Any development occurring in sleep, in pregnancy or the first 2 years of life, if lost, is irreplaceable.

Genetic factors impacting sleep, such as chronotypes

  • Low or high sleep needs

  • Ability to rebound after sleep loss

  • Enviromental impacts; epigenetic of sleep.

The ability for a child to stay awake, their tolerance of the chemical adenosine

  • Overtiredness/Untiredness

  • Cortisol with overtiredness, impacting learning events

Routines of bedtime and consistency

  • Patterns of parent actions & baby’s response

  • Unpredicability causes instability in infant asleep

The brain is very active during sleep, light can disrupt linking sleep as well as shift the body clock.

During sleep is when memories, skills, and new neural pathways are made. If memory transfer is happening when baby is woken, the brain will discard the information.

Even though you may assume a baby is “low sleep needs” only two percent of the population are truly low sleep needs and are outliers on the general population of sleep needs. Low sleep needs, also does not look like ALL short naps.

Behavioural understanding 50-75%

Although sleep feels like a bodily function that the body should simply just “do”, babies don’t sleep when they want to sleep.
Like feeding, sleep is a necessity that is needed to be facilitated and taught.

The child takes on the parents body clock inurtero, as well as having genetic compentents such as being an early bird or night owl, which is 25-50% of sleep structure.

In the first 2 years of life the brain does 90% of it’s growth.

poor infant sleep habits have been found to impact:

  • Executive functioning

  • Ability to learn and engage

  • Behaviour

  • Parental mental health

  • The circadian rhythm

  • Sleep duration

  • Memory consolidation

  • Immune function

  • Infant temperament

  • Physical growth

Having short nighttime sleep duration and long daytime sleep duration in infancy can be detrimental to children’s neurocognitive development.

Infants who sleep longer at night have an easier time and higher capacity for executive functioning later in life. Especially related to strong impulse control.

Sleep is the one time in the day where the immune system is able to restore, and the brain is able to clear out.

Without significant sleep, the immune system is not able to function well.

Less than or equal to 7 hours was related to lower mental development index scores.

Lack of sleep leads to higher rates in Parental Mental Health issues. With Peri/Postnatal Depression rate signifncantly increasing with sleep deprivation.

Continuing to co-sleep by 6 months of age is associated with sleep disruption in mothers, more frequent night wakings in infants and co-parent distress.

Teti, D. M., Shimizu, M., Crosby, B., & Kim, B.-R. (2016). Sleep arrangements, parent–infant sleep during the first year, and family functioning. Developmental Psychology, 52(8), 1169–1181. 

Research shows that an infant’s ability to learn a new task is related to their own level of stress (cortisol in the brain) rather than to their caregivers. This emphasizes the importance of using strategies to allow baby’s best learning and not CIO.

A consistent bedtime routine is associated with longer night time sleep, less time falling asleep, and less fragmented sleep. 

Our Sources

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