SLEEP! How much do babies and toddlers really need? Expert Guest Post.
With a one year old and a two year old, napping and sleep schedules dictate much of my day-to-day Mum-Life. In our household, there are times when everybody sleeps well (relatively!) and other times when sleep times change. When this happens, we find we need to shift our day around to try and ensure Tot and Little Babe get enough sleep (because we sure do know it if they don't!?)
I jumped at the chance for Sara Westgreen, a researcher for the sleep science hub Tuck.com, to write this guest post for us, as it's certainly often a question in my mind!
So, how much sleep do babies and toddlers really need?
Sleep can be elusive when you have a baby or a toddler. You go from being able to sleep through the night, to waking to feed a very small someone several times in the middle of the night, to snatching a few hours at a time whenever possible. But here’s a question - how much sleep do young children really need?
Newborns can sleep upwards of 16 hours a day, but never all at once. Babies start developing a circadian rhythm, or an internal clock, around six weeks old. Their sleep cycles should start becoming more regular and stretch to about five hours at a time between the ages of three and six months, according to the Mayo Clinic.
However, around four months old, that desperately needed sleep cycle can be interrupted, possibly because they’re learning to crawl, according to this study. We all know that sleep regression happens, and scientists are trying to figure out why. “…emerging motor skills may involve periods of disrupted sleep, and point to the moderating effect of age,” the abstract reads. “Clarifying the factors involved in the interplay between developmental milestones and sleep remains a challenge for future research.” Keeping your child’s crib in your room with you until they sleep through the night can help in two ways. Firstly, a child that sleeps in the room with their parent has a lower risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Secondly, sleeping in the room with her parents also makes it easier for the child to feel comfortable going to sleep on their own, and reassure her enough to soothe herself back to sleep at night.
When babies wake up in the middle of the night, try to make sure that they get back to sleep as soon as possible, with as little overstimulation as possible. By the time your child is a year old, they should be sleeping through the night in their crib with few, if any, needs from their parents during the night. Year-old children typically sleep about 13-14 hours with naps and nighttime sleep combined. Toddlers also sleep about the same amount. One way to help your child get to the point where they sleep through the night on their own is to create a before-bed routine with calming activities, like quiet storytime or a warm bath, and staying with them until they fall asleep at a designated time every night. This routine helps them see that bedtime is coming and helps train their circadian rhythm into a pattern that works well with your life schedule. It also helps to calm some of the anxiety that comes with bedtime for a lot of kids. However, they still may need to take a nap during the day. Try to keep naps finished those at least four hours before bedtime, to avoid interfering with their - and your - night’s sleep.
By Sara Westgreen. (She sleeps on a king size bed in Texas, where she defends her territory against cats all night. A mother of three, she enjoys beer, board games, and getting as much sleep as she can get her hands on.)
Tuck Sleep is a community devoted to improving sleep hygiene, health and wellness through the creation and dissemination of comprehensive, unbiased, free web-based resources. Tuck has been featured on NPR, Lifehacker, Radiolab and is referenced by many colleges/universities and sleep organizations across the web.
