“Why is my child so restless? Why isn't he sleeping? My friends’ children behave like angels, but mine…” In her new book “It’s Great to Be a Mom!” psychologist and mother of many children Larisa Surkova talks about two main reasons for a child’s anxious behavior. The first comes from the intrauterine world, the second from the first months of a child’s life.
The baby’s brain is one of the organs that begins intensive development already in the fourth week of pregnancy. For the early development of the child, many mothers play music for the “stomach”, read books and take him to museums. But at the same time, they pay little attention to daily communication with others, especially with their husband.
John Medina, in one of my favorite books, “Rules for Your Baby’s Brain Development,” wrote very well: “Do you want to carry your pregnancy to term and help your child become well-rounded and smart? Leave him alone". This is true. The best psychological foundation for a child’s future life is peace during pregnancy.
The brain of even an unborn child absorbs surrounding information. Before the child’s sense organs are formed, his connection with the outside world occurs through the hormones produced by the mother: cortisol, adrenaline. The baby gets used to them, they stimulate him to develop a certain line of behavior.
Features of children's sleep
The sleep of any person, including a small child, has certain characteristics and includes two phases:
- deep sleep;
- fast phase.
They alternately change at certain time intervals. For the youngest children, the deep sleep phase lasts 25-40 minutes, and then the superficial phase begins, during which the baby can wake up from any extraneous rustle, touch or bright light.
During the superficial phase, the child sleeps lightly at night or during the day. It is not difficult to determine this phase: the baby’s pupils move, his eyelashes tremble and he spins. As for the deep sleep phase, it is difficult to wake up the child during this period. Gradually its duration increases.
If a baby is sleeping too lightly at 4 months, there is no reason to worry. He is probably in the process of a rapid phase.
How to instill independence in a baby?
To help your child fall asleep and rest without his mother, you can use the following effective methods:
- Best friend in the form of a soft night toy. Buy your baby a toy that is pleasant to the touch (it should not have sharp or hard parts) and teach him to nap with it. This way he won't feel lonely. Let the baby choose a soft friend himself.
- Interesting pictures overhead. If your baby has trouble falling asleep at night, try diversifying the interior of his room with beautiful designs that symbolize the night (stars or month). Luminescent images of the starry sky that flicker after turning off the lights in the room look great on the ceiling. There are a lot of options for unusual decor.
- We do not recommend putting your baby to sleep in his own bed. Although parents do this quite often, and then transfer the baby to the child's bed. Firstly, the baby may wake up when moving, then he will have to be calmed down again. Secondly, waking up alone, he will look for his mother and cry.
To achieve a positive result, it is worth trying different methods. All babies are individual and sleep differently: some wake up often, others wake up only once at night. Therefore, do not be afraid to experiment, search and find the right approaches to your baby.
Causes of poor sleep in children
The reasons why a baby sleeps lightly at three months are varied. They are also valid for children of other ages up to 3-4 years old. Among the main factors are:
- illness that causes fever;
- skin irritations;
- colic and gas;
- hunger;
- teething;
- uncomfortable clothes;
- nervous system disorders;
- high/low room temperature.
For babies, good sleep is especially important, so you need to try to identify the cause of light sleep and eliminate it as soon as possible.
Reasons for waking up frequently
There are many reasons for sleep disorders in children.
This is the onset of the disease (even before the appearance of the main symptoms), and too many impressions (even positive ones), and emotional shock. In addition, the baby may sleep poorly, periodically wake up and cry if he is cold or, conversely, tired, or if he has been fed too much. Infants often suffer from digestive disorders due to the immaturity of the gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, any changes in diet can trigger an adverse reaction (unfortunate intestinal colic). Newborns and children under one year old often wake up at night when they are hungry.
Restless sleep sometimes indicates a serious illness - rickets, encephalopathy, a neurological problem. Therefore, in the absence of obvious reasons, you should immediately consult a doctor.
Unreasonable crying
Do sleep problems arise against the background of the baby’s overall good health? So the disease most likely has nothing to do with it. But discomfort can very well cause such disturbances. So why does a baby cry when he wakes up?
Main causes of concern:
- A true nightmare for many mothers is excessive gas formation and intestinal colic.
- Cutting teeth.
- Allergy to any product.
The listed factors, of course, do not disappear anywhere during the day. However, their effect on the baby is much weaker. This happens because the baby is constantly distracted by something. At night, he focuses specifically on the state of discomfort. Therefore, the child wakes up at night and screams hysterically.
Winces
In the first 2-3 months, a newborn goes through a period of adaptation to life outside the cozy mother’s tummy. In most cases, shudders that sometimes occur at night are a reaction to adaptation to the environment and the gradual maturation of the nervous system.
The baby may often startle in his sleep and wake up due to extreme fatigue. Some mothers mistakenly believe that the more tired the child is, the faster he will fall asleep. On the contrary, when you are overly excited, it is more difficult to fall asleep. Instead of a peaceful sleep, the baby will startle, wake up and cry.
To normalize night rest, you need to avoid active communication and games immediately before putting the baby to bed.
If you notice that your baby shudders at night too often, the episodes are long and even rhythmic, it is advisable to visit a doctor. This may indicate a metabolic disorder or a neurological problem.
The best conditions for children's sleep
To normalize sleep in a child, you need to try to create comfortable conditions for this:
- feed your baby well, especially before bedtime;
- hum a lullaby to your child when falling asleep;
- children fall asleep well between mom and dad, but in the deep sleep phase the child needs to be transferred to his crib;
- you can rock the baby to sleep, but then you will develop a habit that will be difficult to get rid of;
- the room should not be hot and normal humidity should be (50-65%). To ensure the required level of humidity, you can choose a household humidifier for your apartment, which will help you with the advice in the corresponding article on our portal;
- make sure your baby goes to sleep with a dry diaper;
- do not tire or amuse your child before bedtime.
Follow the recommendations if your child is a light sleeper, and their sleep will return to normal within one to two weeks.
What can parents do?
So, we understand why a 7-month-old baby doesn’t sleep well at night. But that's only half the story. Parents need to create optimal conditions that will help the baby quickly fall asleep and rest fully.
First of all, we recommend completely eliminating any active or overly emotional games before bedtime. However, this applies to all children without exception, and not just those who have trouble sleeping at night. To prevent overstimulation of the nervous system, give preference to quiet and calm games, start preparing for bed in advance (at least a couple of hours in advance).
Evening swimming should be part of your mandatory daily exercise routine. To enhance the effect, add a decoction of sedative plants to the bath. They will calm the baby gently and without harm to the body, and your baby will be able to quickly fall asleep. The following herbs are excellent for these purposes:
- chamomile;
- Melissa;
- mint;
- valerian;
- motherwort.
Be sure to develop a so-called “sleepy” ritual - an algorithm of actions that the child will associate with rest. Repeating the same actions every day before bedtime relaxes children and quickly calms them down. If your 7-month-old baby loves fairy tales, lullabies, and games, include them in your ritual.
The sequence of actions can be any. For example: a quiet, calm game, evening bathing, changing clothes, a bedtime story or lullaby, falling asleep.
To make it more comfortable for a child to fall asleep, Komarovsky advises creating an optimal microclimate in the room. The air temperature in the children's room should be between 20 and 23 degrees Celsius. In addition, it is important to maintain the required level of humidity (not lower than 55 percent). Regular ventilation of the apartment and wet cleaning improves the quality of sleep. We recommend avoiding spiral portable heaters if possible (they dry out the air greatly).
Take, as a rule, we sleep together with the child. If you put the baby in the crib and he safely dozes off, use the free time for your own sleep. This will restore your strength and give you energy.
Do not forget that the baby should be gradually prepared to fall asleep on his own. Soon he will move into his own room and have his own crib. For this to happen without excesses and hysterics, little by little wean the baby from your constant presence nearby. But do not do this abruptly, but as smoothly as possible, so that the baby does not receive psychological trauma.
Why does the child sleep poorly at night?
At night, sleep suffers more, because in the evening the family gathers in full and all the main emotional stress on the child falls precisely during this period of time - just when it should be minimal.
Not all children are born with balanced nervous processes: for some, inhibition predominates, for others, excitation predominates. All cases are variants of the norm.
How to calm an excitable child
Excitable children are more difficult to calm down, and it is also more difficult to get them to sleep. They often have trouble sleeping at night. They require a special approach, and not only at three months of age. For these kids, it is especially important to create a calm, comfortable environment.
At the same time, active actions should be concentrated in the first half of the day, and in the evening, vivid impressions, acquaintance with new toys and strangers should be minimized.
- If dad bought an interesting new product for the baby, show him the toy not in the evening, but the next day.
- If your relatives really want to come visit and for some reason you cannot offer them to visit the baby when he gets older, let them come before 16.00 in the evening so that the baby has time to experience new impressions and calm down. But this, most likely, will not help, and restless sleep is guaranteed that night.
What you need for a good night's rest
When a baby wakes up crying several times during the night, you don’t always immediately understand what happened and how to help him. If this repeats day after day, it is necessary to find the reason that is bothering the baby. In most cases, there is no neurological diagnosis here, which means that feeding a baby medication “for sleep” is a real crime.
We talked about the reasons for a bad night's rest above. Now let's look at several ways to eliminate them:
- Watch your baby carefully. Note for yourself exactly when and how many times he wakes up. At these moments, you will need to be with him in order to calm the baby down (by rocking, lightly stroking, the soporific sound “chh-sh-sh”, putting a fallen pacifier in his mouth) and help him not to completely wake up.
- One of the simplest ways to solve the problem is to sleep together. We sleep together - this should become a family rule, despite the opinions of the surrounding “experts”. Studies have proven that a baby who sleeps with his parents is much less likely to cry at night. After all, to attract the attention of mom or dad, he just needs to move a little. There is no need to cry and scream anymore.
- . To prevent a 3-month-old baby from waking himself up with involuntary shudders, pediatricians advise swaddling him. Orthopedists clarify that under no circumstances should the legs be brought together tightly. Even loose swaddling is effective in keeping limbs from suddenly flinging up.
- Sleepy ritual. This method works equally well for problems with both daytime and night sleep. It is necessary that falling asleep be preceded by the same actions - for example, feeding, bathing, a lullaby.
- Favorite toy. We must ensure that she is always in the crib next to the child. When the baby wakes up, she will help him calm down. If the baby does not accept the toy, you can use a baby blanket, sheet or diaper that retains the mother’s smell. To saturate them with this smell, you should place them between yourself and the baby during feeding.
- For colic and teething, you need to relieve pain (use medications prescribed by your pediatrician, special cooling gels for gums and baby teethers).
- To check if the baby is hungry, you need to offer him a breast or a bottle with formula. If he begins to greedily drink milk or eat porridge, this signals that it is time to increase the portion. Apparently, the baby did not sleep well because he simply did not eat enough.
Let's summarize
Proper rest during the day and at night is very important for the further normal development of the baby. Only by discovering and eliminating the true cause of unsatisfactory sleep, responsible parents gain peace of mind for the health of their child.
First, it is recommended to analyze your own behavior towards the baby. If no errors are found in it, you can begin to analyze other factors.
In most cases, a 3-month-old baby's sleep problem can be easily resolved by eliminating its underlying cause. Have you tried everything possible, but your baby still doesn't sleep better? Then you need to consult a doctor without delay. After all, the sooner an existing disease is identified, the easier and more successful it will be to cure it.
Author: Yulia Zablotskaya
How to put your baby to bed during the daytime
A baby's lack of normal daytime sleep at 3 months of age can trigger the development of mental disorders and chronic diseases. Parents should be wary if he does not fall asleep for a long time, often whines, and wakes up many times. After all, this clearly indicates that something is bothering the baby.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that a child does not sleep well during the day. It is very frivolous and irresponsible to think that this is a temporary phenomenon that will pass on its own. Action needs to be taken.
- Before lunch, it is recommended to take a longer walk with your baby in the fresh air. It is best to choose park areas for walks.
- If the child begins to refuse to sleep during the day, it will be very good to give him a short bath in slightly cool water. Such water procedures have a hardening effect, so they are doubly useful.
- Create a personal falling asleep ritual for your baby: you can read books to him, sing lullabies or any other songs, put his favorite toy next to him. Finding something that will help you fall asleep can only be done experimentally. After all, every baby is unique.
Poor daytime sleep can be justified only in one case - when the child manages to get a good night's sleep. To check this, it is advisable to track its behavior.
If he has a good appetite and is not capricious or whining, then perhaps it will be enough to just lie down with the baby for an hour or two during the day. You can listen to some audio fairy tale or read a children's book.
When restless sleep is normal
Let's return to the question - does the baby really sleep poorly? Why did parents decide that their child’s sleep was poor at night? If a child occasionally
- screams,
- spinning,
- kicks his legs and arms in his sleep, this sometimes wakes himself up and requires him to be put down again,
- cries in his sleep or makes moaning sounds (by the way, he laughs like that).
This is not a bad dream, but a restless one. And this is the norm.
Physiological crying, sounds, facial and motor activity in the fast phase of sleep occur in completely healthy children.
How to calm down
If the child is sleeping with his mother, then you can put your hand on his tummy, hold his moving arms and legs so that he does not wake himself up, and he will continue his sleep.
If motor activity is weak and the child whines in his sleep, there is no need to rush to take any action. Your baby is sleeping, and his nervous system is “processing” new information.
By the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th month, children become more actively interested in the world around them, begin to participate in its development more intensively, play more and sleep less. The process of adaptation to a large flow of information is actively underway. The baby’s nervous system learns to recognize, filter and sift out all incoming data. For such a baby, short hours of wakefulness, massage and exercise with mom, bathing and playing with arms and legs are a big burden.
The condition of a baby at this age can be compared with the condition of a person leading a sedentary lifestyle, who suddenly finds himself in the Amazon forests and is forced to wade through thickets of vines in conditions of heat and high humidity, while pythons, poisonous spiders, etc. crawl around him. In terms of physical and emotional stress, this will be comparable to what an infant feels who is just learning to live in this world.
