Nocturnal awakenings in babies are physiological. The problem is when they drag on or it takes time for the child to fall back into Morpheus’ arms. Advice from a sleep specialist.
Micro-awakenings are normal and physiological. In both babies and adults, they occur at the end of each sleep cycle. Most of the time, they go unnoticed. But it happens that baby is unable to go back to sleep and has a real waking phase. “My 17-month-old baby wakes up every night, either because he wet his diaper, because of toothache, or because he needs to be reassured,” Lydie, mother of one, tells us. little boy named Arthur. And when she tries to put him back to sleep, this young mother sometimes spends hours there. So, how to react in these cases?
When a baby wakes for long periods of time at night, it’s often a sign that something is wrong. “First, we must rule out pain, illness or teething. Then, we will observe this baby and his attitude: is he awake and happy, cooing? Or is he closer to a scene? from the exorcist?“, explains Candice Turjman, sleep expert for children aged 0 to 5, head of the Instagram account @lafetedusleep and author of the eponymous book. So, if baby cries, it means he has an unmet need ( need to be reassured, changed, fed). Above all, you must not let him cry, but try to understand his needs in order to be able to respond to them. “If he is happy and happy, he doesn’t call, we let him coo, he will eventually go back to sleep on his own,” she adds.
Furthermore, if he is happy and seems not to ask for anything, it may be a sign that it is time to take stock of his naps during the day. Indeed, it is likely that he slept too much during the day and that this impacts the night, because in some way, he has reached his 24-hour sleep quota. “Maybe it’s time to make a nap disappear? If this awakening lasts a long time and is caused by crying, but the medical cause/pain has been ruled out, then we can look for the remaining causes: sleeping environment, diaper, bottle/feeding, or need to be reassured.“, advises the sleep specialist.
Furthermore, long nighttime awakenings are often a sign of sleep regression. There are five major ones which generally occur around the major stages of acquisition (turning around, crawling, crawling, walking, talking). Your baby is so excited about his new superpower that he will try to practice it everywhere, all the time, day and night, for our greatest pleasure. “In this case, you can try to accompany the moment by doing everything possible to soothe it and practice said acquisition as much as possible during the day, so that the desire to wander around in bed at night is a little less present.“.