My child cannot sleep: does he have a sleep debt?

Sleep is a big challenge for babies. It often happens that our child is reluctant to fall asleep, cries during the night or even lightens his naps. The reasons can be multiple: teething, regressions of the sleep, colic of the infant … If these disorders are frequent and common in the development of baby, their prolongation can lead this one to have a sleep debt. How are these sleep debts characterized? What are the consequences and how can they be remedied? We take stock with Kelly Champinot, expert on children’s sleep and founder of the Bébé & Confidences site.

Sleep debts in children: a problem over time and a need

First and foremost, it is important for Kelly Champinot to make a point: “In recent years, we have been talking more and more about sleep debt, but many parents wrongly use it to characterize certain problems related to their toddler’s sleep.«.

Symptoms in babies: how do I know if my child has a sleep debt?

If your baby is in sleep debt then he must have all of the following characteristics:

• Waking up from naps or after the night is crying, which means the baby has had a bad night.
• Crying can also take place at bedtime.
• The nights are punctuated by crying and more or less long nocturnal awakenings.
• Waking up is more and more early in the morning, generally before six in the morning (be careful, however, if you have made a habit of feeding your baby around five in the morning, this is not necessarily abnormal).
• The duration of naps also decreases significantly.

As a general rule, all the moments of sleep of the child will therefore be more complicated and we can quickly find ourselves trapped in a vicious circle: in fact, the less we sleep, the less we can sleep! We must therefore help our boud’chou to sleep at all costs.

Why does baby struggle with sleep?

«When baby is too tired, his body will release cortisol (the arousal hormone) to help him fight fatigue even when he needs to sleep. It is easy to understand how the vicious circle can take place “, Explains the specialist.

4 months, 12 months, 3 years… What is the number of hours and the ideal sleeping time for babies by age?

In order to best determine if your child has sleep difficulties related to debt, it may be interesting to compare with the “ideal” number of daily hours of sleep (night sleep and naps) according to the age of the child. your child.

• From birth to 3 months, the child’s sleep time is between 14 and 17 hours.
• Then, until the first year, the time of sleep is between 12 and 15 hours per day.
• Then, between 1 and 2 years, the need for sleep will be between 11 and 14 hours.
• After three years, the ideal sleep time will oscillate between 10 and 13 hours.

What are the consequences of a sleep debt in a child who sleeps badly?

Can this need for sleep in children have harmful consequences on their health? “The persistence of a lack of sleep can indeed have negative effects in the short and long term. In the short term, these sleep difficulties can lead to a higher risk of getting sick, because it is during the slow sleep that the immune response is put in place as efficiently as possible in the body. The young child will also be less reactive and more clumsy. In the long term, these sleep problems can lead to learning disabilities, even in his physical development«.

Sleep cycle: how to make up for a sleep debt and put an overly tired baby to sleep?

How can we, as parents, improve the quality of sleep of our little sleeper and avoid delay? There are several ways to help him fall asleep, reassures Kelly Champinot: “We must at all costs re-initiate a positive sleep dynamic and get your child to sleep by all means. Stroller, suckling, carrying, car, rocking, presence …: all the techniques are good to make him let go«.

You can also set up an effective sleep ritual, always at the same time, to make it easier to fall asleep. This could include a soothing bath before bed, cuddling, massaging, singing a lullaby, or reading a story.