Four Common Sleep Myths That Can Cost You Zzzzzz
I can clearly remember, like most mothers I’m sure, the very moment I gave birth to my first child. I was absolutely buried in feelings of love and gratitude. And then, about ten to fifteen seconds later, I was equally buried in advice, suggestions, and information. This was all thrown at me with the best intentions, but it was overwhelming nonetheless. I can’t count the number of times I heard the words, “You should,” “You’ll want to,” and “You’ve got to.” If there’s no such number as a “kajillion,” it should be created specifically in order to measure the number of suggestions a new mother receives in her first year of motherhood.
Of course, those feelings of love and gratitude persist to this day, and so do the recommendations. And that’s coming from an expert, a professional, in the child care field. I can only imagine the tidal waves of hints and advice that must overwhelm a mother who openly asks for it.
There’s no such thing as a casual mom. This gig is full-time, no matter if you’re a stay-at-home-mom, a working mom, or somewhere in between.
Your kids are on your mind 24/7, no matter what else might be going on, so we tend to do a lot of research, and with access to unlimited data via the internet, Amazon, or your mother-in- law, it’s inevitable that we get some conflicting information.
Although when it comes to kids, I think the sleep discussion may eclipse politics for the sheer divisiveness and claiming opinion as fact. So today, I want to focus on my area of expertise, that being sleep, and try to dispel some of the more popular myths I’ve seen in parenting forums, heard from Mom meet-ups I’ve talked with, or seen angrily shouted in all caps on some Facebook groups.
1. Sleeping too much during the day will keep baby up at night.Not likely, except in extreme cases. Unless your little one is sleeping practically all day and up all night, you probably don’t need to concern yourself with the length of their naps. Newborns especially need a ton of sleep. In fact, up until about 6 months, I don’t recommend that your little one be awake for more than about 2 – 21/2 hours at a time. For newborns, that number is more like 45 minutes to an hour.
What keeps infants awake at night, more than anything else, is over-tiredness. You might think that an exhausted baby is more likely to sack out for a full night than one who slept all day, but it’s actually just the opposite. The reason we refer to it as being “overtired” is because baby has missed the calming phase and their bodies must kick back into gear, producing a cocktail of alerting hormones which keeps them from falling and/or staying asleep. A baby who has gotten a decent amount of sleep during the day is far less likely to miss the sleep window.
There are substantial variations depending on baby’s age and the length of their naps, but up to that 6 month mark, it’s really not uncommon for baby to be sleeping around 5 hours a day outside of nighttime sleep, so if your little one is still within those guidelines, let them snooze. As toddlers they may need to cut naps at age 2.5 years, but some happily keep them until age 4.
2. Sleeping can’t be taught.
Sleeping is natural, absolutely. Everybody wakes up and falls back to sleep multiple times a night,
regardless of their age. So no, you can’t teach a child to be sleepy. What can be taught, however, is the ability to fall back to sleep independently.
The typical “bad sleeper” of a baby isn’t less in need of sleep, or more prone to waking up. They’ve just learned to depend on outside assistance to get back to sleep when they wake up. Once your little one has figured out how to get to sleep without assistance from outside sources, they start stringing those sleep cycles together absolutely effortlessly, and that’s the secret to “sleeping through the night” as most parents understand it.
3. Babies will naturally dictate their own sleep scheduleThe idea that infant physiology is so flawlessly, naturally programmed to regulate a baby’s sleep schedule is… optimistic. Nothing against Mother Nature, but she doesn’t provide us with a ready-to- run baby like she does with say, the blue wildebeest. (Seriously? Walking six minutes after birth? Outrunning predators within a day? Our babies are cuter, but clearly not as prepared for battle straight out of the womb.)
Our babies need extensive care and help in their development, and their sleep cycles are erratic if left unregulated. If they miss their natural sleep cycle by as little as a half hour, their alerting hormones can increase which causes a surge in energy, and things quickly spiral out of control. So as much as I wish babies could just fall asleep when they’re tired, it simply doesn’t work that way. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t respond to their cues, but you shouldn’t rely exclusively on them either.
4. Babies are not “designed” to sleep through the night.
Putting aside our religious beliefs for a moment, I think we can all agree that, even if babies were “designed” somehow, whoever did the designing left plenty of room for some upgrades. Trusting your child’s physiology to dictate their sleep schedule, their eating habits, their behavior, or just about any other aspect of their upbringing is a recipe for disaster.
Is your toddler designed to eat three pounds of gummi bears? Surely not. Will they if you don’t intervene? Without a doubt. Be wary of the advice of those who tell you that babies should dictate their schedules and stay up until 9 or 10pm. You’re in charge because you want to keep your child healthy and you can see that the whole family is happier when they are better rested.
Parents are teachers and if there is one strategy you’ll be happy you taught them, it’s how to go to sleep confidently all by themselves. When they are empowered to do this, they will love sleeping through the night!
There are obviously plenty more myths and misconceptions surrounding babies and their sleep habits, but these are some of the most important to get the facts on. Find peer-reviewed scientific studies on all things baby-related, and trusted sources like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Institutes of Health, Britain’s National Health Service, Canada’s Hospital for Sick Children, the World Health Organization, and other national children’s health organizations are excellent sources of information you can feel confident about using to answer questions about your baby’s health.
