Are routines best for babies?
The routine debate rages on in most parents’ minds. Do babies need a routine? Can it be gentle and baby-centric? Is a flexible routine is better than a regimented one? Ask these questions to any baby expert and you will get a myriad of answers. Ask a parent and the responses will be even more diverse.
Like adults, babies have their in-built time clocks and physical needs, however these needs differ substantially from their parents. Where adults only need eight hours sleep a night, babies need anywhere from 18 or 20 hours for a newborn to 14 hours for a toddler, per 24-hour cycle.
Where babies’ sleep habits differ most from adults is that they have period of time we call awake times, which are intervals in which they can be happily awake. During this time they will be happy and interactive, learning from their environment. If this period is stretched, in other words the baby is kept awake for longer than his ideal awake time, he will become needy, easily over stimulated and generally irritable. In addition to this he will not naturally fall into a sleepy state and thus will be more difficult to get to sleep.
Where rigid, prescribed routines go wrong is that the baby is forced to sleep at his mother’s convenience or at a predetermined time each day. If this time happens to be before his ‘awake time’ is up, he won’t want to fall asleep. But more commonly it is once he is overtired and the natural lull in his states has been missed. So being overtired and needy he is significantly more difficult to get to sleep.
An example of a rigid routine that is a recipe for an irritable baby and highly anxious mother is one where a two week old baby must have a morning sleep at 9am, having woken at 7am. This would mean he must stay awake for two hours. The ideal ‘awake time’ for newborns is 45 minutes to an hour at the most. Waiting two hours, just to stick to a predetermined time makes no sense, as newborns literally can’t cope being awake this long. Furthermore, the baby may have woken at 6am in which case it would be a three-hour stretch which is a recipe for a very irritable baby.
A baby-centric approach would be to have the guidelines of ‘awake time’ for each developmental age, as found in the Babysense Secret and then more importantly to learn to read the baby’s signals. Practically this would entail the mom watching the clock to see what time her baby woke and then make sure to watch that her baby goes down according to his ‘awake times’. In addition to this she would watch for her own specific baby’s signals. Signals that a baby is tired include rubbing eyes, sucking hands, touching ears, looking into space, drowsy eyes or many other self-soothing strategies. When her baby shows the signs of drowsiness, he should be put down to sleep.
In this way, the baby dictates his sleep times in two ways: firstly according to developmental norms and then according to his own capacity for interactions, by signaling when he is tired. Being tuned to her own baby’s needs will help a mom to put her baby down more easily and in that way establish healthy day sleep routines.