Examining How Babies Sleep

“Sleeping Like a Baby: A Sensitive and Sensible Approach to Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems," by Avi Sadeh. Yale University Press.

The expression "sleep like a baby" conjures up an uninterrupted, blissful state. But truth be told, a baby's sleeping-and-waking pattern, as many weary, bleary-eyed parents can confirm, is not always a model of rest. Rather, it is a complicated affair that varies from infant to infant, one that often features an initial refusal to fall asleep, interrupted breathing and frequent and lengthy wakenings punctuated by earsplitting cries through the night.

In this reassuring book, Dr. Avi Sadeh, who directs Tel Aviv University's Laboratory for Children's Sleep and Arousal Disorders, describes the sleep problems of infants, dispels myths about their cause (for instance, that hunger is the culprit), offers interesting facts (breast-fed babies are more apt to wake up in the middle of the night) and outlines treatment possibilities.
He also tells parents that distress and anger over a crying child with sleep problems are natural and need not be a source of guilt. Dr. Sadeh, who has treated more than 700 children with sleep disorders, says sleeping habits are influenced by neural and bodily systems, environmental stimuli and the very patterns of the family itself.
That an infant, especially, should be plagued by sleep difficulties is understandable. "The newborn has just gone through the process of birth," Dr. Sadeh writes, "a difficult experience demanding transition and adaptation as he moves from a fetal environment to an external world that requires independent functioning." Thus, virtually everything - from a common cold to colic, from heat and cold to the acute sensitivity of babies to their parents' emotions - can contribute to a bad night's sleep.
Dr. Sadeh notes that many children will develop healthy sleep patterns regardless of their parents' behavior. Still, he has some advice for parents to help that happen. To give a baby a chance to learn to fall asleep by himself, he advises, parents should refrain from exaggerated and quick reactions to light crying while he is falling asleep, should establish a bedtime routine and should spend quality time with the child, even if that requires coping with sibling rivalry. They should also be wary of adopting a pattern of sleeping with the baby as a response to the infant's sleep problems and should foster the bond between the child and the father, which, Dr. Sadeh says, "greatly helps in preventing" a child's sleep difficulties.