Why can’t my baby sleep soundly? I didn't expect the reason to be so complicated

Many babies have trouble sleeping, especially when they sleep for a short time and often wake up in the middle of the night. This worries many parents. According to experts, there are many reasons why babies cannot sleep soundly, and most of them are normal.

1. Why does the baby wake up? Because they should wake up...

Peter Fleming, professor of infant health and developmental psychology at the University of Bristol, said the idea that babies should sleep through the night was a 20th-century tradition and that it was normal for them to wake up every now and then. Parents always think that sleep is the best way for babies to grow, but babies do not need to sleep for a long time. There is no clear evidence to show the correctness of this view, although this is not a view that most parents can accept.

2. In fact, even adults find it difficult to sleep through the night.

Darcia F. Narvaez, a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame, said parents have a misconception that "people usually get eight hours of sleep," but they just forget that they woke up in the middle of the night. Adults can sleep eight hours at night because they are busy working during the day, but if we look back at history, we will find that this view is wrong. For example, ancient people only slept two hours a day when they were hunting.

3. Compared with other animals, human babies are "premature" in their development process. They need close contact with the external environment or an external womb to complete their own development.

"Human babies are born prematurely compared to other animals," Narvaez said. Unlike other animals, which are able to walk on all fours and start eating soon after birth, human babies are unable to do so. Therefore, human babies need a quiet environment after birth to complete the development of the remaining 75% of their brain. They need an environment like their mother's womb to smoothly develop the rest of their brain.

4. Babies who wake up easily usually have higher intellectual development levels and better mental states.

Fleming discovered that "infants with higher developmental and intellectual abilities tend to wake up more at night." And Narvaez said that infants who interact more with their parents at night grow up to be more loving, self-disciplined, and kind. Other studies have shown that such babies have stronger cognitive abilities when they grow up and are less likely to suffer from depression.

5. Babies' sleep cycles are shorter than adults'.

Fleming said adults typically have sleep cycles of 90 minutes, after which they wake up and fall asleep again quickly. In fact, you will wake up briefly two or three times before you are fully awake, but you may not be aware of it. Babies only have a 60-minute sleep cycle, which means they wake up more often and have a harder time falling asleep again, making it difficult for them to get a full night's sleep. This is normal for babies.