Sleep specialist and neurologist Dr. Polly Moore studied a 90-minute rest and activity cycle that determines when babies are most likely to nap.
Her new book titled “The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program” is written to help parents and their babies sleep better at night.
How universal is this cycle?
About every 90 minutes, people want to have something to eat, something to drink, to put something in their mouth.
Adults may have 90-minute variations in their creative thinking, and we?ve also learned there are 90-minute variations of blood flow alternating between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.
How important is this cycle as the child grows older?
Sleep, REM [rapid eye movement] sleep in particular, seems to be very important in [brain development].
I?m talking about changes in attention, mood and changes in coordination.
There are associations with ADHD [attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder] and associations between short sleep and obesity in children.
If you cut your sleep down from eighthours to six hours a night for a week, your body already shows trends toward pre-diabetic conditions.
Eating and sleeping are two of a baby?s main jobs. How hard can that be?
Parents do misread the signs of fatigue.
They hear fussing and think it?s time to feed the baby.
A lot of parents end up overfeeding their baby.
It?s important when a baby wakes that you mark the time and feed early in that alertness period.
Later on, when they get fussy, you can really start to see that?s sleepiness, instead of hunger.
You start to see the difference between cries for sleep and hunger.
