What's the difference between normal and excessive night-waking in babies?

It's normal for babies to wake every couple of hours during the night, right into toddlerhood. You can find out about normal night waking here.

It’s also normal to have a bad night every now and then, or even a few bad nights in a row. Often it can be difficult to know what causes a bad night or two. The most important thing is that it passes! Sometimes your baby might have a viral infection. There is evidence to suggest that developmental changes (e.g. crawling, starting to walk) result in temporary changes to sleep at night.

But normal, occasional bad nights are quite different to a pattern of excessive night waking. The sleep deprivation which parents experience as a result of unnecessarily fragmented baby sleep patterns can be awful, and quite unsustainable.

Excessive night waking occurs when your baby

• Wakes very frequently as a pattern through most or part of the night, perhaps every hour or more

• Wakes and wants to interact and play for a period of time in the night

• Wakes every hour, or even more often, from one or two o'clock in the morning

• Groans, grunts with stretching and back arching for long periods in the night, keeping you awake

• Wakes frequently between when you put her down in the evenings and when you go to bed

• Only sleeps when on your body or in your arms

• Wakes and is unable to settle back to sleep for a long period during the night, either

  • Waking and crying whenever you try to put her down in the cot

  • Breastfeeding continuously, or

  • Groaning, grunting and stretching, even with his eyes closed.

Not uncommonly, a breastfeeding mother might report to me that she's been waking every 30 or 40 minutes throughout the night. Often she has tolerated this pattern of extremely disrupted sleep for a very long time because she is deeply committed to responding to her little one's cries and communications. She may have been led to believe that the only alternative to excessive night waking is weaning, or letting her little one cry.

But The Possums Sleep Program helps with excessive night waking without leaving babies to fuss or cry, supporting you as you respond to your little person's communications and needs.

It usually takes one or two weeks to change a pattern of excessive night waking. But since 2011, parents have repeatedly reported back to me and my colleagues delivering the Possums programs that when they put these steps in place, their life is turned around. Research evaluations also show this to be the case.

Acknowedgements

The photo at the top of this page is by Beverley Latter from the Baby Sleep Information Source site basisonline.org.uk