Sleep Maturity

During the first three months of development, tiny babies rarely sleep for more than four

hours without requiring feeding.  At around three to six months, the majority of babies

start to settle. They are awake for longer  periods during the day and some with lucky

parents may sleep five-hour stretches at night! The time they spend in deep sleep starts to

lengthen and the time spent in light sleep shortens. This means babies

are able to enter deep sleep more quickly. This is called sleep maturity.  (Sears, 2005).

The time your baby takes to reach sleep maturity may vary and even when she does reach

it, she may still wake up regularly.  This is because by the time she is old enough to reach

sleep maturity (usually towards the end of  the first year), uncomfortable and painful

stimuli present themselves, such as colds and teething pain.  Furthermore, separation

anxiety develops at around this age which causes sleeping problems.  Babies also start

reaching developmental milestones, such as sitting, crawling, and walking which causes

them to run through their newly acquired skills in their sleep .

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