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Baby sleep: what to expect at 2-12 months

Baby sleep needs

Babies need sleep to grow and develop well. But babies’ sleep needs vary, just as the sleep needs of older children and adults do. Your baby might be doing well with more or less sleep than other babies the same age.

Your baby’s mood and wellbeing is often a good guide to whether your baby is getting enough sleep. If your baby is:

• wakeful and grizzly, they might need more sleep
• wakeful and contented, they’re probably getting enough sleep.

How baby sleep changes from 2 to 12 months

As they get older, babies:

• sleep less in the daytime
• are awake for longer between naps
• have longer night-time sleeps and wake less at night
• need less sleep overall.

2-3 months: what to expect from baby sleep

At this age, babies sleep on and off during the day and night. Most babies sleep for 14-17 hours in every 24 hours.

Young babies sleep in cycles that last 50-60 minutes. In young babies, each cycle is made up of active sleep and quiet sleep. Babies move around and grunt during active sleep, and sleep deeply during quiet sleep.

At the end of each cycle, babies wake up for a little while. They might grizzle or cry. They might need help to settle for the next sleep cycle.

At 2-3 months, babies start developing night and day sleep patterns. This means they tend to start sleeping more during the night.

Around 3 months: what to expect from baby sleep

Babies keep developing night and day sleep patterns.

Their sleep cycles consist of:

• light sleep, when baby wakes easily
• deep sleep, when baby is sound asleep and very still
• dream sleep, when baby is dreaming.

Sleep cycles also get longer, which might mean less waking and resettling during sleep. At this age, some babies might regularly be having longer sleeps at night – for example, 4-5 hours.

Most babies still sleep for 14-17 hours in every 24 hours.

3-6 months: what to expect from baby sleep

At this age, most babies sleep for 12-15 hours every 24 hours.

Babies might start moving towards a pattern of 2-3 daytime sleeps of up to two hours each.

And night-time sleeps get longer at this age. For example, some babies might be having long sleeps of six hours at night by the time they’re six months old.

But you can expect that your baby will still wake at least once each night.

6-12 months: what to expect from baby sleep

Babies sleep less as they get older. By the time your baby is one year old, baby will probably sleep for 11-14 hours every 24 hours.

Sleep during the night
From about six months, most babies have their longest sleeps at night.

Most babies are ready for bed between 6 pm and 10 pm. They usually take less than 40 minutes to get to sleep, but some babies take longer.

At this age, baby sleep cycles are closer to those of grown-up sleep – which means less waking at night. So your baby might not wake you during the night, or waking might happen less often.

But many babies do wake during the night and need an adult to settle them back to sleep. Some babies do this 3-4 times a night.

Sleep during the day
At this age, most babies are still having 2-3 daytime naps that last for between 30 minutes and 2 hours.

6-12 months: other developments that affect sleep

From around six months, babies develop many new abilities that can affect their sleep or make them more difficult to settle:

• Babies learn to keep themselves awake, especially if something interesting is happening, or they’re in a place with a lot of light and noise.
• Settling difficulties can happen at the same time as crawling. You might notice your baby’s sleep habits changing when baby starts moving around more.
• Babies learn that things exist, even when they’re out of sight. Now that your baby knows you exist when you leave the bedroom, baby might call or cry out for you.
• Separation anxiety is when babies get upset because you’re not around. It might mean your baby doesn’t want to go to sleep and wakes up more often in the night. As babies mature they gradually overcome this worry.

6-12 months: night-time feeding

From around six months of age, if your baby is developing well, it’s OK to think about night weaning and phasing out night feeds. But if you’re comfortable with feeding your baby during the night, there’s no hurry to phase out night feeds.

You can choose what works best for you and your baby.

A rollover feed is a late feed somewhere between 10 pm and midnight. Some parents find that rollover feeds help babies sleep longer towards morning. If this works for you and your baby, it’s fine to give baby a rollover feed.

Concerns about baby sleep

If you’re concerned about your baby’s sleep, it can be a good idea to track your baby’s sleep for a week or so. This can help you get a clear picture of what’s going on.

You can do this by drawing up a simple chart with columns for each day of the week. Divide the days into hourly blocks, and colour the intervals when your baby is asleep. Keep your chart for 5-7 days.

Once completed, the chart will tell you things like:

• when and how much sleep your baby is getting
• how many times your baby is waking during the night
• how long your baby is taking to settle after waking.

You can also record how you tried to resettle your baby and what worked or didn’t work.

Then you can compare the information in your chart with the general information about baby sleep needs above:

• How does your child compare to other babies the same age? If your baby is wakeful and grizzly and getting much less sleep than others, your baby might need more opportunities for sleep.
• How many times is your baby over six months old waking up during the night? If it’s 3-4 times a night or more, you might be feeling very tired. You might want to think about phasing out some of your baby’s sleep habits.

If you decide you need to see a professional for help with your baby’s sleep, take your chart with you.

If you’re concerned about your baby’s sleep, it’s a very good idea to see a child health professional for help. You could start by talking with your GP or child and family health nurse.

How baby sleep patterns affect grown-ups

Babies and grown-ups need sleep for wellbeing, but babies sleep differently from adults. Most parents of babies under six months of age get up in the night to feed and settle their babies. For many, this keeps going after six months.

Some parents are OK with getting up a lot at night as long as they have enough support and they can catch up on sleep at other times. For others, getting up in the night over the long term has a serious effect on them and their family lives.

The quality of your sleep can affect your health and your mood. Being exhausted can make it hard to give your baby positive attention during the day. And your relationship with your baby and the time and attention you give baby during the day can affect the quality and quantity of baby’s sleep.

So it’s important that you get some help if you’re not getting enough sleep. You could start by asking family or friends for help. And if you feel that lack of sleep is affecting you mentally or emotionally, it’s a very good idea to talk with your GP or another health professional.

There’s a strong link between baby sleep difficulties and symptoms of postnatal depression in women and postnatal depression in men. But the link isn’t there if parents of babies with sleep difficulties are getting enough sleep themselves.

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Sleep phases in a child - Sleep stages of a baby baby

Each person has his own associations with the word "sleep". For some, this is a viscous, serene state, full of bliss. Someone more pragmatically will appreciate it as a rest for a tired mind and body. But for young parents, sometimes children's sleep attracts feelings of anxiety, excitement and even more fatigue. Such feelings are often associated with a lack of confidence in their knowledge on the subject.

What is sleep? Why do babies often wake up at night? nine0006 What happens in the body of a child and an adult during sleep?

Here we come to phase of REM sleep or REM sleep. Here our behavior changes. The brain begins to work rapidly, as if during wakefulness, experiencing strong emotions. The paradox lies in the fact that the human muscles are completely immobilized, atonic, only the eyeballs under the closed eyelids quickly perform movements in a coordinated manner. At this moment, we see the most colorful, vivid, emotional dreams that we remember after waking up. Our pulse, breathing are irregular, blood pressure and body temperature rise. The brain is busy processing and structuring the information received during the day. The brain adapts a person to changing environmental conditions, creates a program of action in the future. Therefore, it is not desirable to interrupt this phase of sleep, because. it directly affects the mental health of a person. It used to be thought that dreams lasted only seconds, but in fact we can dream up to half an hour. nine0005 This is the most mysterious, unexplored phase. Scientists especially emphasize its importance for human life.

If you combine all the phases listed, you get one sleep cycle. Depending on the genetic predisposition (and not at all on laziness), a person needs to go through 4-6 such cycles. They vary in the duration of the individual phases during the night. If at first the slow sleep phase prevails, but in the morning its time decreases significantly from cycle to cycle, and the REM sleep phase becomes dominant. nine0003

VIDEO TUTORIALS

Baby Sleep Lessons
0-7 years old

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Peculiarities of sleep in children

Turning to explanations related to the peculiarities of sleep of children, a phrase from Winnie the Pooh’s verse involuntarily pops up in my head: “If bears were bees, they would not care ...” If babies were born with a sleep characteristic of an adult , they would lose their touchingness, we would not be able to surround them with care. Of course, children's sleep sometimes causes a lot of trouble, but you can and should adapt to its features. nine0005 We can teach the baby the right sleep habits, can become a wise and calm teacher for the baby, who will be an active participant in joint daytime fun and a guide in the labyrinths of dreams.

From the first day, the brain begins the painstaking work of adapting the child to the world around him. During sleep, this work continues. Conventionally the sleep of an infant can be divided into 2 main phases: active and calm. The infant's resting phase of sleep is the beginning of the development of non-REM sleep, which requires more complex neurophysiological mechanisms. This transformation takes place only by 2.5-3 months. It is no coincidence that there is an expression "to fall asleep with the sleep of a baby", because. the deep sleep of a baby is much stronger than an adult, if the child has entered this phase, he cannot be awakened by external noise. nine0003

The active phase of childhood sleep is similar to REM sleep in adults. We can notice different expressions on the baby’s face; the palms are clenched and unclenched, it seems that the whole body conveys some kind of emotion (although in an adult we notice a minimum of movements in this phase). It can be assumed that the system of suppression of motor activity has not yet been developed in babies. At this point, the baby can wake himself up with his movements. It is useful to remember about swaddling for sleep.

How does a child's sleep change as they grow up? nine0013

The active phase of sleep in newborns takes up almost 70-80% of sleep. Literally in 2 weeks, 50% is given to fast sleep. By 4 months, baby's REM sleep is 40%. By 3 years - 30%. We must not forget that during REM sleep, the baby's brain integrates the information received during wakefulness into a complete picture of the world.

Baby's sleep cycle is 40-90 minutes, babies can't link sleep cycles, so they wake up and cry, it's an accessible way for them to communicate with adults. Weeping, they explain to us their needs. This is the way to survive. nine0006