|
 For example, the study found that 6-month-old babies still take 20
minutes, on average, to fall asleep. And by age 2, toddlers still
wake up an average of once each night.
The study also found that a lot of variation is normal, said lead
author Dr. Juulia Paavonen, of Helsinki University Hospital in
Finland.
"Now we know that the individual differences are very large, and
that patterns relating to falling asleep, waking up, staying awake
at night, and sleeping rhythms often develop at different rates,"
Paavonen said by email.
Parents often fret about how well infants sleep because constant
nighttime awakenings can disrupt everyone in the home and fuel
concerns that babies are not developing normally. For first-time
parents in particular, irregular sleep can seem like a sure sign
that babies are sick, or hurting or hungry.
For the study, researchers surveyed parents of nearly 5,700 children
about how well babies slept during their first two years of life to
get a sense of what types of sleep issues worried parents - and what
might be cause for concern versus simply an exhausting part of
normal infant development.
Overall, about 40% of parents were concerned about babies' sleep
when kids were 8 months old, the study found.
Children's sleep gradually became more stable and consistent over
time, the researchers report in Sleep Medicine. Babies and toddlers
generally slept between nine and 10 hours at night, but the amount
of daytime sleeping declined from about five hours total for infants
to about two hours for toddlers.
As daytime naps decreased from two to one, on average, and kids
slept for fewer total hours during the day, they also reduced their
total sleep time to about 12 hours by the time they reached their
second birthday.
It's not as common, however, for babies to take more than 40 minutes
to fall asleep or to have nighttime awakenings of an hour or longer
by age 8 months, the study found.
It's also unusual for babies to be awake for more than 45 minutes at
a time during the night by 12 months, or for more than a half-hour
by 18 months.
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These might be circumstances when it makes sense for parents to
check with a pediatrician to see if there's anything unusual making
it harder for babies to sleep, the study team concludes.
"It is important to follow a baby's growth to know if they are
healthy," said Dr. Joanna MacLean, a sleep specialist at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who wasn't involved in
the study.
"Given a baby's job is to eat, sleep, and grow, growth is a useful
indicator of health problems," MacLean said by email. If growth is
normal, patterns that seem like sleep problems to parents might also
be normal, MacLean said.
Parents should also avoid waking a sleeping baby, because that's
when a lot of brain development happens, said Gina Poe, a researcher
at the University of California, Los Angeles who wasn't involved in
the study.
"There is important work ongoing in the sleeping brain," Poe said by
email.
Setting consistent sleep routines can help babies get the rest and
development time that they need, advised Valerie Crabtree of St.
Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
This works best when parents start in early infancy, Crabtree, who
wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
"Even for newborns, parents can begin to have dim lighting and less
interaction at night and brighter, even natural light during the
daytime with more activity and interaction," Crabtree advised.
Putting newborns in pajamas at a consistent bedtime also helps.
"As early as is possible, try placing the baby in the crib drowsy
but not fully asleep," Crabtree added. "This helps babies learn to
put themselves to sleep and helps them return themselves to sleep
after normal awakenings."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2UNyzh4 Sleep Medicine, online January 20,
2020.
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