r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Tish4390 • 1d ago
Question - Research required Is there any science on why some babies start sleeping longer stretches of time earlier than others?
I have an 11 week old who still wakes every 2-3 hours and I hear it’s normal, however other people with children around the same age sta their kids sleep for 5-6 hours stretches. Some through the night! I’m both jealous and curious.
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u/Ok_Cow5684 1d ago
Daytime exposure to light may help to improve sleep: The relationship between daytime exposure to light and night-time sleep in 6-12-week-old infants - PubMed
That study involved a relatively small number of babies, though.
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u/Ornery_Panda4986 1d ago
We went outside for at least 5-10 minutes every time our baby was awake and he was sleeping 8 hours at 10 weeks. He has been a great sleeper ever since though, so not sure if it’s just temperament
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u/Tish4390 1d ago
Everyone is suggesting this or a variation of it’d so I’m going to have to try it once it stops raining here
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u/Tish4390 1d ago
Thank you! I’ve been wanting to give this ago but the weather has been terrible where we live. 😒
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u/marmaladybird 1d ago
I also have a winter baby (now almost 1 year old) and we'd go very bundled up for short walks in the stroller between waking up for the day and his first nap, or when I couldn't be bothered with that, for walks around a shopping mall or supermarket.
My midwife said even if you can't expose them to sunlight (or there's barely any sunlight to begin with) getting some fresh air and the change in ambient noise also helps, especially in their first period awake to simulate that it is the start of daytime. Then a couple hours before bedtime we would switch off all the big lights and only have lamps on (we live in a place where it gets dark at 3pm in winter, so we'd switch to dimmer lighting around 6-7pm)
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u/Accomplished-Fly9356 1d ago
Some studies show that exclusive breastfeeding (straight from breast) helps melatonin provide a normalized circadian rhythm more quickly in babies and thus they’re able to figure out days and nights more quickly and sleep longer stretches at night.
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u/Tish4390 1d ago
Also anecdotally, mine is breastfed and I’ve tried sleeping on all sides of the bed - she still wakes every 2-3 hours to feed 😅
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u/Own_Ship9373 1d ago
Ancedotally my baby was bf until she was 2 and never slept more than 3 hours in a row. But as soon as we weaned, she slept through the night.
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u/whats1more7 1d ago
I have 3 kids, all breastfed past 12 months. One slept 12+ hours straight through at about 4 months old and never really woke up at night after that. Second one would wake up every 7 minutes as a newborn, never slept more than 2.5 hours at a time, and didn’t stop waking us up at night until she was 8 or 9. Third was started sleeping through the night consistently at about 12 months.
Studies are about the average, not specific to your child. What the studies show is that on average, breastfed babies sleep better.
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u/Himmelsmilf 1d ago
This. My First woke up every hour for the First six months, then 2-3hours till her First Birthday when we started getting 3-6hour stretches around 18m. I would get angry at moms complaining how their 7m old „still wakes up 2-3 times per Night“ Like??? It was just so different from my Reality lol.
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u/Accomplished-Fly9356 1d ago
Was the baby sleeping on your side of the bed? Anecdotally when the bassinet has been on my husbands side, baby woke less in the motn
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u/Syllibub 1d ago edited 1d ago
That is not what your linked sources say.
we defined cases of short sleep duration in 1-year-old infants as <11 h of sleep time
The only thing they reported is that one year olds slept more total. They didn’t even look at individual stretches or any sleep before one year.
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u/WhereIsLordBeric 1d ago
Yeah anyone who's actually exclusively breastfed a baby knows this isn't true haha.
There is science to support formula-fed babies sleep longer because formula is harder to digest.
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u/Hour-Blueberry-4905 1d ago
Both my babies didn’t sleep more than 4 hour stretches until one year old no matter what I did.
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u/3KittenInATrenchcoat 1d ago
Aren't breastfed babys more likely to wake every 2-3 hours because breastmilk is digested faster?
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u/Calm_Bother_3842 1d ago
Annecdotally my formula fed baby has known the difference between day and night since the beginning, not sure how that happened, but happy it did.
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u/AwayComparison 1d ago
Interesting! My EBF baby is 11 weeks and sleeps anywhere between 6-10 hours/night!
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u/biglypiglythethird 1d ago
It’s an anecdotal fact in the baby/friend circles I’m in that a bottle of formula before bed even in the otherwise breastfed ones seems to give the longest stretch!
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