Baby is the most precious gifts of God to any parent. This is a gift with a responsibility which demands attention and care. For many first time parents, it is learning, surprise and challenge to understand and cope with the sleeping cycle of babies. A baby parenting is an art which hones with time. We only need to see and understand the changing sleep pattern as this helps parents to alter their working time. A new born baby generally requires 16 to 17 hours of sleep which is intermittent and they usually awake at a gap of two hours for nursing and caring.
Since babies have a tendency to keep their mother’s awake at night hence some parents may find it tough or irritating but parents should remember that babies are the God’s gift who has the right of good parenting which requires adjustment of parents sleeping cycle. Reason for intermitted awakening is that babies have a small tummy which becomes empty fast and babies wake up to signal their moms of nursing. No attempt should be made to break this natural cycle of need based nursing. Forced nursing suiting parents cycle order can be detrimental to baby’s health.
Once a kid covers one month of its existence then a shift in its sleeping cycle and amount of feed is noticeable. Till a span of three months there the sleeping patter takes it own way of stabilising and their tummies intake capacity increases to allow kids to sleep at night at longer stretch.
From about six months, babies have their longest sleep at night. Most babies can sleep for duration of six hours or more at night and have less waking tendency.
Between six and 12 months, most babies are in bed between 6 pm and 10 pm. It is seen that around 90% of babies usually take less than 30 minutes to get to sleep. About 60% will wake only once during the night and go back to sleep once they settle themselves say with a correct posture or checking whether mom is nearby or not. About one in 10 will call its parents 3-4 times a night. More than a third of parents report problems with their baby’s sleep at this age.
To improve quality of sleep parents are recommended to do the following –
- Do a light massage of their legs
- Keep room soundproof
- Using natural bedding materials as its gives soothing effect to skin
- Ambience temperature regulated to body temperature
- Spending more time with babies gives them a sense of security and they go for a better sleep.
Hence we see that re aligning individual sleeping cycle with that of baby sleeping cycle is no rocket science and God helps to do so as parenting is a true relationship honoured by nature.
