Coordinating expectations: Your baby should not sleep through the night

This burdensome and persistent fatigue of parents of infants is the leading reason they turn to professional help and advice.

But it could be that the problem is not with the baby, but with our expectation that he will sleep a whole night so early

Dana said, in collaboration with JAMA

10/01/2022

Monday, 10 January 2022, 08:07 Updated: 08:17

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Many times parents turn to sleep counseling and hope to find solutions while there is really no problem.

Fatigue is the most common reason parents turn to professional help in the first year.

This is not surprising, parenting a baby is a difficult and tiring business, if we break it down into numbers for a moment - a parent loses an average of 700 hours of sleep in the first year of parenting.

Such a deficiency may impair managerial functions.

The problem-solving ability of a tired parent is impaired, his patience is impaired, his ability to regulate and self-calm is impaired, as are his memory, perseverance and self-control.

In short, a parent is tired and not really at his best.

Now add to all that, baby too.

Sometimes crying and restless, sometimes back poop, sometimes gas and sometimes long, white nights while jumping on a physio ball around the clock, here you have fertile ground to get out of the way, a natural trigger for burnout and search for quick fixes.

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But before you fantasize about consecutive nights of sweet sleep, it is important that you recognize the simple fact that sleeping babies are different from adults.

Just as they came into the world with a still immature digestive system, so too their ability to sleep a whole night, relax and fall asleep alone is not yet at its peak of glory.

They sleep differently from adults, just need to get used to it.

Sleeping baby (Photo: ShutterStock)

Infants (as well as adults), go through cycles of deep sleep and light sleep. There will be babies who in the transition between cycles will wake up, and there will be others who will not, there will be babies who will cry and need external regulation and others who will not, there will be babies who will return to complete another sleep cycle and others who will not. The paradox is that it is precisely those babies who are having difficulty and need more help, meeting more exhausted parents who turn to counseling and sleep guidance, who often try to come up with solutions when there is really no problem.

So what else can you do to regain a little more hours of sleep and help your baby relax and fall asleep comfortably?

- One of the significant tools in the context of raising children is to show curiosity towards them. Get intrigued and get to know your only and special baby, what is his temperament? What are its regulation capabilities? What calms him down? What annoys him? What is hidden in his inner world? Because even if he is a really small person, he is still a person, capable of feeling the whole rainbow of simple and complex emotions (yes, even at the age of one week he can feel longing for the mother). The more you are intrigued, get to know and learn, the more you will build the synchronization between you. It does not come in one day, it is a process that takes time and a lot of trial and error.

- Note that any request for outside help and advice will come with an asterisk, with an inner voice and listening to your baby and his needs more than external voices.

And it's not easy for the young mother who encounters comments all along the style: "What, he has not slept all night?"

"He's still in bed with you"?

"Watch out, in the end he will get used to the hands ..." Remember, no one knows your baby better than you and no one wants his best for you more than you want.

Give them contact without account.

Mother breastfeeds baby at night (Photo: ShutterStock)

Provide unconditional presence and touch

- Dear parents, our babies need confidence in order to develop. It has long been no "penny psychology", research in the field shows us unequivocally that babies are completely dependent on us to complete their brain and emotional development. Physiologically it has also been found that contact increases the secretion of oxytocin (the love hormone), affects the ability to regulate, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, anxiety hormones, even the body temperature is different in infants who receive sleep contact compared to those who do not - share no account, it is not "It will go up in their heads."

- Bet on the goal that the baby sleeps all night, even if it is possible.

Let's start from the end - it works, babies learn everything and pretty fast.

If you persevere and do not approach him when he cries at the end he will despair and stop crying.

If you persevere and do not touch, hug, kiss and lift to calm down, in the end he will learn to calm down alone.

But (and this is a big but), it's all a question of price, what will be the price of the process for the relationship between you, for the trust and confidence that mom and dad are always here.

- remember that habits can be changed.

It will never be easier to teach a baby to fall asleep alone when he understands language, when he knows that if a mother is in the living room, she still exists.

Do not expect a baby in the first years of life to fall asleep for the night without you.

Father and baby (Photo: ShutterStock)

In conclusion, just as you would not expect your partner to refuse to hug you when you are overwhelmed or nervous and would not want them to take your cozy blanket just when you fell asleep, just so you learn to fall asleep "independently", do not expect a baby in the first years to fall asleep without you. It's easy for us to understand the woman who falls asleep less well when her husband is not by her side and the bed is cold and empty, and we are also forgiving if our partner craves "something sweet" before bed, but for some reason we are convinced that it is forbidden, produces "dependence" or "habit" to avoid From him, for some reason we are used to assuming that indulgences at night are "unnecessary services" but it's time to think a little out of the box when it comes to baby sleep. Especially in the first year of their lives, when the foundation of security and belonging was built.

After all, at the end of the day, we all love to cuddle.And without us noticing we will have an adolescent home that will no longer want to cuddle and sleep 12 hours straight… It really comes faster than you think.

The Jama app was established with the aim of addressing mothers of babies from birth to age three, and centralizing for them content, activities, tips from experts and videos that will accompany them throughout this challenging period.

All the content in the app "grows" together with the baby and is precisely adapted to its developmental stages, so that the mothers receive only what is relevant to them and interests them at any given moment.

The Jama app is the place for mothers in Israel to meet and get to know other mothers around them, and create new and exciting friendships in the fascinating journey.

Search us on Google: https://app.jama.co.il/

• health

• New parents

Tags

• parenthood

• Babies

• Sleep

• Babies up to one year

• tiredness