The Common Mistake That Could Keep Baby From Sleeping Through the Night

Nothing makes a parent cringe quite like the cry of their baby waking up from what was supposed to be a nice, long sleep. And while every fiber of your parental DNA may be telling you to help your infant resettle to slumberland, a new study suggests that’s a huge mistake.

For this study, conducted at the University of London, researchers videotaped over 100 infants with infrared cameras overnight when they were 5 weeks and 3 months old.

The good news? A full 45 percent of babies were sleeping over 5 hours by the three-month mark, compared to just 10 percent at 5 weeks.
What’s more, at each age, about a quarter of infants woke and resettled themselves back to sleep on their own. Plus, this ability to “autonomously resettle” without help at five weeks was a harbinger of longer bouts of shut-eye later on: 67 percent of babies who could autonomously resettle at five weeks were sleeping over five hours later on, compared to just 38 percent of 5-week-olds who couldn’t resettle.

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The take-home lesson: If your baby wakes up before he’s had decent shut-eye, give him a chance to resettle on his own back to sleep. We know it’s hard, but if you do intervene, you could be throwing a wrench in your baby’s own abilities to drift off again…and making yourself more bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived for no good reason.

Do you help your baby resettle back to sleep?

-Judy Dutton

(Photo: Getty Images)

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