"Night Tears", or why does the child cry in his sleep?

Features of children's sleep

Newborn babies (up to 1 month old) sleep differently than their parents. The child spends almost half of the time in the so-called REM sleep phase. It is necessary for the child's brain to grow and develop intensively. During this period, the pupils of babies can move, children begin to move their upper and lower limbs, grimace, smack their lips, thereby reproducing the process of sucking on the breast, making different sounds and whimpering.

Such a dream is rather weak and anxious, so the baby may cry and wake up from this. But more often it happens differently: the child cries for several seconds, then calms down on his own and continues his night's rest.

In addition, the duration of sleep is different. For example, an infant under 1 month of age will sleep about 21 hours a day. Growing up, the child sleeps less and less, and at 1 year old, many children have 2 hours of naps and about 9 hours of rest at night.

Thus, children's sleep is just being formed, "honed", established, therefore, failures in the form of short-term crying at night are not excluded. Usually, such a whimpering does not bother the child and his parents too much, but if the baby cries a lot in sleep, the hidden reasons for this process should be established and the quality of rest should be improved.

Why does the baby cry at night?

If a child cries a lot at night, screams loudly and shrilly, you should definitely understand the prerequisites for such behavior. Sometimes the uncomfortable feelings experienced by the baby in a dream become the culprit.

In other cases, nighttime tears are a symptom of serious illness, especially if the child suddenly starts crying and does not stop for a long time. Feeling pain, the baby tries to signal this to the parents. But since his capabilities are severely limited, the most accessible method remains screaming. Let's look at the main causes of crying at night.

External factors

It is not uncommon for babies to cry because of the discomfort caused by so-called external factors. Nighttime crying can occur if parents do not consider when laying down:

the temperature in the room (if perspiration appears on the skin, it means that it is hot in the nursery; if the skin has goosebumps, and the hands and feet are cold, the room is cool);
the level of humidity in the nursery (if the room is too stuffy and dry, the child's mucous membranes of the nasal and oral cavity may dry out);
dryness of the diaper (a baby 6 months old and younger may start crying if in a dream he feels that the diaper has become wet);
the convenience of undershirts, bed linen, pajamas (many children are extremely negative about creases on clothes, seams, folds and other inconveniences).

Such factors may seem frivolous only at first glance. At the age of 2 or 3 months, children, unable to roll over or otherwise correct the inconvenience, begin to cry and scream, attracting mom's attention.

Internal factors

Answering the question why a baby cries in a dream, many experts point out the presence of internal factors. These include various diseases, hunger and other unfavorable conditions. Each of them deserves a more detailed description.

Pain syndrome

If the child is crying a lot in his sleep, then his health should be checked. Probably, the baby is unwell due to intestinal colic, teething, inflammation of the middle ear, colds.

The gastrointestinal tract of an infant up to 3 or 4 months only adapts to breast milk or formula. The resulting gases are not completely discharged outside, which causes colic.

If a baby 2 or 3 months old begins to cry in a dream, pull his legs to his tummy, clench his fists, most likely he is worried about intestinal colic. Crying in this case will be even, prolonged and incessant.

To reduce soreness, the mother should review her own diet, monitor proper attachment to the breast, hold the baby in a column so that he regurgitates excess milk and gets rid of gas. Another popular way to combat colic is dill water.

The cause of the pain syndrome can be unpleasant conditions such as a runny nose or inflammation of the middle ear. When the child lies in the crib, being in a horizontal position, the processes become aggravated, as a result of which the child cries and screams in his sleep.

Teething is another likely cause of crying at night. Many children have teeth at 5 or 6 months of age, which is accompanied by a decrease in appetite, high fever. The pain syndrome especially intensifies at night, hence the sobbing and crying in a dream.

Hunger

If the child cries in his sleep and does not wake up, then the mother may assume that she is feeling hungry. Satiety is an important condition for a quiet night's rest at 3 months or 2 years. Correcting the situation is quite simple - the child is given milk or formula.

Do not overfeed your baby, otherwise he will constantly wake up, cry because of a feeling of fullness in the stomach or bad dreams.

Overwork

It would seem that you need to physically load the baby as much as possible so that he goes to sleep "without hind legs." However, there is an inverse relationship: if the parents missed the optimal time for sleep, overloaded the child with exercises, games, then he will hardly fall asleep.

When he closes his eyes, fatigue will not let him sleep well. A small child will wake up with tears or whimper in a dream, which, of course, will affect his health. This behavior is especially common in excitable babies.

Experts advise to act in the same way, regardless of the age of the child. Both the one-month-old baby and the one-year-old toddler must go to bed before they start crying from overwork. Also, you should not get carried away with massage, games and gymnastic exercises.

An overabundance of emotions and information

Is the baby crying in his sleep? Perhaps this is due to agitation and excessive emotional fatigue. A child at 5 months or at 9 months equally reacts to information and emotional oversaturation.

an excess of emotions and experiences during the day, especially in the evening, leads to the fact that babies cry in their sleep. Thus, nighttime tears are children's reactions to strong emotional stress;
experts advise turning on the TV when the child turns two years old. However, many parents introduce cartoons and television programs when the babies are not even 9 months old. This overloads the nervous system.

Minimize the child's contact with the TV and especially the computer during the day. It is especially important to give up watching cartoons before bed. Also, you should not overload the baby with communication with peers and other people's adults.

Scary dreams

If the child wakes up at night and cries loudly, it is likely that bad dreams are the cause. Until a year, dreams are not so bright, but after a specified age, night visions become more and more realistic, which affects the quality of rest.

In a dream, the baby does not always see something pleasant, and this is completely normal. However, if such terrible dreams happen regularly and the child is constantly crying in his sleep, you need to think about what is the source of nightmares.

Psychological problems

If a child often whimpers at night, but is physically completely healthy, it can be assumed that there is some kind of psychological problem.

A toddler of 2 or 3 years old can react sharply to a strong emotional impression. Such a shock is often a sharp change in his life: adaptation to kindergarten, the appearance of a brother / sister, moving to another place of residence.

Why does a newborn cry in a dream? Perhaps this is how he reacts to the psychological state of the mother. If there are problems in the relationship with the spouse, the woman is under stress due to fatigue, the baby will definitely feel this and express it in the form of a bad dream.

Often, nighttime restlessness is the first and most obvious sign of diseases of the nervous system. That is why, in case of repeated cases of baby crying at night, parents should definitely show the child to a neurologist.

What to do if a child cries at night?

If a child cries in a dream rarely, without waking up, do not be afraid. Perhaps these cases are one-off. But with a constant roar of the night, it is necessary, if possible, to establish and eliminate the factors that impede proper rest:

If a baby 2 or 3 months old cries out from colic, you need to alleviate his condition with the help of improvised means or medicines.
A baby at five or six months may cry because of teething. In such a situation, a teether or special cooling gel for the gums is useful.
A universal tip that will help prevent nighttime crying at both 5 and 9 months concerns room preparation. Parents need to ventilate it, set a comfortable temperature.
Be sure to feed your baby before bed, but make sure he doesn't overeat. Otherwise, heaviness in the abdomen or nightmares are inevitable.
Avoid active entertainment and watching cartoons before laying down. This will prevent psycho-emotional overload, which can cause nighttime tears.
Try to enter a specific sleep and wake schedule. The child should fall asleep at the same time - for example, at 9 pm. It is best if falling asleep is preceded by a ritual - bathing, singing a lullaby.
A child can wake up from various factors, including those that the parent is unable to influence. These include the birth of another baby, a visit to kindergarten at three years old, etc. In this case, you need to demonstrate your love for the baby in every possible way and support him in all ways.
Do not leave an older child alone in the dark. A night light or a lamp with a dim light will help prevent nightmares. A soft toy placed in a crib can also be a good solution.

The famous pediatrician E.O. Komarovsky is convinced that only well-rested parents will be able to establish a good sleep. If the mother does not sleep enough, is in constant stress, then the child also feels this tension, which is expressed in the night cry. Therefore, adults should also get enough sleep.

As a conclusion

So, when answering the question why a baby cries in a dream, we found many provoking factors. The main task of parents is to pay attention to the crying baby, try to establish the true "culprit" of children's tears and react correctly.

Some children in this way require their mother's presence or signal discomfort, while others require qualified medical assistance. But in any case, mother's tenderness and love will not hurt all babies!