When a couple has their first child, they quickly realize that babies sleep a lot, but briefly.
This causes many of our routines to be altered and among them that of sleep, since from the first day we began to accumulate sleep, night after night (to tell my dark circles).
The funny thing is that, despite sleeping in this way, with many awakenings and at quite short intervals, they have an enormous energy if we compare it with what we parents show when we sleep just like them.
You could say that, baby and dad (and mom), we end up as the protagonists of the lighthouse vignette that heads the entrance and that motivates the question: Why do babies wake up so much? (and why do they have so much energy in spite of it?)
Babies often wake up to feed
Babies receive food with a double objective: live and grow. This means that it is not enough for them to eat to be alive, move, breathe, ... but they must also do it to grow.
If we add to this that they have a rather small stomach, it is logical to say that babies have to eat often and, therefore, wake up often to do it.
If they slept in the same way that we slept, adults might not eat well, since they would spend too many hours without taking a shot with the risk that this entails.
To survive by having the caregiver take it into account
We have already commented on several occasions that Babies born today are the same as those born thousands of years ago. At that time the danger was not that the baby would put a coin in his mouth or get caught in the comforter, but that a predator would eat it. For this reason, babies cry and complain when their caregiver is not around, so that they can listen to them and defend them from species that without too much trouble would eat them (among many other dangers, I suppose).
Today there are no lurking animals or predators that can harm babies, however they do not know it and, in any case, many have to continue acting in the same way so that their parents pay attention to them (or perhaps you have not He never heard the question: “Why do you take it if he hasn't cried?”), and sometimes even not like that (“let him cry for a while, nothing happens because he cries”).
To make sure the food
Breastfeeding is a type of diet based on the mechanism of supply and demand. The more demand is made, the more quantity there is to offer and, the less request there is, the less quantity is contributed. In other words, the baby that sucks often gets, as a rule, that his mother produces more milk that whose breaks between shots are very long.
If we also take into account that at night the mother's brain secretes more prolactin (hormone responsible for making milk), it is easy to understand that the baby wakes up again at night to take advantage of that plus of prolactin and send the message “more suction + more to the mother's brain prolactin = more milk yet. ”
Babies often wake up to learn
The rational brain of a newborn is tremendously immature. From the moment he is born, and through the different stimuli he receives, his brain begins to develop creating new neural connections that will make, little by little (or much to much), learn things from life, of himself, of his surroundings, ...
In order for a baby to learn, he needs stimuli and they arrive when he is awake. If a baby slept too much, he would learn little because he would not be sufficiently stimulated and would mature more slowly than desirable (we must bear in mind that at birth we are one of the most immature spices both physically and mentally).
And why do they have so much energy waking up so much?
Well, basically, for a matter of energy expenditure. We are awake all day, doing things standing, sitting, walking, talking, thinking and the only time we rest the body and brain is when we sleep and, in sleep, in the phases in which we sleep more deeply.
Babies instead move little, sleep a lot and spend little time awake. To this we have to add that his dream does not have as much restorative mission as ours, since, in addition to the fact that babies are not too tired, they need to integrate what they have learned during the period in which they have been awake stimulating. For this reason they are able to reach the REM phase of sleep (the phase in which the brain is active and learning is consolidated) almost immediately after falling asleep.
Also, when your bodies really need a respite, they don't have much trouble getting to deep stages of sleep, so, as soon as they sleep, they rest.
To us, on the other hand, that we need to reach deep stages of sleep so that our body gets ready, it "crushes" us to wake up often because every time we go back to sleep it is like a "start over".
Summarizing
Well, there is little to say. It is what it is. The awakenings of babies have a reason and various goals are met when they happen. All parents can do is understand what our children's dream is like and try to rest as much as possible to respect the natural evolution of our children.
A trick that has always worked for us is go to bed as soon as possible. So, even waking up often, we managed to sleep for a few hours.
