3 Things That Happen When Your Baby Sleeps

Sleep is obviously a very important part of life for everyone. It is one of the major pillars of a person’s overall health and well-being. This is no different for young children or babies. If anything, it is even more important for them. 

While your baby sleeps, their body goes through three major transformations that support their development tremendously. These transformations affect brain connections, the immune system, and their physical body. These transformations are equally important and a lack of sleep can severely affect all of them. So, this is why it is imperative to ensure your baby is getting plenty of sleep rather than just enough. 

Let’s discuss each of these transformations in detail.

Brain Connections

When your baby sleeps, their brain starts to make connections. The new skills that your baby learns each day are connected with past experiences and reinforced in their memory. All of the information that they took in during the day is then transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory. When your baby sleeps, the brain function that influences language, attention, and other critical abilities matures. All of this maturation and organizing of connections also affects abilities to learn and mood control. There have even been recent studies that show the strengthening of the connections between the right and left hemispheres of a child’s brain during sleep!  

Simply put, when your baby sleeps, their brain is built!

Immune System

I truly believe that this is one aspect of sleep that many of us do not think about being affected by sleep. We know that when we are sick our bodies need rest, but we forget how sleep can also act as a preventative to illness. This is especially true in babies and children. 

When your baby sleeps, their immune system works to restore itself. During sleep, proteins called cytokines are produced by the immune system. These proteins fight infection and inflammation. So, the more sleep your baby gets, the higher the production of cytokines and the better their bodies fight off infection and inflammation. However, when sleep is decreased, so is the production of cytokines, leaving their bodies less effective in fighting off infection and inflammation. 

Physical Body

This is one of my favorite events that occur during sleep! I love to tell parents this! Baby actually grows when they are sleeping! So, when you look at your baby early in the morning and think to yourself “I swear you got bigger overnight,” it’s because they probably did! While your baby sleeps, their body sends increased blood flow to their muscles. This restores energy within their muscles, repairs tissue, and even creates new tissue growth. They really are growing overnight!

Promoting Restorative Sleep in Your Baby

Now, you know what happens when your baby sleeps, and you know why sleep is so important for their development, but how do you get them sleeping? This is obviously a very common struggle. Here are my top 5 recommendations to support your baby’s sleep. 

1.    Recognize why sleep is so important.

If you are one of those people who say “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” recall the above information and remind yourself why your child getting quality sleep is so important. They are still learning, developing, and growing. So, make sure they are getting all the sleep they need and more!

2.    Get your baby on a schedule and routine.

Create a sleep schedule that is most effective and efficient biologically for your baby. Work towards following that schedule. You don’t have to be exact every single night, but a general schedule that works with your baby’s biological rhythms will be extremely helpful in getting them sleeping. 

Follow a routine for nap time and bedtime. Do it nearly exactly the same every single time. This will help to give your baby cues as to what is coming next, and they will eventually get to a point where they know sleepy time is coming and they will be ready for it. 

3.    Pay attention to your baby.

It is so easy to miss those sleepy cues in the early days. Then, your baby will hit their second wind and seem to have all the energy in the world. So, watch closely for their sleepy cues. Since I know you’ll already have a schedule in place since I just told you to do that, you will be able to easily identify these sleepy cues based on the schedule. If you haven’t yet established a schedule, just watch your baby. If you start noticing that they are slowing down, zoning out, or rubbing their eyes, they are already tired. Get them to bed fast. If they are seeming to bounce off the walls with energy, they are overtired and you should get them in bed earlier next time. 

4.    Get their sleep environment right. 

Even though this is number 4 on this list, the sleep environment is actually extremely important to provide your baby the best opportunity to get good sleep! First, you want to make sure you are following safe sleep guidelines when it comes to the crib that baby is sleeping in. Next, you’ll make sure the room is dark, very dark. You will also want to be sure it is cool and quiet. I encourage you to play white or brown noise in your baby’s room, but not loudly. This will help to drown out any noise from outside the room. Many parents believe their babies are afraid of the dark, so they install nightlights. This really isn’t necessary since babies aren’t born with a fear of the dark. Keep the room totally dark, but if you must have some light in there be sure it is red or amber light only.

5.    Work with a sleep consultant.

I’m sure you kind of knew this one was coming! After all, I am a sleep consultant and this is my specialty! As parents, we tend to do what we must to get our babies to sleep without thinking much about the future implications of our actions. Or we totally understood that in the future we would want a different sleeping arrangement for our babies, but now we are unsure how to make that change. As a sleep consultant, I have read the books, I’ve done the research, and *bonus* I’ve sleep trained my own kiddos. And to give me more street cred as a parent, I did the sleep training before I became a sleep consultant. So, I truly do get the struggle!

Sure, you can basically find all the information I know online and try to piece it together. However, working with me (or any well-trained sleep consultant) isn’t just about getting information. It is about getting the information that will support your family the best. It is about getting the support that benefits your family the most. And it is about sleep training your little one based on you, your baby, and how you want to approach it! It’s customized just for your family! Well, at least that’s how I work! 

Wrap-Up

There it is! There you have it! You now know the 3 major events that occur when your baby gets quality sleep, andyou have an idea on how to get them sleeping! You should be feeling more confident already!

If you’d like more information on working with me as your sleep consultant, go to the “Contact” page on my website! From there you can book an evaluation call to discover how great it is to get that extra help and support!