You came home after a long and tiring day. You spent time with your child and spouse, had a brief look at your favorite TV show, prepared your baby’s formula and put it to sleep, and finally lay in your bed to sleep.
It didn’t last long though, did it? Obviously, you have a little family member who wakes up frequently and makes your night even harder by crying. If your newborn wakes up frequently, has irregular sleep pattern, and thus prevents you from sleeping adequately and regularly, it is possible that your baby has a sleep ıssue.
Many factors such as nutrition, psychological ıssues, natural effects of the developmental process etc. may be a part of infant sleep ıssues. First and foremost, please remember that you, as a parent, should be calm and relaxed. That is because your panicking will cause your newborn to question the safe zone it takes shelter in, which in turn will cause your baby to become disturbed and restless.
Your baby’s waking up frequently and crying should not cause you to think of yourselves as inadequate parents. There may be lots of biological and psychological reasons for your baby’s sleep issues. Some of these are as follows:
- Premature babies and babies fed at night may suffer from sleep ıssues.
- It is quite normal for teething babies to wake up frequently and have irregular sleep pattern. This is caused by the teething process, and is one of the problems you will encounter every now and then until the teething is over.
- Babies having reflux, chronic urinary tract infection or ear inflammation have irregular sleep pattern. If you suspect any of these disorders, you are recommended to take your baby to the nearest pediatrician.
- If you rock your baby to sleep, this habit may disturb its sleep pattern as well. That is because if your baby has become used to be fed or rocked to sleep, it will demand the same to go to sleep again when it wakes up at night, which will eventually become a habit. When the baby realizes that this habit is not fulfilled regularly, the baby feels uneasy and begins crying as it thinks it has been abandoned. As a natural result, the will to sleep will become reduced. For all these reasons, you are not recommended to rock your baby to sleep.
- Babies and small children who have seen their parents for a short period of time during the day or stayed apart from them for a while may have sleep issues as well. This anxiety, which is caused by the fear of abandonment, may adversely affect your baby’s or child’s sleep pattern.
- Among the sleep disorders your child, who is not an infant anymore but is still young, may suffer from is the issue called “night trouble”. Children suffering from this issue have bouts of panic at the 2nd to 3rd hour of sleep. They may scream or tend to throw off their clothes or objects around them due to the panic and fear they experience. They are unresponsive to their parents trying to communicate with them, do not get involved in a dialogue with them during this period, and even may not recognize them. They do not remember at all what happened earlier after they go to sleep and wake up again. Professional help must certainly be sought for these stimulation issues which are completely of psychological origin and occur during the first moments of NREM (non-rapid eye movement) stage of sleep.
- If your baby has sleep apnea, this may also cause lack of sleep. Occurring as a result of recurrent upper airway obstruction, sleep apnea is an important sleep disorder. It is seen particularly in children from 2 to 6 years of age.
- Another sleep disorder which may be seen among the individuals of all ages but causes more trouble for the children is sleepwalking. Due to being a state where the individual loses consciousness completely and acts unconsciously and involuntarily despite being asleep, sleepwalking is even a greater problem for the small children who are prone to all the external threats and require the protection of their parents. Sleepwalking which manifests itself as walking while asleep and meanwhile mumbling, either meaningful or not, lasts generally for 10-15 seconds, and though rarely, it may last as long as 30 minutes. Sleepwalking children do not recall anything when they wake up. Parents should approach the child in a relaxing and comforting way so that the child will not get scared of the condition and detach himself from other people. And of course, professional help should be sought for this psychological sleep disorder as well.
