Light sleep and deep sleep - how does it affect your baby
Babies, like adults, have periods of light sleep and periods of heavy sleep.
When you go to bed at night, if you’re a good sleeper, you probably think you sleep all night. Especially when you’re at home in your own comfortable bed. But if you were to sleep in a hotel or somewhere unfamiliar, it’s likely you’ll have a bad night’s sleep for at least the first night while you get used to your new surroundings.
In reality though, your sleep pattern will have been almost the same at the hotel as it usually is at home. In both places you go through periods of deep sleep and periods of light sleep. During the light sleep you rouse. When you’re at home and everything is familiar and comfortable you go back into a deep sleep without even realising you’ve woken. In a hotel though, when you enter light sleep, your brain becomes more alert than it would at home because of the unfamiliar surroundings. It’s then harder to get back to sleep because instead of only half waking, you’ve fully woken.
It works the same way for babies. Their sleep is much deeper and more relaxed when they sleep in a place familiar to them.The same applies for how you put them to sleep. If babies are rocked off to sleep in a pram or in your arms; or if they go to sleep in the car, or next to you in bed, when they rouse through their light sleep they will expect to be in the same place they were in when they went to sleep. They will also expect to be with the same person. If they wake somewhere different or by themselves, they’ll be startled, perhaps even scared. Then of course they’ll cry and completely wake themselves up.I’m not saying don’t rock your baby off to sleep. I’m not saying don’t put them into bed with you, all I’m saying is remember that babies will expect to be in the same place they were in when they went to sleep when they check in through their light sleep. How would you feel if half way through the night you rolled over to find an unknown body in bed with you? Or if you rolled over to find you were no longer in bed but on the garage floor? I know I’d sit bolt upright, scream and then run, all thoughts of peaceful sleep long gone.
