What Causes Baby Sleeplessness?
There are as many different answers to that question as there are babies in the world! Each and every one is different, so there can be no simple ‘catch-all’ answer. But, there are some general observations that can be made that will at least begin to explain some of the most common reasons that babies sometimes do not sleep well. Remember what I said earlier about babies not being miniature adults? Then there is the fact that whilst most pediatricians and child experts will tell you that your baby needs to sleep for 14 to 15 hours per day, a baby’s stomach can carry a maximum of three to four hours worth of nutrition. |
Hence every few hours he or she will almost inevitably be hungry, and is most likely going to wake up crying.
Sometimes, as a fairly inevitable side effect of such regular feeding sessions come regular bouts of upset stomachs and colic too.
Such pain and discomfort is bound to keep baby awake. Then there are individual factors that relate to only your baby.
Be aware that, even at this young age, your baby is beginning to develop a character and that part of that character is that certain things will be ‘natural’ to your child that might be totally alien to another baby.
For example, having already established that your baby’s stomach can only carry three to four hours nutrition at a stretch, this does not necessarily mean that every baby will definitely wake up every three to four hours.
Whilst the majority of babies may well do so, some will probably not be as sensitive to hunger as others, and maybe they will sleep for six hours before they actually feel the onset of the hunger that eventually causes them to wake.
Some babies will sleep ‘heavier’ than others, and so will be woken from their slumbers less easily than other infants will.
Thus, there are many factors that will decide whether your baby sleeps well or not so well.
Some of these factors will be of a general nature and some will be individual, things that apply to your baby markedly more or less than they do to others.
There is no one thing that medical science has so far discovered that can accurately determine whether a baby will be a good sleeper or not.
Thus, there is equally no one ‘cure’ for baby sleeplessness that can be applied to every baby on a universal, global basis.
What can be done, however, is to establish a general set of guidelines that should help almost all babies to sleep better, and to do so without resorting to tablets or medicines.
Whatever else can be said about babies and their sleeping patterns, it is a fact that there are lots of remedies for the problem that are available to you that you should definitely exhaust before turning to medication or pharmaceutical drugs.
For adults and especially for babies and infants, medication and drugs should always be viewed as a last resort solution, and that is exactly what the rest of this book is all about.
Horses To Water……..
There is a famous old saying that has it that ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’.
In other words, there are some situations in life that you just cannot force, and making baby sleep is a perfect example.
You can try every single thing that you will read about over the following pages, and still it might make no difference. Baby still stubbornly refuses to go to sleep, no matter what you do.
In short, sleeping and eating are both things that you cannot force your baby to do, no matter how hard you try.
So, you must try to adopt a realistic attitude right from the start, and accept that whilst there will be times when sleep comes remarkably easily to your baby, there will be times when it does not as well.
The best that you can do is to try to create a comfortable and secure environment that allows sleep to overtake your baby as quickly as possible.
And do not forget that, even on those nights when nothing seems to be working and baby seem absolutely determined to make sure that you do not get a wink, it is only one night!
Try to think longer term whenever possible. Establish a realistic and healthy long-term goal of helping your baby develop their own healthy attitude to sleep.
Try to help them recognize that sleep is a pleasant state to enter and a safe, non-threatening state to remain in.
Indeed, extensive research now indicates that this is an extremely important factor in helping to prevent many of the more common sleep problems and disorders in older children and adults.
From this research, it now appears that in many cases, these problems seem to stem from children growing up with an unhealthy attitude to sleep, from a belief that sleep was not a pleasant state to lapse into and a fearful, scary state to remain in.
In simple terms, what you teach your baby during the night-time is every bit as important as what you try to teach them during daylight hours.
Imbue your baby with a restful attitude to sleep when they are young and the end result will be that all members of your family will sleep better because of it.
Solving Sleeplessness in Infants Will Help You...
The History Of Drugs & Baby Sleep
What Causes Baby Sleeplessness?
Cry It Out & The Ferber Method
