sleep begets sleep...really?! - Page 2

[Abraisme]

My DD's bedtime naturally went from 10:30-8:00ish on her own between 3-4mo. This seems to be a pretty normal sleep progression that happens to a lot of babies. I think that the term "sleep begets sleep" is more about quality than quantity as well. If your baby gets good naps during the day, then he/she is more likely to fall asleep easier at bedtime. An over-tired or over-stimulated baby can be very difficult to get down.

[savithny]

12 weeks is very early in the sleep development process. Your baby's brain is still sorting out being out in the world, and its too early to expect the sleep/wake cycles of an older baby.

My mom has a book on sleep studies that has a really interesting chart. It shows babies' sleep and wake times as dark and light bars on a 24-hour timestrip, progressing from birth to 6 months (?). It illustrates how at birth, they're just on and off, up and down, in short amounts, but that their awake time and asleep time gradually coalesce into longer stretches, most noticeably over the first 16 weeks. It really takes at least 4-5 months for a non-newborn pattern to stabilize, if not a bit longer. At 12 weeks you're still far from that point.

My first slept at least 3 hours at a stretch at night from birth, though he was an evening cluster feeder until about 9 weeks old. One night at about 9.5 weeks, he cluster fed and cluster fed ... and then fell deeply asleep around 9pm ... didn't awake when I put him down in the bassinet, and then slept nearly 5 hours. By 11 weeks he'd sleep about 6 hours straight, usually from about 11pm-5am. And by 4 months, when I went back to work, he was regularly doing 9pm-5am. And by the time he was a year old, that bedtime had moved back, on its own, to about 8pm. Sometimes it would look like he was not sleepy, but when we put him in jammies and nursed and rocked and did stories, he'd fall asleep. And if we ignored bedtime because he seemed spry? Well, one or two nights was okay - we could be flexible about it. But if it got ignored too long, it was clearly an issue. He was miserable, acted sleepy all afternoon but wouldn't nap at his usual times, and was generally negatively affected by it.

His sister didn't sleep more than 3 hours at a stretch until she was 15 months old -- but at the same time, she made it clear fairly early on that she needed to start one of those stretches by about 7pm. Again, if you pushed to keep her up, she'd stay up, but if we did it too many days in a row we saw a difference in her sleep cycles and behavior.

So I do think at some level that "sleep begets sleep," in the sense that I believe that "overtired" is a real thing, that babies and small children can get so wound up if they are kept up too long that they then cannot sleep when their body really needs it. So I think it may be more "Lack of sleep begets lack of sleep."

[4evermom]

I really don't think the sleep begets sleep thing is aimed at young infants, certainly not as a way of scheduling the timing of sleep. They go through so many developmental phases so quickly...

But it is most definitely true of toddlers and kids! It still doesn't mean they sleep when you think they should. But if my ds skipped a nap, he would get wired and cranky and have a hard time going to bed. He would also sleep more fitfully and be more prone to nightmares, insomnia, and night terrors. It was better if he had a late nap and stayed up late than skip a nap and go to bed early.

[Super~Single~Mama]

Originally Posted by P.J.

Aw, thanks!

What I've learned from reading the responses here is that the phrase sleep begets sleep can be more about quality than quantity. If I think of it that way it makes a lot more sense. And it seems pretty normal that at his age my LO is keeping the hours he is. Still, I'd love it if he would quit the 5am wake ups!

I think your babe is adorable too!!!

And yes, quality over quantity!!!!!! And, the 5am wake ups may not last too much longer. Also, if you can keep the room dark, and restful even though baby is awake, you may be able to kind of 'teach' her that 5am is sleeping time. Theres no reason to get up (are you nursing? I don't remember?) so just stay in bed with her!

[AirMiami]

No matter what age she was, my daughter woke up at the butt crack of dawn no matter WHAT time I put her to bed. I tried putting her to bed at 7:00, thinking that by putting her to bed at 10:00 I was screwing up. Then she just got up at 3:00 am. I put her to bed at 8:00 now, she gets up at 5:00 am.

She just doesn't follow any of those sleep "rules", and at 19 months old, I don't think she ever will. I'm just counting down the days until she'll be old enough to get up and read a book while mama gets some SLEEP.

[crunchy_mommy]

Well the way I understand 'sleep begets sleep' is that if your child isn't getting enough sleep, they need more sleep to sleep better/longer. If they ARE getting enough sleep but the bed/wake times are too early or late, that's a different issue.

My 18mo DS sleeps best if he goes to bed at 11pm. He will sleep 11+ hours if he goes to bed at that time, and take a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon. If I try to get him to bed earlier & by rare chance, succeed, he wakes up too early. I think you really have to experiment to find the best time for YOUR child, I don't buy into the 'kids need to be in bed by 8pm' thing because for us it's simply NOT true -- though I don't doubt that many, maybe even most kids do best with an early bedtime!

Also people sleep lighter during the second half of the night -- and things like sunlight, household noises, etc. can waken you more easily. So if his 'light sleep' period happens to coincide with when the sun is coming up, when the a/c kicks in loudly, when another family member gets up for work, etc. then it will be harder for him to stay asleep. So you may need to get room-darkening shades or all-night white noise to overcome that...

[Tway]

DD is 10 months and we've just given in and decided to put her down at 9 p.m.--way later than the books say and not what we were comfortable with. It just seems to be her preferred sleep time.

Since we've done that, she's been going down in 15 minutes (instead of 30 to an hour) and getting up just 2-3 times at night with a wake-up of about 9 or 9:15 in the morning. I figure as she gets older we'll adjust her bedtime to a more reasonable time.

(Now I just hope I didn't jinx myself by posting this!)

[sapphire_chan]

For some babies, maybe. For us putting DD to bed before 10pm is a mistake. She'll be up and MAD, scared, screaming, or, rarely, full of vim (which changes to when I'm not ready to hop up and play) at midnight or 3am and not be ready to go back down for 2+ hours.

[tangledblue]

At 12 weeks, my baby definitely needed an early bedtime. I'd try to keep her up until 6:30 to see her dad but that didn't work well. 6 or even 5:30 was a much better bedtime (obviously, she was still waking at night to feed a few times.) Can't remember when she got up--probably on the early side--but the earlier bedtime prevented evening meltdowns.