A Look at Baby’s First Year of Sleep

The Importance of Sleep to Babies

Sleep is a basic physiological need required for physical recovery, reinvigoration, body growth, brain maturation, learning and memory. Some babies sleep as many as 18-20 hours during their first days of life, whereas others sleep only 8-10 hours. These varying tendencies may persist throughout baby’s first year. Whatever the case may be, all parents can benefit greatly from learning more about their baby’s sleep and the physiological and psychological elements related to sleep.

Sleeping Through the Night

Newborns spend, on average, 16 hours a day in sleep. Their sleep is divided into 4-6 sleep episodes around the clock, separated by relatively short periods of wakefulness. During the first year of life, in a rapid developmental process, sleep concentrates mostly at night, and daytime sleep drops dramatically. Sleep at night becomes more continuous, and the number of night-wakings and their duration decreases. This process that leads to “sleeping through the night” is achieved by most babies during the first year of life. However, as many as 20-30% continue to experience fragmented sleep characterized by frequent night-wakings and difficulties falling asleep — becoming their major sleep problem during the first two years of life.