Surfing the Sleep Wave

Creative Commons
originally uploaded by Hamed Saber

Good sleep is a lot like surfing. Really. Several biological rhythms work together to help us (and our babies!) fall asleep. There are rising and falling temperatures, as well as melatonin and cortisol level cycles.  We want to catch the rising "sleep wave" before it begins to crash into a fussy, overtired baby.

According to Dr. Weissbluth in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, when we time our childrens' naps and night sleep when all three of these cycles are at the right point, good quality sleep will come easily.  This is when the child is beginning to lose steam, but before he catches his "second wind."


I had a recent experience that illustrates the most common problem parents have with riding the "sleep wave" very clearly. Our 10-month-old son is getting more active and alert and toddler-like all the time. That means that he can handle longer times of wakefulness before he needs a nap. I, however, made the classic mistake of pushing the naps back too far.

At first, he seemed able to cope quite well. He was still napping about 1.5 hours twice a day and sleeping nearly 12 hours at night. This was less sleep than before, but I figured he was growing up. But over the course of a week or two, he became fussier and more "wound up" at naptime. It took him longer to fall asleep and his naps became far too short. This is not fun for mom or baby, let me tell you!

So yesterday, as I was reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" it dawned on me that I had created this problem. But adding just a little too much wake time, I had robbed my sleepy boy of his much-needed rest. So I moved up his afternoon nap by an hour and he took a gigantic 3.5 hour nap. He must have had a lot of catching up to do!

Today we are back to slightly earlier nap times and so far, pretty solid sleep. Maybe I'll surf the nap wave myself...

RESOURCES
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child