Sleep Requirements

Being a new mother, you probably will observe or might think that your baby sleeps too much through out the day. This varies from baby to baby; but there are certain standards on which you can deduce your expectations. Even if you’ve had children before, each baby will be different.

The sleeping time of a new born infant is around 16-17 hours within a 24-hours period. And a proven fact is that most of the babies will not sleep throughout the night; until they’re at least 3 months old and for this, there are several reasons why. First of all, their stomachs are quite small and they’ll get hungry quite frequently, especially if you’re breastfeeding your baby. Breast milk is gets digested in a little time as compared to a formula, and your baby will be requiring more feed, especially in the initial stages.

Babies have shorter sleep cycles than adults do, and so have shorter dream cycles. In general a newborn baby should sleep about 8 or nine hours during the day and 8 hours or so at night but in the beginning, these sleep times will be quite short.

As the baby grows older, up to about 2 years of age, she’ll still be sleeping 13-14 hours, but the day time sleep time will reduce month-by-month. By reaching the age 2, your baby should be sleeping through the night with a 2-hour nap during the day, but thus again this will vary by child. May be your baby might need a slightly longer nap or two short naps. At this particular age, try to discourage naps too late in the afternoon, as this can make it harder for them to sleep a few hours later at bed time.

Once the baby begins to sleep throughout the night, parents are often dismayed when he/she begins to awaken in the night again. This typically happens at about 6 months of age and is often a normal part of development; and is called separation anxiety.