11/17/2018
New research, published in next month’s ‘Pediatrics’ * has shown how warped our expectations of infant sleep are.
The study of almost 400 babies assessed how much they really sleep (and how their sleep impacted them & their parents). They found:
At 6 months; almost 40% were not sleeping for chunks of 6hrs and almost 60% were not sleeping for chunks of 8 hours.
At 12 months; almost 30% were not sleeping for chunks of 6hrs and almost 45% were not sleeping for chunks of 8 hours.
Considering most describe ‘sleeping through the night' as sleeping from bedtime until morning, ie 12 hours, what this study found is that only half of one year olds are sleeping through, the other half are still waking regularly at night! It's important to note this study relied on parentally reported data and we know parents under-report waking (ie: babies wake a lot more than parents think). So it's likely that the babies were actually waking a lot more than this!
What the research also found is that there was no negative effect for the babies who were waking, they were no more likely to suffer from mental or physical problems, or delays to their development, when compared to their peers who 'slept through'. ie: it is NOT better for babies to sleep through the night & night waking is not a problem for them!
They also found that mothers of babies who woke at night were no more likely to suffer from postnatal mood disorders (e.g: PND) than mothers of babies who slept through.
These last two points are key when it comes to dire warnings issued by those in favour of sleep training - we now have research showing that it is NOT better for babies to sleep through, they don't suffer in any way for it and also, it's not better for mum's emotional health either! Combine this with other research showing that after 6 months there is no difference in the sleep between babies who have been sleep trained and those who haven't (ie sleep training does NOT teach better sleep!) and you have to wonder why sleep training is still so popular?!
* link to research: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/11/08/peds.2017-4330