What is a sleep cycle?
Our sleep cycles change as we grow and develop. A newborn’s sleep cycles are around 20 to 50 minutes long.
Sleep cycles are made up of active and quiet sleep. During active sleep, your newborn will move around, open their eyes, cry, and breathe noisily.
During the quiet phase of sleep, they will lay still, and their breathing will be more even. It is normal for a newborn to wake between sleep cycles. As they grow older, they will eventually learn to self-settle.
A newborn baby’s sleep cycle is divided into two categories: REM (active sleep) and NREM (quiet sleep). In the first few of a child’s life, their sleep is split evenly between the two. As they grow and develop, their sleep cycles mature, and they slowly begin to spend less time in REM sleep.
Their sleep cycles slowly begin to look like an adult’s cycle, as they start to experience the three stages of NREM.
How does adult and baby sleep differ?
Adult sleep looks very different to a baby’s sleep. On average, adults sleep around seven hours a night in a single (largely uninterrupted) block of time. While a baby needs up to 18 hours of sleep every 24 hours which is broken up into multiple periods of time as they often wake between cycles.
By six months, babies will sleep around 13 hours a day. This is because they have not yet developed an efficient circadian rhythm which helps them to understand the difference between day and night.
Newborn sleep cycles
The newborn sleep pattern is unique. In the first few weeks, a newborn baby will sleep most of the time, with many sleeping 14-20 hours a day in two to three-hour bursts. Below, find two key reasons behind the newborn sleep cycle.
They haven’t established a circadian rhythm
Newborn babies don’t know the difference between day and night. It takes time for their body clock to kick in and until then, they will not understand when it’s time to sleep.
They have a small stomach
When a child is born, their stomach is around the size of a marble and by day 10, it’s the size of a golf ball. As a consequence of this, newborn babies need to be fed regularly. That’s why they wake between sleep cycles.
