If you’re a new parent, you’ve discovered the irony in the age-old adage “slept like a baby.” Welcome to the club!
All humor aside, it’s incredibly helpful for parents to understand kids’ natural sleep cycles and awakenings.
Early in life, an infant naturally wakes up multiple times to feed and often needs caregiver help to transition back to sleep. But as they get older, why do some infants still have multiple awakenings at night while others sleep through the night?
Based on what we know about the science of sleep, the term “sleeping through the night” is a misnomer. No human being actually sleeps through the night–infants included.
In fact, nighttime sleep occurs in cycles in which we dip into deeper stages of sleep and then emerge into lighter stages at the end of the cycle. Sleep research shows that the cycle lasts about 60 minutes for infants and 90 minutes for adults.1 There is often an awakening at the end of a sleep cycle during light sleep. Here is a simplified diagram of how a night may look:
An infant that “sleeps through the night” is able to simply go back to sleep during the normal awakenings at night. They have the ability to “self-soothe” and turn their wake brains back off and sleep.
Infants who are unable to sleep without help from a caregiver have what is called a sleep-onset association. This term is used to describe anything in the environment that a child needs to fall asleep.
For example: If a parent consistently rocks an infant while falling asleep at the beginning of the night, the infant learns to fall asleep only when rocked. The rocking is the sleep-onset association for the child. When the infant awakens at night during a normal awakening–no longer being held and rocked–the infant begins to cry until rocked to sleep again. This happens repeatedly throughout the night, often separated by an hour (the time it takes to go back through another sleep cycle). It leads to disruption in both the infant’s and parent’s sleep.
Some infants naturally learn to fall asleep independently at an early age, while it can take longer for others. By six months of age, most sleep specialists agree that an otherwise healthy child should be able to learn how to self-soothe and fall asleep independently. This often involves techniques known as extinction or modified extinction, popularly known as “cry-it-out” and the Ferber technique, respectively. Both techniques have a great deal of sleep research to support safety and efficacy.2 The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has an article endorsing these treatment techniques.3 However, implementing these techniques is challenging due to infants/toddlers crying regularly during the process and the stress it creates in caregivers. As a result, many parents give up and subject themselves and their children to months–and sometimes years–of poor sleep.
Lullabee can help.
We designed Lullabee with the goal of helping your child become an independent, confident sleeper who doesn’t rely on any outside factors to help them sleep. Lullabee works to gently support an infant’s needs by helping them transition to sleep using gentle vibration and soothing sounds.
In the Support Phase, the mattress provides as much support as the infant needs. Lullabee is creating a new sleep-onset association with the mattress. Once the child has learned to fall asleep quickly, the mattress automatically enters the Weaning Phase, slowly and gently decreasing the intensity of vibration and sound it will give the child. It gradually teaches the child the skill of falling asleep independently–gently and slowly. Once the infant learns to fall asleep independently without Lullabee’s help, you can turn it off completely and Lullabee becomes a comfortable, standard crib mattress.
But we know sleep regressions can occur. Whether it be a trip away from home, teething, or an illness, your child’s sleep may hit a road bump at some point. With the push of a button, Lullabee is ready to support your child again and get them back on track. At Lullabee, we believe parenting is hard enough as it is. Sleep should be easy.
Citations:
- Lopp S, Navidi W, Achermann P, LeBourgeois M, Diniz Behn C. Developmental Changes in Ultradian Sleep Cycles across Early Childhood. J Biol Rhythms. 2017;32(1):64-74.
- Mindell JA, Kuhn B, Lewin DS, Meltzer LJ, Sadeh A, American Academy of Sleep M. Behavioral treatment of bedtime problems and night wakings in infants and young children. Sleep. 2006;29(10):1263-1276.
- Morgenthaler TI, Owens J, Alessi C, et al. Practice parameters for behavioral treatment of bedtime problems and night wakings in infants and young children. Sleep. 2006;29(10):1277-1281.