Here’s a conclusion from a scientific study that will shock anyone who has ever been a parent: most babies don’t sleep through the night. And the study also reaches another, equally startling determination: most parents pay a lot of attention to trying to get their infants to sleep through the night.
Thank goodness we’ve got scientists around to confirm the obvious!
The study found that 38 percent of babies that were six months old were not getting even six uninterrupted hours of sleep at night, and more than half weren’t sleeping for eight hours straight. One-year-olds were only marginally better, on average, with 28 percent not yet sleeping for six hours and 43 percent not sleeping for a solid 8 hours at night. The study also found that many parents worry about their baby’s sleeping habits, with mothers reporting feeling tense and depressed about trying to get their child to sleep through the night. The researchers offered this reassurance for anxious parents, however: after following babies from birth until the age of three, they found no material developmental difference between kids who slept through the night at a young age and those who took longer.
The study’s authors seem to attribute parental focus on their new baby’s sleep habits solely to developmental concerns. I’m sure that some of the attention to infant sleep is attributable to reading the “baby books” about what is normal and what isn’t, but my personal experience teaches that at least some of it is naked parental self-interest. When our boys got to the point of getting a good night’s sleep — which incidentally meant that Kish and I got a good night’s sleep, too — we felt like we had crossed the Rubicon and should be popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. When a baby finally starts eating simple solid food (if you can call baby food “solid”) and falls into a sound sleep with a full belly, the mood around the house takes a decided turn for the better.
What’s up next for the scientific researchers trying to confirm what every parent knows? A careful examination of the joys of changing baby diapers?
Webner House 