May/June 2001
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SLEEPING LIKE A BABY:
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Probably no topic is more discussed by new parents than sleep: how much their baby gets, how little they get. Until recently, relatively few healthy infants underwent sleep laboratory monitoring. This procedure, which requires that electrodes be pasted to the scalp, is costly, and a bit stressful. It may disrupt the child's sleep, reducing the value of the information collected. A new device, the "sleep watch," or actigraph, can be strapped to the wrist or ankle, and does not bother the child. It records bodily movements, yielding a reliable picture of sleep/wake patterns. With this device, researchers now can study sleep behavior in large numbers of young children. Avi Sadeh, who directs the Laboratory for Children's Sleep and Arousal Disorders at Tel Aviv University, and his colleagues at Mothers and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, used the sleep watch to monitor 220 babies in the newborn nursery in their first or second day of life. The researchers confirmed earlier studies showing newborns sleep about 16 hours a day on average, though some babies slept as few as 9 hours and others nearly 21 hours. The babies as a group also slept longer at night than in the day. This finding suggests that humans may be born with a biological clock that favors nighttime sleep. Because lowered activity in the hospital nursery at night or hormones acquired from the mother also may affect this pattern, the researchers are conducting further studies to understand it better. In his book, Sadeh describes both normal and disturbed sleep in young children, and tells how to promote good sleep habits. He outlines strategies to correct problems that often crop up in early years, such as bedtime fussiness, frequent awakenings, and sleep terrors. Each of more than two dozen chapters begins with a parental concern, such as "He's hyperactive, and at night he has trouble falling asleep," or "At night she can scream for hours and her father doesn't hear a thing." Sadeh doesn't offer easy answers. He wants readers to understand the complex interaction of baby, parents, and environment. A child born with a tendency toward problematic behavior, he notes, may sleep poorly. At the same time, difficulty sleeping may make a child nervous, impatient, and harder to manage. Steps parents take--even a mismatch between a quiet or energetic parent and a child with the opposite disposition--may provoke or aggravate a child's behavior and sleep problems. Temporary stress such as an illness or death in the family also may upset a child's sleep. After her grandmother died, three-year-old Lisa insisted on sleeping with her grieving mother. A few months later, mom was ready for Lisa to return to her own bed, but didn't know how to foster this transition. To her surprise, she accomplished the task in one night with a few words of explanation. Lisa readily recognized she no longer needed to "mother" her mother. Some parents and physicians believe children will outgrow most sleep problems that develop in the early years. But such problems linger in about half of all youngsters who experience them, Sadeh reports. If not corrected, they often lead to sleep problems in later life. Happily, early and typically brief treatment usually yields impressive success, a good reason for seeking help promptly when something's wrong. This book belongs on the nursery bookshelf. With luck, you will be able to read it at leisure in the daytime while your baby naps. |
Copyright (c) 2001
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