A 1-month-old baby does not sleep well during the day and at night

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Author of the article

Ekaterina Rakitina Doctor Dietrich Bonhoeffer Klinikum, Germany

Reading time: 8 minutes

Article last updated: 04/29/2019

A newborn baby eats and sleeps most of the day. He still spends little time studying the world. A baby who has reached the age of one month sleeps a little less than a baby from the maternity hospital, is more active and examines the environment and people. But he should still sleep well. During sleep, the growth and development of a child's body occurs. Lack of sleep is dangerous to your health. In this case, we are talking not only about night sleep, but also about daytime sleep.

Baby is 1 month old: what has changed

The first days of a baby's life are accompanied by the following needs: sleep and food. There is practically no wakefulness. The baby’s internal clock is already building certain biorhythms. There is no point in setting a schedule or following any instructions - the baby himself will tell you when to feed him or put him to bed. Crying is a signal that the baby requires attention. Children at this age do not know how to be capricious; the likelihood of manipulation by adults is extremely low.

It is important to know! A child's daily sleep norm in the first month has the highest duration - 17-19 hours. A month-old baby can fall asleep for two to three hours at a time, staying awake for about an hour and a half.

It is useful for the baby to sleep outside: this way he can get the necessary fresh air, and a walk will have a positive effect on the child’s adaptation to the new environment.

Young parents can check how their baby is developing:

The baby raises his head and tries to hold it, lying on his stomach.
Reacts to sounds, recognizes voices, tries to “speak.”
He turns his gaze to bright things, toys, follows them, turning his head.

The baby develops reflexes. Touch your finger to the child's palm - the child will try to grab it. The baby curls his toes when touching the heel.

Even the correct approach to the rest and feeding of the baby is accompanied by problems. Parents panic when a child sleeps poorly for 1 month.

Main causes of sleep disorders

In the case when a newborn up to 1 month is healthy and receives timely care and quality nutrition, the main reasons for poor sleep may be the following:

Violations or lack of routine. Parents should establish a clear daily routine from the first days of their child’s life. However, the baby cannot immediately adapt to him; he needs time. Gradually, the child gets used to the schedule; the slightest changes can affect the quality of the baby’s sleep.
Undereating or overeating. Even with artificial feeding, when you can see the amount eaten from the bottle, it is difficult to understand whether the child is full or not. This is all the more problematic when breastfeeding, especially with insufficient experience. In such situations, control weighing the child before and after feeding helps.
Belching. Everyone knows that immediately after feeding a newborn should be held in an upright position or placed on its side to regurgitate excess air and food. If you neglect this rule, then during sleep the child experiences discomfort, tosses and turns and may burp, which poses a risk of choking.
It's hot in the room. The metabolism of a newborn is several times faster than that of an adult. This directly affects the amount of heat generated per unit of time. If the room is warm for an adult, the baby is hot. The optimal room temperature should not exceed 18-20 degrees.
It's stuffy in the room. A sufficient amount of oxygen is necessary for comfortable sleep. To do this, you should ventilate the room more often, especially before going to bed.
Microclimate in the room. The permissible humidity level in the room is 40-60%. Excessively dry air causes the mucous membranes of the child’s nose and mouth to dry out, the skin becomes dry and irritated, and the body becomes dehydrated. All this negatively affects sleep, making it interrupted. If a child has snot or cough, the next morning there is a chance of waking up with laryngitis, tracheitis or a stuffy nose. The mucus accumulated in the nose and bronchi thickens and is difficult to separate, becoming a source of infection in the body.
It's cold in the room. The following behavior may indicate that a child is cold: excessively active movements of the limbs, crying, sneezing.
Dirty diaper. Some babies are especially sensitive to the slightest amount of urine or feces in their diaper. Delicate baby skin instantly reacts to an irritant, disrupting a restful sleep.
Colic. One of the common causes of sleep disturbances in a child under 3 months. The new nutrition system and the lack of a normal level of intestinal microflora create discomfort in the body, causing bloating.
Constipation. Often parents overfeed formula-fed children, the poorly digested excess of which creates this problem. Poor nutrition of the mother, psycho-emotional stress, lack of milk, taking antibiotics, and infrequent water consumption can also cause constipation in a breastfed baby.
Bright light. Direct sunlight or a bright lamp that irritates a child interferes with the production of the hormone melatonin, which allows for quality relaxation and rest, launching the necessary processes in the body and synthesizing the necessary hormones.
Extraneous sounds. The monotonous noise of the street is unlikely to wake up a sleeping child. However, children in the first month of life react painfully to loud, sharp sounds, shuddering and getting scared. This background prevents you from falling asleep quickly and negatively affects your sleep, making it superficial and restless.
Absence of mother. At this age, the child does not recognize himself separately from his mother. Swaddling helps soothe your baby and give him the feeling of being in the womb - an environment that is familiar and close to him.

Following a daily routine may not always guarantee restful sleep. Sleep can be disrupted by various diseases, pain and mental disorders.

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Methods for getting your child to fall asleep independently

If a 1-month-old child regularly sleeps poorly for several days, the help of a doctor is necessary, even in the absence of obvious signs of illness. With the help of examination and tests, the doctor will determine the cause of poor sleep and prevent the development of possible complications.

In addition, there are a number of external factors that can cause restless and inadequate sleep:

Birth injury. Various disorders of the nervous system significantly affect the quality of sleep. A consultation with a neurologist will reveal abnormalities, and timely treatment will help avoid negative consequences in the future.
Psychological atmosphere in the family. The mother's constant anxiety, fatigue and irritation affects the child's condition, which can result in poor falling asleep and poor quality sleep.
Biorhythm failure. Children in the first month of life often confuse day with night. They get enough sleep during the day, and at night they require attention and communication.
Discomfort on the skin. Diaper rash from rarely changing diapers or due to their constant wearing causes discomfort in the baby and contributes to restless sleep. In addition, skin rashes due to overheating of the baby (baby heat rash) also cause itching and discomfort, preventing normal rest.
Temperament. The genetically determined character of a child manifests itself from the first days of life. The child’s activity during waking hours and the quality of sleep during the rest period depend on what temperament the baby is endowed with.

You can talk about a problem with sleep if the newborn cries a lot, does not calm down after or during feeding, wakes up every 3 hours at night and every 30 minutes during the day. If a baby wakes up every 3 hours to eat and falls asleep again after feeding, this is considered normal and does not require special correction.

A one-month-old baby began to sleep restlessly: we are looking for an answer

Sleep disturbances are difficult for an adult to bear, but for a baby they are completely dangerous. Often, parents of a baby consult a doctor if he begins to wake up at an unusual time or has trouble falling asleep. The first month of a child’s life is spent mostly in sleep, so the inability to sleep normally has an extremely negative impact on his growth and development. Having noticed that the child cannot rest, it is urgent to find out the cause of insomnia.

Typical manifestations of anxiety

Lack of sleep in a small child is a real problem. According to inexperienced parents, poor sleep is accompanied by the following manifestations: the baby tosses and turns, grimaces, coos, and twitches. In fact, these actions are just in the order of things. The human brain does not stop working when we sleep. In a one-month-old baby, it also continues to function, but in this case it occurs due to active development: the brain assimilates everything that the baby has learned while awake.

Problematic sleep of a baby has two accompanying factors:

frequent awakenings at night;
difficulty falling asleep.

A healthy baby will fall asleep when he receives what he needs, or when conditions suitable for sound sleep are met. If a child is 1 month old and does not sleep well at night, it is necessary to identify the reason for his insomnia.

Rest standards and deviations

On average, a child spends about 18 hours a day sleeping. We must not forget that each baby is unique; its development and growth cannot fit into any rigid framework or be subject to special rules and regimes. It is important that manifestations in the behavior, well-being, and lifestyle of a month-old baby are not unhealthy.

Parents are concerned that the baby spends the night not in sleep, but in their arms. It seems that he has fallen asleep and can be returned to his crib, but the baby starts crying again - and so on until the morning. Others are concerned about why a one-month-old baby does not sleep well during the day. Also, doctors often hear complaints that the baby cannot be woken up; he is able to rest the whole day. All this has reasons, and if they get rid of them, moms and dads will rest and help the baby develop normally further.

Explanation of restlessness during sleep

There are a number of reasons that lead to a baby waking up in the middle of the night, starting to whine and call for his mother. Each of them has its own explanation and solution methods. The most important thing is to detect the potential cause of awakening in time and eradicate it.

The reason is the disease

In some cases, poor sleep is caused by illness. First of all, it could be colic - the baby was overfed, so he started crying. Other problems associated with indigestion are also common: constipation, diarrhea, bloating.

The reason for frequent awakenings and crying is a common cold and the “charms” associated with it: runny nose, otitis media, cough, fever. Sometimes a baby has hidden diseases that can be a serious threat to health and even life. Therefore, any suspicious symptom should be a reason to consult a doctor.

Restless sleep can be caused by a neurological disorder, which is associated, for example, with a genetic factor or birth trauma. In this case, consultation with a neurologist is required. It is important that the emotional background in a house where there is a month-old baby is normal - without quarrels, screams and scandals. Small children sense the mother’s condition very subtly: the more nervous she is, the more the child roars.

Physiological factors

The first month of a child’s life is characterized by a sharp jump in its development. New sensations frighten the baby, which is why he constantly asks to be held in the arms of his mother - the only person who is ready to help the baby without fail in such a difficult period.

The baby sometimes wakes up due to sudden movement in his sleep. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with this, the baby needs to be reassured, and he will fall asleep again. But there may be deviations. It is worth contacting a specialist in the field of neurology: he will confirm or deny the presence of disorders.

Features of the phase structure of sleep prevent a child from sleeping. In children of this age, the superficial stage (rapid eye movement sleep) predominates over the deep stage (slow wave sleep). At this time, the baby sleeps poorly, often wakes up, and reacts sensitively to external and internal stimuli. Sometimes the baby whines in his sleep. This is the baby’s way of checking whether his parents will come to his call when he needs help. The situation is twofold: not coming means causing a real hysteria in the child (“I feel bad, why aren’t they coming?”), but constantly reacting to the baby’s whining and the presence of parents nearby will become a habit: he will be able to fall asleep only in the arms and in the company of adults.

Improper care

The baby knows when to wake up - thanks to the internal clock. Waking the baby up again means harming him and his development. Inexperienced or inattentive parents make a serious mistake - they impose a new regime on their child. It seems to them that the baby is resting above normal. Guided by a certain schedule, the child is woken up (time to feed, go potty, go for a walk, bathe). Naturally, the child begins to cry, and mom and dad run to the doctor, trying to understand what they are doing wrong.

Incorrect care also consists of the following: they wrap the baby up or, conversely, make him freeze, do not change the diaper in a timely manner, forget to bathe him at night, or go outside with him. These errors cannot but affect the duration and quality of sleep.

Poor organization of sleeping conditions

A child will sleep normally if three factors are observed: darkness, silence and freshness. As you know, dry air and too warm an atmosphere will not allow the baby to sleep. Crusts will form in the nose, closing the opening for breathing. Light is extremely undesirable - a dim nightlight at most; darkness promotes the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. The presence of tiny gadgets in the room that can sound loudly or shine brightly will cause difficulty falling asleep. Therefore, there should be no tablets, TVs, computers, or phones near the baby. The room should be ventilated, the air should be humidified, bedding and pajamas should be made from natural fabrics and kept clean.

No mode

In a strict sense, there is no regimen for children in the neonatal period. The internal biorhythms of a baby at the age of one month are adjusted. They cannot be violated, only slightly adjusted, and only if they cause problems.

In some cases, the regime is imposed. For example, parents are accustomed to their own rhythm and are not able to give it up, which is a serious mistake. The child is put to bed at night at the same time as mom and dad, although he is not tired and is still ready to stay awake. The disrupted routine is also manifested in the fact that a 1-month-old child does not sleep well during the day.

About children's sleep standards

At 1 month of age, the baby begins to actively get acquainted with the world around him. The adaptation period does not always go smoothly. Excessive emotions, contacts, and excessive stimulation before bedtime cause difficulty falling asleep and proper rest in most children. The child’s nervous system is still immature; it needs sleep to restore and digest a huge amount of new information. There are many reasons for poor sleep in newborns, and often parents, without knowing them, find it difficult to cope with the problem.

Evgeny Komarovsky, a famous pediatrician and author of articles on children’s health, connects children’s sleep with the comfort of the whole family. If a child's sleep is disrupted, the entire household suffers.

Lack of sleep is dangerous for newborns and can cause dysfunction of the body, as well as a deficiency of hormones and enzymes necessary for the proper growth and development of the child. Therefore, the main task of parents during this period is to improve the baby’s sleep.

The norms of children's daily sleep in pediatrics are usually assessed by average indicators:

a newborn needs to sleep up to 22 hours a day;
from 2 to 4 months - about 20 hours, the intervals between feedings increase;
from 6 months - at least 14 hours a day, night sleep prevails over daytime sleep and amounts to 8-10 hours;
from 12 months - at least 13 hours a day, of which 9-10 hours are allocated at night;
2-4 years - the total number of hours of sleep is at least 12;
after 4 years - a total of at least 10 hours;
from 6 years - at least 8 hours at night and about 1 hour during the day;
From the age of 11, it is enough to allocate 8-8.5 hours of sleep at night.

As the child grows, sleep becomes deep, while the total number of hours allotted for rest gradually decreases, and the duration of the sleep period increases.

The given norms for a child’s daily sleep are very arbitrary. The parameters of sleep and wakefulness are individual and depend on the pace of development and temperament of the baby. In addition, the discipline of parents in forming and maintaining a daily routine is of great importance.

Parents' reaction

Sleep disturbances in a 1-month-old baby cause real stupor in inexperienced parents. In a panic, they start visiting doctors, trying to find out what is wrong or taking measures that are best avoided.

The Right Action

How to restore sleep to a baby is a question that worries all parents without exception. The baby will fall asleep if mom and dad approach this responsibly. Below is a list of things you can do to calm your baby.

Calm down. The subtle connection between mother and baby helps the baby feel everything that mother feels. There is no need to be nervous and irritated if the baby wakes up - the mother’s negative emotions will provoke the baby even more.
Examine the baby carefully. Maybe he's hot? Or is the diaper already soiled? In this case, you need to eliminate the cause of awakening - change the diaper, ventilate the room, and so on.
Bring the baby to you. Children sleep soundly next to their parents. At one month of age this is normal. The most important thing is that such a situation does not become habitual in the future, as the baby grows up.

Almost always, parents are prompted to take the right actions by their instincts and inner instincts. This allows you to not only help your baby return to sleep when he wakes up, but also provide him with the opportunity to fall asleep. However, there are mistakes that most parents make.

There's no need to do that

Sometimes parents can make mistakes when trying to calm their baby. Many people believe that a child who wakes up screams and cries from hunger - this is not always the case. They gag him with a bottle or breast, but after eating for just a couple of minutes, he refuses, continuing his hysteria. In fact, first you should have examined the baby for a dirty diaper, or looked at his pajamas - maybe he is uncomfortable in them.

Advice! There is no need to be irritated when the baby wakes up. The emotional background in the house and the mother’s feelings in particular only aggravate the problem.

It is very difficult to put a child who has woken up in the middle of the night and is out of sorts to sleep. The same applies to the moment of going to bed. The mother hurriedly puts the baby in the crib, worrying that the process will not drag on, because she has already made plans on how to spend several hours while the baby naps. This is wrong - the mother should help the child go to bed responsibly and calmly, without haste.

Reasons why a child often wakes up

If a baby doesn’t sleep well, wakes up within half an hour after falling asleep and screams after waking up, then this can happen for several reasons:

Colic, which sometimes doctors can confuse with a manifestation of hypoxia. As in our case, we were treated for colic, and then, when we found a good neurologist, it turned out that it was hypoxia.
Teething.
Dysbacteriosis.
The manifestation of allergies is when the baby cannot scratch himself.

Do not forget that your baby may simply have a restless character.

Preventive measures: consultation with specialists

To avoid having to visit a doctor and suffer from insomnia due to the baby’s cries at night, you should take care to provide the child with the necessary conditions for normal sleep. Dr. Komarovsky gives a lot of advice. You can ensure healthy sleep for your baby by taking a number of measures:

Maintaining sleep and feeding patterns. The baby knows when to eat and sleep. Parents are only obliged to support him. Until one year of age, they do not have the right to strictly enforce their own patterns of rest and wakefulness.
Conditions for sleeping. Ventilate the room, make sure the bed is soft, fresh, and clean. Baby's pajamas should have no rough seams. If the baby’s clothes are uncomfortable, change them. Make sure that the materials of the products are natural, avoid synthetic fabrics.
Eliminate irritants that may distract or excite your child. Darkness and silence will help your baby fall asleep quickly.
Bathing. Regular bathing procedures in warm water will ensure healthy sleep for your baby. A couple of times a week you can bathe the baby with a decoction of herbs.
Walks. Children sleep well in the fresh air. Dress your baby for the weather and ride in quiet places.
Don't overfeed your baby. A dinner that is too dense, even from breast milk, can cause colic or bloating, which will not allow the baby and, of course, his parents to get a good night's sleep.

Simple tips like these will provide your child with healthy sleep, and mom and dad with preserved nerves.

Advice! Remember that you should only consult a doctor if you suspect a disease if you have a number of other symptoms (rash, redness, sweating, lethargy).

How to improve your newborn's sleep

It is not worthwhile to independently understand the pathologies of a child’s poor sleep, much less make diagnoses.
This is the prerogative of doctors. The task of parents is to promptly identify serious sleep disorders and seek advice from a pediatrician or neurologist. If the baby’s health and appetite are satisfactory, he is active and steadily gaining weight, but at the same time has difficulty falling asleep, duration and quality of sleep, negative factors should be eliminated with the help of simple tips:

Regularly ventilate your child’s room before going to bed;
use special devices that allow you to optimize the required parameters of temperature and humidity in the room;
eliminate the source of bright light, gradually teach the baby to sleep in complete darkness;
eliminate loud and harsh sounds while falling asleep, but do not create a feeling of complete silence: turn on a quiet lullaby, the sounds of birdsong or the sound of the sea;
after feeding the baby, it is necessary to allow excess air and food to escape;
make sure the diaper is clean and dry;
provide your child with daily walks and sleep in the fresh air;
create a favorable psychological atmosphere in the house, devoid of scandals, irritation, and nervousness;
2-3 hours before going to bed at night, exclude active games and loud laughter to avoid emotional overload;
if there are no contraindications, give your baby a bath with the addition of healing herbal infusions or soothing aromatic oil;
make sure that children's pajamas do not contain irritating seams or tags and correspond to the temperature in the room;
massage with warm hands around the baby's navel clockwise, then turn it over and let it lie on the stomach for a while to facilitate the release of accumulated gases;
swaddle the baby's arms or put him in a special cotton sleeping bag for a comfortable and restful sleep;
maintain close contact with your baby while feeding, rock him before bed, this will calm him down and help him fall asleep.

A developed bedtime ritual, expressed in daily repeated actions, forms in the child the correct associations with falling asleep. This could be bathing, a light massage, reading a fairy tale, listening to a lullaby and more.

What are the dangers of frequent crying and sleep disorders?

Many parents and the older generation do not see anything wrong with their children’s crying, letting them “scream it out” and making no attempt to calm them down. This is not a physiological method of dealing with crying, whatever the reason, especially if the child also sleeps poorly.

Crying loads and overstimulates the nervous system, threatening the development of “rolling” with periods of respiratory arrest and acute brain hypoxia. This will have an extremely negative impact on the development of the child, leading to nervousness and anxiety, difficulties in learning and disinhibition of arousal processes.

note

When screaming, the lungs are ventilated worse, not better, as many people think, and this leads to tissue hypoxia and preconditions for pneumonia, bronchitis with obstruction, as well as various anomalies in the structure of the lungs (atelectasis, bronchiectasis).

Alena Paretskaya, pediatrician, medical columnist

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Sleep tips for babies

More often, sleep problems occur in children from the 4th month of life. During this period they are trying to transfer them to the regime. In order for the child to quickly adapt to new conditions, the transition is carried out gradually. In the process, it is advisable to follow the recommendations of experts:

To begin with, they determine the number of feedings, gradually eliminating night visits. Breaks between meals are divided into equal intervals, adjusting to the mother’s regime. For some children, 5-6 feedings will be enough, while others will need 7-8 feedings. The latter is carried out half an hour before bedtime.
To make it easier for the child to get used to the regime, it is necessary to adhere to the sequence of actions. When your baby wakes up, do not immediately put him to the breast. First, the child takes air baths, is given a light massage, and only then is fed. Babies up to 3 months fall asleep almost immediately after eating. Older children need to be allocated time to be awake and only then put to bed.

Daytime wakefulness

Gradually, daytime sleep is reduced to the optimal minimum. Its duration is easy to determine using the standards from the table above. If your toddler sleeps more than expected during the day, it will be more difficult for him to fall asleep in the evening.
The baby needs to be tired with games so that by nightfall he wants to sleep. If you notice that the child has begun to yawn, he should immediately be put to bed. If the mother misses this moment and the baby endures it, the drowsiness will go away, the little one will continue to be awake, but at the same time be capricious.
It is important to select all clothes for a newborn with external seams. Then they will not disturb the baby during sleep.
For a baby to have a restful night's sleep, he must feel comfortable in bed. The child is uncomfortable in an empty crib, so it is recommended to equip something like a small “nest” there, covering the baby with pillows or soft hypoallergenic toys (if they do not scare the little one).

Important! You should not use a stroller for sleeping at home. The child associates it with walks.

If the room is too dry, it is recommended to purchase a humidifier. You can add a couple of drops of essential oil (lavender, chamomile, sandalwood, vetiver) to the water if your baby is not allergic to them. These smells, saturating the air, promote restful sleep.
Before putting the baby in the crib, the bedroom must be ventilated. Fresh air from the street acts like a sleeping pill on small children.
Above the crib you should hang a musical turntable with a lullaby melody. It will lull the baby to sleep and subsequently become a kind of signal for going to bed.

Lullaby for baby

If a newborn has been switched to a regime without night feedings, and he wakes up, you should not immediately pick him up, advises Dr. Komarovsky. Babies often wake up at night not because they are hungry. This occurs under the influence of biological processes: during the transition of sleep from one phase to another.

At this time, the toddler may groan, wave his hand, and even scream a little. Then he will gradually fall asleep. Once the mother is active, the baby’s sleep will go away.

If the child begins to scream loudly, arch over, or tighten his legs, it is better to immediately pick him up. This behavior does not indicate hunger, but is a sign of health problems.