The Science Baby

Sleep is probably the biggest hurdles you are going to face as a new parent, because there’s a fundamental difference between how babies sleep and how adults sleep. It’s a source of stress and can lead to some tragic outcomes.

In this episode, Kim and Leila discuss the conflict between our sleep expectations.

What to Expect in Episode 2

Kim has a four and a half month old, and Leila has a two and a half year old, so we are at different stages of our parenting – and sleep! – journeys. We discuss our personal experiences with babies sleep.

Next, we talk about the biology of baby sleep, and why it’s so… unhinged! Ultimately it comes down to two factors, the fact that their hunger overrrides their tiredness, and the fact that their hormones haven’t yet settled down into a predictable circadian rhythm.

Kim recommends Helen Ball’s book How Babies Sleep (affiliate link), and their research website BASIS, which has all of the up to date science and advice.

Then we get on to how you can expect your babies sleep to change, focusing on the different stages of sleep, active and deep sleep in babies, the importance of REM sleep and the joining of sleep cycles as sleep becomes more consolidated.

Bearing all that in mind, we talk about the HUGE range in normal sleep patterns for young children, as each kid starts to express their ‘sleep personality’.

A lot of the conflict between baby sleep and adult sleep stems from our culture, not biology. Western expectations of babies’ independence and parents daytime functioning are leading more and more parents to thing that there’s something wrong with their babies’ sleep, whereas in many Asian countries where co-sleeping is the norm, these problems just don’t exist.

Finally, we offer a little science-backed advice on how to deal with the disparity in baby sleep. The fact that your baby is waking often is actually a good thing, you are more biologically capable than you might think, but we talk about safe co-sleeping as a way of improving everyone’s experience.

Listen to The Episode

👉 You can watch and listen to Episode 2 right here

Or find The Science Baby Podcast on your favourite podcast app.

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This is just the beginning. We’ve got a long list of incredible baby, toddler, and parenting science to share with you.