Aren’t Babies “Supposed” to Wake at Night?

“Sleep training is wack because it’s normal for babies to wake at night to prevent SIDS” — real thing real people are saying on the internet. See also: “you should just get used to it because night wakings are biologically normal.”

Ok look.

Babies naturally have short sleep cycles of about 40-50 minutes. This is normal.

They wake up at the conclusion of each sleep cycle. This is normal.

The same goes for every human being from newborns, to older infants, to toddlers, to adults. At the conclusion of each of our sleep cycles, we briefly rouse, roll over, flip the pillow to the cool side, and resume sleeping. This is normal.

What would not be normal is if every time we completed a sleep cycle, we had to cry out for our husband or wife to come pat our backs or else we could not fall back asleep.

We teach our babies to talk, walk, use a fork, put on shoes, count to 10 - why wouldn’t we teach them to connect their sleep cycles?

A sleep trained baby will wake up the Exact. Same. Number. Of. Times. As a non sleep trained baby. They just won’t see it as a problem which they have to holler for a parent to come “fix” for them! They will wiggle, grunt, and return to dreamland.

The same goes for young babies who still physically need to eat at night! They wake, eat, lay back down in the crib and sleep until the next feeding time, with zero tears (or very very few). No one, I repeat no one, is making hungry little babies go all night without food.

Babies/toddlers LOVE habits and routines. Some love them more than others, and get very attached to them. These are the ones who must be rocked back to sleep every 40-50 min lest they wake the dead with their howling ;) if not hungry, they are frustrated that they are awake when they want to be sleeping and they don’t know how to go back to sleep without the same type of assistance they enjoyed at bedtime.

I hope this helps clear up any questions/confusion about this important issue, as it’s being talked about a lot and nothing is more important than safety when it comes to our babies!

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