Mark Twain said that "A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother." Let's be honest: the bother comes in the middle of the night. Everyone dreads the newborn's nightly feedings every two hours and wants their baby to start sleeping through the night at a miraculously early age. And, doesn't it always seem like newborns are sleeping all day to get rested for their late nights of being night owls? The funny thing is, when a new mom tells you her baby is "sleeping through the night," she could mean the baby is sleeping 5 or 6 hours straight (say 10pm to 4 or 5am); whereas, if an adult without children talks about "sleeping through the night," she probably means a good 8 hours (say 10pm to 6 or 7am). Perspective can really change. I think God's way of preparing you for this magical time of twilight activities is shown by the fact that I now, with my pregnant bladder, wake up every 4 hours to use the restroom, no matter what I do to try warding that off before I go to sleep at night. It's like clockwork, but I remind myself to be thankful that I can go back to sleep after I get up temporarily and enjoy this time when it's only every 4 hours instead of every 2.
Okay, so is there anything we can do during pregnancy to help your baby have an easier transition to sleeping through the night...?
Here's the fact of the matter - experts report that as early as 16 weeks after conception, babies have clear sleep and wake patterns, or circadian rhythms, that start resembling their newborn patterns of sleeping and waking. So, they are already getting set in their ways and sleep patterns during the second half of pregnancy, and those patterns carry over after they are born. The problem is, when babies are in utero, they get rocked to sleep all day while mom is moving and walking around. Then when mom is sleeping and still at night, babies in the womb wake up and are moving around in there. It's always pretty dark in there, so they don't know the difference between night and day. Thus, it makes sense that babies develop a sleep pattern of being awake at night and sleeping during the day. What a difficult pattern to break as newborns! Knowing this, I formulated a plan (very much pre-pregnancy) to help my baby to develop a circadian rhythm more conducive to typical life outside mom's womb, and more similar to my own preferred sleep pattern :). I couldn't come up with a reasonable way of rocking the baby to sleep at night - my ideas of a vibrating tummy-wrap or a water bed just didn't seem feasible, although I may toss and turn in my sleep enough to do the trick. However, at the same time babies start developing their circadian rhythm, they are also becoming responsive to light and dark. Even though their eyelids are closed, they can sense the presence of bright lights versus dark. So, if you shine a flashlight on your belly, babies will move in response to the light. To help my baby wake up during the day, I bought a flashlight to use whenever I think it's time for baby to stop daytime napping. Now, this practice of shining a flashlight on my baby to wake the baby up makes some people nervous, like my mom, who think I may be stressing the baby out or something. Taking that into consideration, I only do this occasionally, not even every day, so I see it as testing the baby's reflexes. Additionally, I'm using a normal flashlight that is not super bright. Besides, I'm helping the baby to prepare for an easier transition to after-birth sleeping patterns :)
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