This is Mother Nature’s way of preserving the sanity of parents. And there’s an alternative, less cosmic explanation. Dr. David Hopper, president of the American Academy of Somnology, says, “sleep is crucial to the brain development of infants. After birth, the average infant spends sixteen to eighteen hours of sleep per day. Up to 60 percent of that time is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, more than twice the percentage of adults. What is the significance of their greater proportion of REM sleep? Dr. Hopper explains: REM sleep is the stage of sleep that dreams are associated with. Brain wave activity is very active during this stage and closely resembles an awake state. It is sometimes called paradoxical sleep because the brain is very active as if awake but the individual is deeply asleep. By one year of age, the brains of babies are sufficiently developed to begin cycling of four distinct NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep stages with REM sleep. Although sleep researches still do not understand precisely how this works, REM sleep seems crucial to the development of the central nervous system of infants. The NREM “quiet sleep” is far from a waste of time though. The pituitary hormones, crucial for growth, are released during this phase of sleep. Parents will be glad to inform anyone willing to listen that their babiesdon’t always sleep soundly, yet the cliche’ persists that anyone who can withstand interference from sound or light while snoozing is sleeping “like a baby.” The solution to the paradox lies in the unique sleep cycle of newborns. The reason the babies sleep like a log much of the time, as we have learned, is because they are in REM sleep 50 to 60 percent of the time. It can be difficult to rouse and infant during REM sleep; yet the same baby might awaken quite easily when in any stage of NREM sleep. The proportions of REM to NREM sleep gradually decreases during the first year of life, and babies sleep for longer periods at a stretch. Still, they may be fussier and wake up more easily, especially if they are being weaned from breast milk, which studies show truly does help babies “sleep like a baby.” Submitted by Father Gregory Battafaranao of Niagara Falls, New York |
