Signs baby is in deep sleep

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Sleep

Types of Sleep

Babies have 2 types of sleep. Both types of sleep are important and healthy.

Light Sleep

Your baby needs light sleep for his brain to grow and develop. This is when your baby dreams. During light sleep your baby:

Moves around and makes noises.
Has eye twitches or opens and closes his eyes quickly.
Has fast and slow breathing.
Wakes up easily.

Deep Sleep

Your baby needs deep sleep for his brain to rest. During deep sleep your baby:

Doesn't move very much.
Has relaxed and floppy arms and legs.
Has regular steady breathing.
Makes sucking movements.
Doesn't wake up easily.

Newborns fall asleep dreaming in light sleep. Wait for signs of deep sleep before laying your baby down. This may take 20-30 minutes. It's normal for baby to fall into a light sleep while nursing and still need additional time to fall into deep sleep. Consider it extra snuggling time!

Sleep Patterns

Some babies need more sleep than others. As your baby gets older, her sleep will change and become more predictable. It's normal for your baby to be hungry and wake to breastfeed in the middle of the night. This is what you can expect:

Newborn to 6 Weeks

During the first 6 weeks, your baby's sleep will be hard to predict. She is getting used to the new world around her. You can expect that your baby will sleep for only a few hours at a time and will wake up many times throughout the day and night. It's normal and healthy for baby to be hungry and nurse in the middle of the night. Look for hunger cues and bring your baby to the breast as soon as you see them.

Cluster feedings are common during these early weeks. This is when the baby feeds almost continually for several hours. Your baby may have a series of short feedings that are close together or one or two long feedings. Baby will still get enough sleep even if she wakes often to feed, and this frequent nursing will help you establish a good milk supply.

6 to 8 Weeks

Starting at around 6 weeks, your baby may sleep more at night because she is awake more during the day. Waking at night to breastfeed is still normal and healthy. Remember to nap when your baby does—even a little sleep can help you feel more rested.

About 3 Months

Now your baby will start to sleep for longer periods of time at night, but she will probably still not sleep through the night. It's common for babies to wake to breastfeed once or twice per night—or more frequently if they are going through a growth spurt. Soon your baby will begin falling into deep sleep faster so you can lay her down sooner after breastfeeding.

About 6 Months

Your baby may sleep for up to 6 hours at a time. Some babies sleep through the night, but many do not. Breastfeeding during the night is still normal and healthy, even after your baby begins eating solid food.

About 8 Months

Your baby's sleep schedule will become more regular. She will probably take two naps during the day and sleep about 6 hours at night. Breastfeeding at bedtime will help calm your baby, but she may still cry when you leave the room. This can make naps and bedtime more difficult. Keeping a regular routine will help your baby feel more secure and learn to calm herself. Some babies are able to self-calm around 8 months, but others learn this skill later on.

Throughout the first year, babies may have times when they wake up more often because of growth spurts, sickness, teething, or changes in routine.

Some babies take a long time before they sleep through the night. As long as your baby is happy and growing well, there is no reason to be concerned. Talk to your doctor if you are concerned about your baby's sleep schedule.

Safe Sleep: Your baby needs your protection even when she's asleep.

Here are steps to follow every time baby goes to sleep.

Always put baby down to sleep on her back.
Baby should sleep on a separate, firm sleep surface with no pillows, blankets, stuffed animals, or toys. Avoid curtains or window shades that could be pulled into the sleep area.
Baby should sleep in the same room with you but not in the same bed. You can bring your baby into your bed to breastfeed, but she should be returned to her own sleep surface, such as a crib or bassinet, after each feeding.
Baby should never sleep on a sofa or other soft surface.
Baby should be dressed appropriately for the room temperature. Babies don't need to wear extra layers of clothes. A sleeper or sleep sack should keep her cozy if the room is cool. Some young infants feel more secure when they are swaddled, or wrapped in a blanket. Swaddling may help calm a fussy baby, but the blanket should be removed before she goes to sleep.
All caregivers should know and follow these safe-sleep practices.

Tips for Sleepy Parents

New parents can expect to get less sleep. For a few months, most of your sleep will be in short stretches. These tips will not make your baby sleep through the night, but they may help YOU get more rest.

Keep baby close at night

Put your baby to sleep in your room in his own crib or bassinet for the first few months. When your baby wakes up and needs something, you won't have far to go. It will be easier for you to recognize baby's hunger cues so you can bring him to the breast right away.

Try some "white noise"

Play music softly or turn on a quiet fan so you won't wake up with every little sound your baby makes. You will still be able to hear your baby when he really needs you.

Keep the lights low

Keeping lights low while you feed, burp, or change your baby's diaper during the night will help you get back to sleep more quickly. Turn the lights on if you are giving medicine or doing something else that requires your full attention.

Sleep when your baby sleeps

Even a short nap will help you feel more rested.

Ask for help

Ask family and friends for help at home.

From Wide-Awake to Fast-Asleep: Baby’s Sleep Patterns

While awake and asleep, your baby goes through different stages. Knowing what happens during these stages can help maximize your child’s sleep, while helping you make the most of her waking hours.

The Alert Phase

Babies also have differences in how alert they are during the time they are awake. When a newborn awakens at the end of the sleep cycles, there is typically a quiet alert phase. This is a time when the baby is very still, but awake and taking in the environment. During the quiet alert time, babies may look or stare at objects, and respond to sounds and motion.

This phase usually moves into an active alert phase. You’ll notice your baby is more attentive to sounds and sights, and moves actively.

After this period of active alertness, your baby enters a crying phase. Her body moves erratically, and she may cry loudly. Babies can easily be over-stimulated during the crying phase, so it’s usually best to find a way of calming her down. Holding her close or swaddling (wrapping snugly in a blanket) may help lull her. She is not likely to respond to the same stimuli that she did when she is actively alert.

It is usually best to feed babies before they reach the crying phase. When in the crying period, your baby can be so upset that she refuses the breast or bottle. In newborns, crying is a late sign of hunger.

While She Sleeps

Babies, like adults, have various stages and depths of sleep. Depending on the stage, your baby may actively move or lie very still. Infant sleep patterns begin forming during the last months of pregnancy—active sleep first, then quiet sleep by about the eighth month. There are two types of sleep:

REM (rapid eye movement sleep)
This is a light sleep when dreams occur and the eyes move rapidly back and forth. Although babies spend about 16 hours each day sleeping, about half of this is in REM sleep. Older children and adults sleep fewer hours and spend much less time in REM sleep. Your baby may startle to and awaken from noises during REM sleep that she will barely respond to during Non-REM sleep.
Non-REM sleep
Non-REM has four stages:
- Stage 1: drowsiness—eyes droop, may open and close, dozing
- Stage 2: light sleep—your baby moves and may startle or jump with sounds
- Stage 3: deep sleep—your baby is quiet and does not move
- Stage 4: very deep sleep—she is quiet and does not move

A baby enters stage 1 at the beginning of the sleep cycle, then moves into stage 2, then 3, then 4, then back to 3, then 2, then to REM. These cycles may occur several times during sleep. Babies may awaken as they pass from deep sleep to light sleep and may have difficulty going back to sleep in the first few months.

Online Medical Reviewer: Louise Jovino, DO

Date Last Reviewed: 4/6/2010

© 2000-2018 The StayWell Company, LLC. 800 Township Line Road, Yardley, PA 19067. All rights reserved. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. Always follow your healthcare professional's instructions.

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? What happens in the body of a child and an adult during sleep?

Sleep phases

In the middle of the 20th century, scientists at the University of Chicago N. Kleitman and Y. Azerinsky, using electroencephalographs, came to the conclusion that at night a person needs to go through 4-6 wavy cycles of 80-100 minutes each.

Everything starts with a nap. This is first phase . This dream is extremely sensitive, it lasts 5-10 minutes. Breathing, pulse slow down, muscles relax. If we turn to a person, then he says that he did not sleep, but simply thought.

Time has come for the second stage or slow-deep sleep , which lasts approximately 20 minutes. Consciousness is turned off, but there are also thresholds of high auditory sensitivity, i.e. a person can be easily awakened by calling his name. The dream is light and gentle, but already real.

This is followed by the third and fourth stages of slow deep sleep. At this moment it is difficult to wake us up. The brain is busy processing signals from internal organs. The body removes decay products that have accumulated in the brain during the period of wakefulness. The fourth phase accounts for 80% of dreams, but what a pity that we do not remember them.

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. 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.

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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. 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.

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?

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.

As early as 4 months old, parents can start teaching their baby how to link sleep cycles to each other in order to provide better quality sleep for their baby and the whole family. The baby is growing, sleep norms are changing , and the process of children's sleep is becoming more and more close to that of an adult. The amount of sleep is reduced, periods of wakefulness change, the phase of active sleep decreases, muscle movements during sleep become a thing of the past.
Now it is useful to learn how to teach your child to connect the cycles of dreams. Believe the habit of sleeping through the night is a skill that can be mastered by children from 5-6 months.

Physiology of sleep Sleep phases Sleep cycle Norms of sleep

Night tantrums and sleepwalking in children. Parasomnias.

08/12/2016

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The baby suddenly “wakes up” and screams terrible words in a dream “Don’t touch me, get away!”, “Stop it right now!”, “Disappear, please disappear!” he does not respond to persuasion, continues to cry terribly. His eyes are open, his forehead is covered with sweat, the child is not himself. This horror can last from several minutes to half an hour.

Here is an example of parasomnia called "night terror". Anyone who has ever experienced night hysteria will never forget it.

Parasomnia - what is it?

Human sleep is not just the absence of wakefulness, it is a whole world, a system organized in a special way. This system is controlled by the brain and subjugates the entire body during sleep. Even in an adult, sleep and wakefulness may not completely pass into each other. In a child, especially in the first months of his life, when the sleep phases are not yet fully formed, they sometimes appear at the “wrong time” or even overlap one another. At the moments of such a “superposition of phases”, the body behaves not quite normally - a person can walk, talk, move his arms and legs, or even sob bitterly, while continuing to sleep soundly. Such phenomena of activity during deep sleep are called parasomnia (from para - disturbance and somnus - sleep).

Parasomnia is not a pathology, but simply a consequence of the general immaturity of the brain. Over time, this "imposition of phases" occurs less and less, and by the transitional age it usually disappears altogether.

Well, perhaps leaving the ability to talk in a dream about oneself “as a keepsake”.

Parasomnias in themselves do not pose a health hazard, however, they can add anxiety and excitement to parents. It is best to terrify parents with such manifestations of parasomnia as night tantrums and sleepwalking. Here we will dwell on them in more detail.

Night tantrums. Why does a child cry in his sleep?

Let's immediately distinguish between terms so as not to get confused further. There are many articles about children's sleep, and the terminology is different everywhere. So, there are terrible unpleasant dreams. We all see them sometimes at night, but they have nothing to do with what we would call night tantrums, or nightmares / fears. The nature of night tantrums is very different from the nature of ordinary dreams, below we will consider and analyze the main differences.

Most often, night tantrums occur in children from one to five years. Night tantrums (in English sources "night terror") are called bouts of intense fear, usually accompanied by crying or screaming, occurring when one phase of sleep overlaps with another.

Anyone who has ever encountered this phenomenon knows that it is really very scary. The child desperately screams, talks, his eyes are wide open, but he does not seem to see you, his forehead is covered with perspiration. You can feel how fast his heart is beating and how hard he is breathing. It is almost impossible to calm the baby, he does not respond to persuasion, does not allow himself to be hugged or pulled out of the crib.

And really, you shouldn't try to do that.

Although the child may appear to be awake, he is in fact in deep sleep. An attack of night hysteria can continue from several minutes to half an hour.

What is the main difference between night tantrums and bad dreams?

Frightening dreams, like any other dreams, occur during the rapid eye movement phase. During this phase, the body is asleep, but the brain works in much the same way as in waking mode. Sleep at this time is sensitive, a child who had a nightmare can wake up quickly, he remembers what scared him, and your gentle hands, hugs, motion sickness will help him calm down.

This is not at all the case with an episode of night hysteria. Night tantrums usually occur at the beginning of the night, when the phases of deep sleep, in which a person sleeps without dreams, prevail. The child suddenly experiences a strong feeling of fear, his brain tries to wake up, but at the same time continues to sleep soundly. As a result, the baby screams and cries, but it will not work to correct the situation with persuasion or caress - even though the baby’s eyes are open, he sleeps and does not see you.

A kid who has survived a night tantrum will not remember anything after waking up. Therefore, if you want to talk to him about what happened, your questions should be built only in the form of open-ended questions that do not offer a choice of two or three options and cannot be answered with "yes" or "no".

Let's clarify why you can't "guess". Imagine: the baby still woke up from a night of hysteria, does not remember anything, except that he slept sweetly in his bed. And then a frightened crowd stands in front of him: a neighbor with valerian, an older sister, and her mother in tears asks: “Dear, did you dream that a shark was chasing you, or how your mother left and did not return?” Put yourself in the place of a child. Here you confess to anything, if only everyone would leave and stop asking strange questions. But doubts that everything is fine, the baby will definitely appear.

It is best to ask questions like “What do you remember?” or “What did you dream about?”, so as not to impose your vision of what happened on the child. And then, such questions can be asked once to make sure that it really was an episode of parasomnia, “night terror”. The more calmly and less intrusively you ask the baby about what happened, the less likely it will be to frighten him.

So what to do about night tantrums?

First of all, it is necessary to exclude the possibility of neurological causes of what is happening. Consult your doctor. If the doctor says that your baby is healthy and does not need treatment, then you need to behave with night tantrums as follows:

As already mentioned, do not try to wake the child - you will only disturb him more.
Dim the lights, sit next to him, but do not try to take the baby out of the crib or cuddle him. Make sure that the child does not injure himself if he jerks his arms or legs sharply. You can sing softly or say something soothing to him.
The most important thing to do in order to prevent night tantrums in the future is to monitor the child's regimen, avoid "overwalking" or lack of sleep, avoid stress and overexcitation.
Be sure to keep a diary, where you write down what time your baby went to bed on the day the night tantrum occurred, and what time the episode began. On the following nights, half an hour before the expected time of the start of the tantrum, you can wake the baby for a second with a gentle hug and kiss, this will bring down his rhythms and “reboot” sleep. Often this method helps to avoid night tantrums. Such work must be done within two weeks and try after that to see if it was possible to restart the system as a whole. Of course, during this time it is important to put the baby to sleep early at night, offer naps, avoid noisy events and unusual trips.
Pay attention to the crib: it should be as safe as possible. Take special care to make the sleeping area safe so that the baby cannot harm himself when he swings his arms and legs in his sleep.

Night tantrums usually subside with adulthood, but in some cases may return during adolescence. Be prepared for this and warn your child that this can happen.

It is also worth paying attention to whether your relatives had parasomnias in childhood. Often this suggests that this can happen to your baby too - the causes of parasomnia have genetic roots. Moreover, if one of the relatives had one type of parasomnia, his child may have another. For example, a grandmother had night tantrums, and her grandson may have sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking

Studies have shown that 5% of children aged 6 to 16 experience sleepwalking up to 12 times a year. And another 10% had sleepwalking episodes every 3-4 months. Modern science believes that sleepwalking is not associated with emotional stress or behavioral problems, and its causes lie in hereditary predisposition. Sleepwalking episodes usually occur 2-3 hours after falling asleep, and last up to half an hour. If at this time you look at the sleepwalker, it seems that he does not quite understand where he is. His gait is devoid of smoothness, and his movements seem to be aimless. During episodes of sleepwalking, the child can not only walk, but also dress, open doors and windows, and even eat! The problem does not require treatment, however, certain security measures should be taken care of. Make sure that your baby (or husband) will not be able to open the front door or window in a dream: put the door lock or chain so high that the child cannot reach it, put special handles with a lock on the windows.