04/10/2024
Do you have a Newborn baby who doesn’t let you sleep?😴
Let’s talk about normal newborn sleep and what to expect:
Newborns sleep a lot in the first few weeks of life, 16-18 hours on average per day, they have frequent wakings and rarely sleep longer than 3 hour stretches.
🌞Many newborns get their days and nights confused making things more complicated.🌛
Understanding the Science behind newborn sleep can help you initiate healthy sleep habits right from the start.
During pregnancy, the fetus will follow moms physiological cues about day and night, as well as following her internal clock. Maternal melatonin , our sleep hormone, crosses the placenta and may directly affect the fetus’ internal clock. When the infant is born, they lose that hormonal connection to mom and are now responsible for their circadian rhythm: which takes time to develop!
Infants can take 12-16 weeks to develop day and night circadian rhythms.
❇️This means that most infants before 12 weeks will likely sleep without a detectable pattern. It is very normal for a newborn to sleep anywhere from 20 minutes up to 3 to 4 hours at a time.
Strategies to help your little on develop their circadian rhythm:
✳️ Frequently feed your little one throughout the day, instead of feeding every 3 to 4 hours, you can try feeding every 2 hours throughout the day. Having more wakeful periods during the day can bring more consolidated sleep at night.
✳️ Help your infant establish their rhythm by making them a part of your daytime routines; interactions, visits and spending time outdoors going for a walk in the sunshine.
✳️ Open those blinds in the morning and let that natural light shine in, as this helps signal to your little one’s brain that it is daytime.
✳️ In the evening around 8 pm each night, decrease the stimulation in your house by closing the blinds, dining the lights and decreasing activity levels. In the night when your little one wakes to feed, keep feeding with minimal interactions and use a dim light (red, orange or yellow tone). This can help your little one learn that nighttime is for sleeping versus playing.
