Читать книгу Help Your Baby to Sleep - Penney Hames - Страница 18

NREM and REM sleep alternate through the night in both adults and babies. Babies cycle between the different types of sleep faster than adults. At birth it takes your baby about 50–60 minutes to complete a cycle, whereas it takes you about 90–100 minutes. The reason that this matters is that as you come out of REM sleep, ready to drop back down into NREM sleep, you arouse briefly. Your baby does the same. These brief arousals may or may not become complete awakenings depending on what you or your baby make of being awake alone.

Naturally, as your baby moves through the REM/NREM sleep cycle once every 50–60 minutes there’s a chance that he could wake you every 50–60 minutes. What’s more, these arousals happen with greater frequency towards dawn (Carskadon and Dement, 1989), just when you are having most of your REM sleep, the sort that helps you cope mentally with the day.