Babies should not be put in a dark, quiet room for a nap but in a light room with background noise like a washing machine, an expert has said.
Prof Helen Ball, a scientific adviser for the charity The Lullaby Trust who has carried out sleep research with more than 5,000 parents and babies at Durham University, said long daytime naps are like “mini night times” that can disrupt babies’ sleep when they properly go to bed.
She believes parents should let babies and toddlers snooze naturally in a light room, with background noise so they wake up themselves if they have had enough sleep.
Ball, an anthropologist who won a Queen’s Anniversary prize for her research on parent and infant sleep in 2018, said: ‘The pressure to control babies and give them scheduled sleeps, so they fit in with our clock-driven routines, is getting worse now we have so many baby sleep coaches, baby sleep monitors and apps about ‘wake windows’ which claim to calculate exactly when a baby needs to nap.
“Babies, like us, biologically need to build up sleep pressure – tiredness from energy expended in the brain through the day – to fall asleep. So they naturally nap at different times on different days, depending on whether, for example, they have been for a walk with lots of tiring sensory stimulation, or have been inside.
“Putting them down to sleep in a silent dark room at a set time for a prolonged period during the day is great for parents who want some down-time or to get some housework done. But it doesn’t make sense at all for babies who, when they have these mini night-times during the day, are more likely to then be awake during the night.”
NHS advice states: “It’s a good idea to teach your baby that night time is different from daytime from the start. During the day, open curtains, play games and do not worry too much about everyday noises when they sleep … Your baby will have their own pattern of waking and sleeping, and it’s unlikely to be the same as other babies you know.”
Babies can wake up at night because they are hungry, teething, processing a new skill they have learned, or struggling with separation anxiety and wanting comfort. Sleep training, which means parents allowing babies to cry when they wake at night without going to them, to encourage them to self-soothe, is advised against by Ball, whose book How Babies Sleep will be published next month. She said: ‘This stems from previous generations’ advice that parents had to show babies they were in charge and get them into a routine of sleeping.”
She suggests parents catch up on sleep by going to bed earlier, because babies stay asleep for the longest period at the start of the night, allowing parents to get some deep sleep before their child wakes. Older babies’ bedtimes could also be shifted later, so it is later in the night when they first wake crying, she said.
The popular advice when it comes to nap times is to watch babies for signs of tiredness, like rubbing their eyes, tugging their ears or yawning.
But Ball said: ‘These apparent tiredness cues can just be a sign of boredom, and the need for a change in activity. Even if they are tired, the baby is not necessarily ready for a nap, so a parent could be trying to rock them to sleep for a long time with no luck and for no reason.
“If people wait for babies to fall asleep naturally, rather than imposing naps on them, it could save a lot of frustration and time which could be spent doing better things.”
Scheduled naps are often encouraged by baby sleep “consultants”, a growing industry, and social media influencers.
Andrea Grace, a sleep consultant who advocates scheduled naps, said: “Wake windows can be useful for parents to feel more confident on when their babies need to sleep. A schedule based on these can prevent infants becoming overtired, which then makes it harder for them to sleep.”
Prof Paul Gringras, clinical lead for children’s sleep medicine at King’s College London, and president of the International Paediatric Sleep Association, said: “Psychology and medical sleep professionals tend to appreciate that it’s not always ‘one size fits all’ and that different families might need different approaches.
“But in the first three months, I don’t think any would support extremely rigid schedules for baby sleep, as they do not align with natural sleep-wake cycles and can interfere with feeding.
“All families are different, and where parents’ mental health and wellbeing is really suffering, they might try to get babies to nap at around the same time, because that rhythm in the day is useful.”
He added: “Some studies suggest that controlled crying – when babies are left to self-soothe at night – causes them stress, shown by higher levels of cortisol. However, other studies looking at children after a variety of bedtime routine strategies showed no difference in cortisol levels, so there is still some debate around this.”
He advised families to check the qualifications of baby sleep consultants, as the profession is unregulated.
