What should you expect from your child's sleep?

One of  the most common discussions amoungst new mums is the duration of their child's sleep. The "perfect" baby will wake to eat, play or interact for a short time, fall asleep easily and sleep through the night. This seems to be what many expect. Life unfortunately, is often not like that.

Your baby has come into the world with a sleep plan from your and your partners genes. You have an opportunity to build on that because the third part of sleep is in part learned by experience.
Most newborns do spend more time asleep than awake.Their brain is growing, "filing" the expereinces which occured during waking and "remembering" them. In part this is why routines are so important. When experiences happen regularly the child starts to understand the usual order of these, and to better understand what is expected of them.

It is important to your child to have regular routines. For this reason it is very useful to see baby's day as a 12 hour stretch with built in opportunities to nap. Night time is also then a 12 hour period when sleep is the most important thing.
For example ;- if your child spontaneously wakes at 7am on a regular basis, then they should be in bed ready to sleep at 7pm.
Sadly it does not always follow that come 7pm they will fall asleep and sleep through the night.

Sleeping through the night without waking for a feed, a comforting cuddle, or help to get back to sleep happens at different ages and stages. In general, many infants sleep through the night from about 6 months. Breast fed babies may still wake for a single "through the night feed" at 9 months but, this is usually accomplished quickly, with the little one being sleepy and not requring prolonged attention.
 By the time a little one is a year old they should not physically require a feed between parents bed and wake time.

If you would like help and support to improve your child's sleep
Contact us ...email     info@dream-angus.com