Restless baby sleep at night is a common problem. Many moms and dads dream that the child himself should sleep well and give them, the parents, at least 8 hours of sleep. Not all moms and dads know why their child does not sleep well at night, often wakes up, shudders, and turns and turns restlessly. With these questions, parents turn to the authoritative pediatrician and author of books and articles on the health of children, Evgeny Komarovsky.
About the problem
There are many reasons for the disturbance of children's nighttime sleep. This is an incipient illness, when its symptoms are not yet noticed by others, and emotional turmoil, an abundance of impressions.
Often bad sleep at night is an echo of an ill-conceived day regimen, when the baby sleeps too much during the day.
The baby may sleep restlessly and often wake up and cry if he is cold or hot, if he is overfed. Up to 4 months, the cause of nighttime anxiety can lie in intestinal colic, up to 10 months and older, the child may sleep poorly due to discomfort caused by teething.
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A newborn and nursing baby under one year old may sleep poorly if he is hungry. For all children, without exception, poor sleep can be a symptom of a serious illness - rickets, encephalopathy, a diagnosis of a neurological nature.
Sleep deficiency is dangerous for the child's body. From constant lack of sleep, many organs and systems are imbalanced, the child is deficient in many enzymes and hormones that are produced during sleep. Therefore, getting your sleep back is paramount.
About the norms of children's sleep
Evgeny Komarovsky puts a bold equal sign between the concepts of “children's sleep” and “sleep of the whole family”. If the baby sleeps well, then his parents can get enough sleep. The whole family feels great as a result. Otherwise, all household members suffer.
In pediatrics, it is customary to assess the quality of a child's daily sleep according to certain average rates:
- Usually newborn sleeps up to 22 hours a day.
- Child aged from 1 to 3 months - about 20 hours.
- Aged from 6 months the baby needs at least 14 hours of sleep, of which 8 to 10 hours should be on the night.
- One year old a child, in order to stay healthy, must sleep at least 13 hours a day, of which about 9-10 hours are allotted at night.
- If the baby from 2 to 4 years - in a dream, the child should spend about 12 hours.
- After 4 years - at least 10 hours.
- At 6 years old the child should sleep at night for 9 hours (or 8 hours, but then be sure to go to bed for another hour in the afternoon).
- After 11 years night sleep should be no less than 8-8.5 hours.
At the same time, Komarovsky recalls, it is necessary to take into account the hours that the child sleeps during the day. There are no uniform standards, everything is quite individual. In general, 2-3 small "quiet hours" during the day are enough for a child under one year old. A kid up to 3 years old - one or two. The situation when a child at 2 years old does not sleep during the day is not very normal, since he is still too small to withstand the whole day without rest. If a child at the age of 5 has given up daytime sleep, this may well be a variant of the norm, since sleep largely depends on the temperament of the smallest man.
How to get sleep better?
Getting sleep at night is not as difficult as it seems at first glance... Yevgeny Komarovsky for this case offers ten "golden rules of healthy children's sleep."
Rule one
It is advisable to perform it immediately, as soon as you and your baby arrived from the hospital. It is necessary to set priorities as quickly and irrevocably as possible. The child must intuitively understand that there is a time when everyone around him is resting.
Komarovsky recommends immediately determining which interval is suitable for sleeping for all household members. It can be from 9 pm to 5 am or from midnight to 8 am. The child should be put on a night's sleep at this time (the time frame should not be shifted anywhere).
All family members will be required to discipline and adhere to the established rule.
It is clear that at first the baby can wake up at night to eat. But by 6 months, most babies do not need night feeding, and the mother will be able to get her 8 hours of sleep without waking up to eat her son or daughter.
Often parents complain that the baby sleeps only in his arms. As soon as he is transferred to the crib, he immediately wakes up and begins to express dissatisfaction. This case is a lack of discipline among the parents themselves. It is enough to remember that hand sickness does not in any way affect the health and strength of sleep, it is only a whim of the parents themselves. Therefore, the choice is theirs - to download or not to download. Komarovsky's opinion is that a child should sleep in his crib and go to bed at the same time.
Second rule
This rule follows from the previous one. If the family has decided what time the night's sleep should begin, then it's time to think over the daily routine for the youngest household. What time will he swim, walk, sleep during the day. Very quickly, the newborn will get used to exactly the schedule that the parents suggested to him, and there will be no problems with sleep either day or night.
Rule three
It is necessary to decide in advance where and how the child will sleep. Komarovsky believes that for a baby under 3 years old, the best option is his own crib, and up to a year it may well be in the parents' bedroom, because this way it will be more convenient for the mother to feed the baby at night and change her clothes if the unexpected happens.
After a year, says Evgeny Olegovich, it is best for the child to take a separate room and move his bed there (if, of course, such a possibility exists). Sharing sleep with parents, which many moms and even dads are now trying to practice, is not the best option. Yevgeny Komarovsky believes that such rest has nothing to do with sound sleep, and he does not add health either to mom and dad or to the child. Therefore, it simply does not make sense.
Rule four
You will not need to use it if the daily routine of the crumbs is well thought out by its parents. But if the toddler tosses and turns a lot at night, sleeps in "fits" for 30 minutes or an hour, and the doctors did not find any physical diseases or neurological diagnoses in him, most likely, he simply gets too much sleep during the day. Evgeny Komarovsky recommends not to be shy and resolutely wake up a sleeping baby during the day, so that an hour or two “go away” in favor of a night's rest.
The fifth rule
Sleep and food are the basic needs of a baby in the first year of life. Therefore, parents need to find the right balance between them. To do this, Komarovsky advises to optimize the diet. From birth to 3 months, the baby may biologically need feeding at night 1-2 times. From 3 months to six months - it is enough to feed once at night. After six months - no need to feed at night at all, says the doctor.
With the implementation of this rule in practice, most of the problems arise in families that try to feed the child on demand. If there is a clear regimen or the often recommended mixed regimen (on demand, but at regular intervals - at least 3 hours), then the baby gets used to eating that way. But if with every squeak he is immediately given a breast, then you should not be surprised that the baby wakes up every 30-40 minutes and cries. He can do this already because he is simply chronically overeating, his tummy hurts.
It is best to offer the baby a light snack in the penultimate feeding, and in the last before going to sleep at night - to feed him satisfyingly and densely.
Rule six
To sleep soundly at night, you need to get tired during the day. Therefore, with the child, you need to walk more and more often in the fresh air, engage in developmental games appropriate for age, practice gymnastics, do massage and temper the baby. However, in the evening, a few hours before going to bed, it is better to limit active games, strong emotions. Better to read a book, listen to songs, watch (for a short time) your favorite cartoon. Komarovsky recalls that there is no better sleeping pill than mother's lullaby in nature.
Rule Seven
It regulates the microclimate in the room in which the child sleeps. The baby should not be hot or cold, he should not breathe too dry or too humid air. Komarovsky recommends adhering to the following microclimate parameters: air temperature - from 18 to 20 degrees, air humidity - from 50 to 70%.
The bedroom should be ventilated and the air clean. It is better to put special valves on the heating battery in the apartment, which will prevent the air from drying out in winter.
Rule eight
To make the baby sleep more sound, do not forget about the massage before the evening swim. Komarovsky advises bathing in a large adult bathtub filled with cool water (no higher than 32 degrees). After such a procedure, good appetite and healthy sleep are guaranteed.
Rule nine
Parents who want to get enough sleep at night should ensure that their child sleeps comfortably. Particular attention should be paid to the quality of the mattress. It should not be too soft and squeezed under the baby's weight. It is better if it is filled with environmentally friendly materials marked "hypoallergenic".
Bed linen must be made from natural fabrics. You shouldn't buy bright sheets and duvet covers with cartoon characters. It is much more useful for a baby if there are no textile dyes in the underwear, it will be the usual white color. The laundry should be washed with a special baby powder and rinsed thoroughly. A baby does not need a pillow until at least 2 years old, says Evgeny Komarovsky. After this age, the pillow should be small (no more than 40x60).
Rule ten
This is the most delicate rule, which Yevgeny Komarovsky himself calls the most important of the ten. Restful sleep can only be in a baby who is dry and comfortable. Therefore, one should be very picky about the choice of a disposable diaper. It is better to give preference to expensive diapers with a "smart" absorbent layer, proven by generations and safe.
Tips
If the parents are faced with the task of establishing sleep for a child who has long grown out of diapers, then mom and dad will have to work hard. Firstly, the child will need to increase physical activity and significantly reduce the influx of new experiences (temporarily not buying new toys, books and not showing new films). Sometimes it is worth giving up daytime sleep in favor of nighttime sleep.
Exactly the same tactics should be followed by parents of babies, who, as the people say, confused day and night. Only a merciless daytime limitation of dreams will help to transfer the child to normal during the week, when he begins to rest at night.
If disturbances in nighttime sleep are not eliminated even with the systematic observance of all the above recommendations, the child must be examined by a doctor.
Parents, on the other hand, should take a closer look and observe the nature of the crumbs' sleep and the positions in which he still manages to fall asleep. If your baby sleeps with his head thrown back, this may be a sign of increased intracranial pressure. If the baby often flinches during sleep, this can be either a manifestation of neurological problems or a deficiency of calcium and vitamin D.
If a child sleeps with his eyes open, this may be a sign of increased nervous excitability. Sleep disturbance in a child very rarely requires any medication; you should not stuff the baby with tranquilizers and nootropic drugs. But sometimes you can use herbal preparations or decoctions of motherwort, valerian, mint.
Sleep on his stomach, about which there is so much controversy on parental forums on the Internet, Komarovsky considers a completely acceptable and even very useful option. For a child, this body position during rest is quite natural. There is no connection between sleeping on the stomach and sudden infant death syndrome, Komarovsky says.
Small children are very weather-sensitive. Even if all the recommendations are followed, sometimes there can still be sleepless nights, if atmospheric pressure "jumps", the weather changes dramatically, outside the window there is a strong thunderstorm.
In the video below, Doctor Komarovsky will tell you what conditions must be created during the day so that the baby sleeps well at night.
1. Instructions for the medical use of the medicine Kholisal®
There are contraindications. It is necessary to read the instructions or consult a specialist.
