Caitlin Chartier?s three babies had a lot in common?they all walked early and hated peas. They also all struggled with day/night confusion (sometimes called day/night reversal), which is when a newborn?s sleep ratio overwhelmingly skews in such a way that they spend the bulk of their day sleeping and most of the night awake. In other words, they have have their days and nights mixed up. ?I was up all night with all three babies,? says Chartier, who lives in Ottawa.
Wendy Hall, a UBC School of Nursing professor emeritus and expert in infant sleep, notes that what parents interpret as day/night confusion sometimes isn?t. After all, newborns sleep up to 80 percent of the day and usually feed every one to three hours around the clock. To parents accustomed to seven or eight hours of solid sleep, these frequent wake-ups can leave the impression that their baby is up all night. Newborns also engage in ?active sleep,? during which they may move, make noise or even open their eyes. Parents sometimes misinterpret these behaviours as their child being awake and then, while trying to comfort their fussing infant, wake up the baby, feeding the theory that their child doesn?t sleep at night.
Still, ?babies aren?t born knowing day from night,? says Hall. They learn this as their biological clocks mature and their sleep-related hormones ramp up and stabilize. This means that, without intervention, most babies sort out their sleep patterns by about six months, though some can take longer. ...