Crawling Night School
by:
You’re not imagining it—just when your baby started sleeping soundly night after night, she’s back up again throughout the night under the moonlight and rearing to go. Has she just started crawling?
Researchers have found a new nighttime awake period in babies, and it coincides with mobility. Babies who have just started crawling wake up more often at night say researchers at the University of Haifa, Israel. In this study, most babies began crawling around 7 months and were waking up for at least 10 minutes at a time twice in the night, compared to more sound snoozing habits before and after learning to crawl.
For babies, all that restlessness may be related to survival, the study says. As babies begin to explore their world, fear of being separated from mom becomes a reality.
The good news for parents, though, is that researchers found that within 3 months of those first shoves and scoots, your baby should begin sleeping through the night again.
Check out our section on Baby’s Milestones:
First Words: Better Baby Babble
AUTHOR
AWHONN Editorial Staff