Your sleep completely depends on when your baby sleeps. If she is awake, you are awake and if she is sleeping, you are probably finishing some pending work. This is the story of every mother. Being anxious about how your baby’s sleep pattern is going to change is normal. We will help you understand the different stages. Though each baby is different, we will try and explain the most common things that you can expect.
Active sleep is when your baby is not into deep sleep. Their eyelids flutter, they breathe heavily or twitch their arms and legs and can be easily woken up. Quiet sleep is when your babies lie still and breathe deeply. As compared to adults, babies have very little quiet sleep.
Birth to three months
- As much as you want to spend time with this new little toy of yours, she is in no mood of doing that. She is going to sleep a lot. Expect her to sleep for 15-16 hours a day.
- She is only going to open her eyes when she is hungry or when her nappy needs to be changed
- She is in active sleep but she will not entertain any communication for the first few weeks.
- This sleep pattern is generally exhausting for parents but required for babies, so be patient with her and let her be
Three to six months
- In this phase, the baby sleeps for almost 14 hours a day
- The active sleep starts to reduce now but she still will wakes up often at night
- This is the time when you can start making a sleep schedule for her. She will try to understand you at this stage
- She would still be taking about 4 naps a day of 1-2 hours each and it is fine
- She is going to need more than 2 feeds at night
Six to 12 months
- If you have trained her well, by now, she knows that days are for playing and nights for sleeping
- She will be sleeping for 11-12 hours in the entire day and she will experience quiet sleep now
- She will wake up less frequently at night giving you enough time to sleep as well
After 12 months
- Once your baby has turned one, she will tend to sleep better.
- She will now sleep for 8-10 hours in the entire day and wake up fewer times at night
- Her day time naps would reduce and she will not need feeds at night anymore
- Your baby is growing up and soon she will do things just as you do