Baby's Deep Sleep and Light Sleep

Baby sleep types can be divided into deep sleep and light sleep, fresh parents sometimes cannot distinguish these two sleeping types and lose their heads when baby burst into a sudden cry.

The pediatric emergency department doctors often encounter those children who were sent to hospital because of poor sleep at night and crying acutely. But some babies are very quiet when they arrive in hospital and even sleep very well. How does this happen?

There are two types of baby sleep: Quiet sleep (deep sleep) and active sleep (light sleep).

1. Deep sleep: Sleep quietly, face and limbs are relaxed, breathing is quite uniform, occasionally has snoring. Even if occasionally he has some start movements or the corners of mouth swing, he is still in the condition of complete rest.
2. Light sleep: The whole process of sleep is not quiet, although the eyes are closed, we can see the rapid movement of his eyeballs. Baby occasionally opens his eyes for a short term. The limbs and body have some activities, his face often shows ridiculous expression, such as smile and frown, and sometimes he shows the movements of suckling or chawing. The sound of a small action can lead to startle and sometimes even a sudden cry.

Experts point out that when baby is in the light sleep, some slight noise will trigger baby a sudden startle. This phenomenon makes parents thought that baby was scared, and pick up baby in haste, actually that will disturb baby’s normal sleep. Some babies may cry abruptly when light sleep (it may be relative to his dreams), but parents are worried about that babies must be hungry, pick up baby and breastfeed it. While baby is not willing to be disturbed at this moment, he cries out loudly to protest against. Parents are getting more anxious by seeing this situation, they try various ways to pacify baby. Some parents may mistakenly believe that children are sick and rush to hospital; when they arrive they will find that the baby has already fallen into sleep.

Thus it can be seen, when baby is in his light sleep, partial movements of trunk and limbs might repeat, even soft sob will appear. This is the normal physiological phenomenon in sleeping, it is unnecessary to think that baby is not sleep well, don’t hold baby up or feeding. Now you cannot touch baby for the time being, and if baby cries out, you can pat him gently and he will enter deep sleep after a few minutes.