Baby is very sleepy but won't sleep

The biggest difficulty many mothers encounter when taking care of their babies is that the baby does not sleep, or the baby's sleeping time is different from that of adults. Sometimes, even the baby is very sleepy, but just won’t fall asleep, which is very troubling for mothers. So, when encountering this situation, is there any way to improve it? In fact, as long as mothers can flexibly control the baby's wakefulness intervals, it will be fine.

When the baby is not sleepy, the sleep pressure is relatively small, and it is more difficult to coax him to sleep; on the contrary, when the baby is overly tired, the body will secrete cortisol and adrenaline to help the body overcome fatigue, and it seems that the baby is not sleepy again, and it is more difficult to coax him to sleep.

The wakefulness interval, in simple terms, is the length of time it takes for a baby to wake up from one nap and fall asleep the next. As long as the baby is awake, whether it is feeding, patting, changing diapers, bathing, or even coaxing sleep, it should be counted as the awake interval.

The time for coaxing the baby to sleep must include the interval between wakefulness. For example, if the baby's wakefulness interval is 1.5 hours, then if you estimate that the process of coaxing the baby to sleep or falling asleep will take 15 minutes, you should start preparing 1 hour and 15 minutes, instead of 1.5 hours later.

In actual practice, many mothers will have their babies have difficulty falling asleep due to the intervals between wakefulness being too long or too short.

1. Symptoms of long or short wakefulness intervals

The baby's sleep window is fleeting, and sometimes if you feed him an extra meal, he'll miss it by the time he's ready to go to sleep. But don't go to extremes and advance the birth order just for fear that your baby will miss the window. Sometimes, deliberately lengthening the awake interval of daytime naps is to better serve the night sleep, which has the longest sleep time and the most important sleep quality, so that the baby can have a stable sleep time at night. Raising a child is really an art of balance~

For example: An 8-month-old baby who takes three naps during the day usually wakes up at 6:30 and falls asleep at 19:00, the ideal time for a night nap. However, because naps are unstable and often take 30-60 minute naps, if the wakefulness interval is 2 hours, it is very likely that when you wake up from the third nap it will be too early for a nighttime sleep. This will result in a very long wakefulness interval before nighttime sleep, exacerbating night awakenings in the first half of the night. If this is the case, you can delay the waking interval by 10-15 minutes every day. You may indeed feel a little tired at this time, but after gradually forming a habit, it will become your new sleeping pattern. Of course, it is also necessary to work hard on taking naps. If you are worried that your baby will be too tired, then use low-intensity discharge throughout the process.