula feeding mothers take longer to fall asleep than those who are breastfeeding. Breastsleeping mothers may not fully awake at all.
Human infants are born with immature brain development compared to other mammals. Frequent breastfeeding day and night is necessary for the rapid brain growth necessary in the first year outside the womb. Breastmilk is processed quickly be the digestive system, fueling this development. Studies have confirmed that babies do not consolidate multiple sleep cycles and sleep longer stretches at night until one year.
So what about sleep training?
If we know night time breastfeeding is normal, important and required for healthy development - why do so many people claim to be able to train babies to sleep through the night?
The first thing to clarify: no human sleeps through the night. Babies, children and adults all wake regularly during the night. Independent mobility and control over their own environment and actions allows adults and older children to get out of bed to urinate, drink water, get a snack, add or remove layers of clothing or bedding, adjust the heating or cooling, nudge a snoring co-sleeper and curse the possum on the roof. Babies and toddlers confined to cots in rooms separated from their caregivers need to signal to the sleeping adults to facilitate any of the adjustments needed to return to sleep. They signal through subtle cues intended to wake the parent sleeping within arms reach. When this doesn’t work, signalling increases until it becomes a cry of alarm.
Adults who believe they are training their baby to sleep are actually teaching their child these cues are not reaching their target. The primal response of an infant who believes it is alone is to make themselves safer by becoming quiet and still. A crying baby unprotected by a parent is at risk of predators. Research into the cortisol (stress hormone) in babies and mothers after the crying stops has shown levels quickly return to normal in mothers - but remain hight in babies. Eventually exhausted, the baby falls asleep. Until they wake again and repeat the whole cycle.
The global market for sleep training books, workshops, consultations, webinars and other resources is a multi-million dollar industry built upon parental anxiety and lack of support. Lacking in evidence and claimed by many as their own “secret”method of baby whispering, most are nothing more than extinction methods based on the Cry It Out or Controlled Crying techniques many claim not to be using. There is nothing unique about any of it.
Parents need support, not sleep training advice.
There are stages during the first year (and the second!) when babies wake more in the night. Indeed, the first three months are relatively uncomplicated in what babies need: mostly they just need a breastfeed. As their brains begin more complex development, mobility skills begin to develop on teeth begin to emerge: mostly they just need a breastfeed.
A lot of wasted time and energy is spent trying to work out why a baby is waking more at night. As though, armed with that knowledge, it can be somehow prevented.
As Sarah Ockwell-Smith points out in her article The Rollercoaster of Real Baby Sleep:
“As it happens, 3 months is the peak of sleep in the first year, that means it’s as good as it gets. There is a very, very high likelihood that your baby will sleep the best they are going to sleep until their first birthday (and later) around the age of about 3 months. It’s really not uncommon for 3 months to be happy to be put down, to only wake once or twice in the night and to go to sleep easily after a quick feed/cuddle.”
As she approaches three months, your baby might begin to show signs of her developing circadian rhythm: the control system which regulates sleep and wake in response to day and night. Up until now, your baby has been unregulated by hormones like melatonin, which cause sleepiness when the day comes to an end. In the womb, she shared your hormones and your circadian rhythm by proxy. Once she was born, she was able to feed and sleep freely, without any input from her body clock, which probably ensured she would wake when needed to feed, maintaining milk production and fueling here rapidly growing body. It will be at least two years before she has a mature circadian rhythm.
What’s ahead? (Brace yourselves!)
Four months is a period of complex changes for your baby. You can expect changes to your baby’s sleep around the clock. This will occur again around 8-10 months and again around 15 months. These stages coincide with multiple changes all happening on top of each other: consolidation of daytime sleep into three per day (around four months), two per day (around 8-10 months) and one per day (around 15 months). Mobility development: rolling around 3-5 months, sitting and crawling around 8-10 months and walking around 12-18 months. Research into sleep disruption associated with the development of crawling showed increased wakefulness one month before achieving crawling and up to three months after they begin to crawl!
““It is possible that crawling, which involves a vast range of changes and psychological reorganization in the babies’ development, increases their level of arousal, influences their ability to regulate themselves and causes a period of temporary instability that expresses itself in waking up more frequently,””
