Why Does My Baby Wake Up at 3 AM?
That right there might be the single most common question new parents ask. Is it a developmental milestone? A sleep regression? Are they getting too much sleep during the day, or not enough? Maybe they’re just hungry. Maybe they’re too hot, or too cold.
Well, the truth is that it could be any of those things, and it could be a combination of several of them. What that means, and what you’re probably already aware of, is that baby sleep is tremendously complicated. I’m going to explain a little more on the science of sleep so you understand what’s going on in your little one’s brain and body.
Circadian Rhythm
The biological patterns that drive our 24 hour day and night cycles is called our circadian rhythm. It runs in the background of your brain and controls your sleep/wake cycle, eating and digestion as well as your body temperature.
Darkness signals that it’s time for sleep and light signals your brain that it’s time to wake up. Darkness helps your body naturally produce your sleepy hormone, melatonin. Your body’s urge to sleep is guided by your circadian rhythm along with sleep pressure that builds every hour you or your little one is awake.
Your body begins releasing melatonin 1-3 hours before bedtime. These levels begin to drop between 2-4 AM. On the opposite spectrum, cortisol, your stress hormone, starts being released slowly around 3 AM. Your body releases cortisol slowly in the morning to naturally wake you.
All this to say, that we are in lighter sleep after 3 AM, so it’s more likely for your child to wake up around this time. This, combined with a lack of independent sleep skills, means that baby’s probably going to wake up fully, and have a really hard time getting back to sleep.
Sleep Cycles
Night wakings are completely normal. As adults we cycle through our 4 stages of sleep all throughout the night, sometimes waking up fully, before falling back to sleep. Sleep cycles for newborns and infants are very different from the sleep cycles of an older baby or child. Newborns only have 2 stages of sleep, active sleep and quiet sleep. After 3-5 months of age, babies go through a sleep reorganization, aka the four month sleep regression.
During this sleep regression, babies gain two new stages of sleep (pictured above), which are much lighter. So you can guess why this is called a regression, right? Because your amazing sleeper is now waking up several times a night (sometimes every 1-2 hours) stuck in light sleep. So this 3 AM waking could be the telltale signs of the looming four month sleep regression… or if your baby is older it could be something else completely!
Hunger or Habit?
Maybe your baby is just hungry? If your baby is under 6 months, it’s perfectly normal to still feed them in the middle of the night. That’s not to say you can’t feed an older baby, but, there’s less of a chance that this wake up is truly caused by hunger as your baby gets older. In fact, I’ve had 12 week old babies sleep through the night without a feeding, but that’s not the point I’m making here.
How do you know if this wake up is from hunger or habit? This can be tricky, but there are a lot of different factors to consider. Look at how much they’re eating during the day, what time they’re waking up to eat at night and how well they’re staying awake for the feeding at this time. For example, if you have an 8 month waking up three times a night, eating one of those times, but they fall asleep during that feeding, then I would deduce that it’s not a hunger issue.
If your baby is waking up multiple times a night, and is not a newborn, it’s pretty safe to say that they are in light sleep and are having trouble falling back to sleep. Sometimes, babies wake up out of habit. Their body clocks are set to wake them at a certain time and they expect the same response each time. So, if they are fed at this wake up every night, they will wake up like clockwork at this time every night. I have seen this happen in older babies that are very stubborn and don’t want to drop the night feeding.
How do you fix it?
So now for the big question you’ve probably been hoping I might have an answer for. How do you fix it?
While there’s no quick fix for adjusting baby’s hormone production schedule, you can definitely help your baby out by getting them outdoors during the day as much as possible. Natural light during the day helps your body produce melatonin at night.
It also helps to ensure that baby’s room is as dark as you can get it at night, and start turning down the lights in the house at least an hour before you put your baby to bed. Simulating the sunset will help to cue that melatonin production so that it’s in full swing when your baby goes into their crib.
Avoid any TV, iPhone, tablet, or screen time of any kind for that same hour before bedtime. (Preferably even longer) as these devices emit blue light, which will stimulate cortisol production and reduces their body’s natural melatonin.
Independent Sleep
But above all, the number one way to help your baby sleep through the night is to get them on a predictable, consistent sleep schedule and teach your baby the skills to fall asleep independently. Because the truth is that you’re never going to prevent nighttime wake ups. We all wake up in the night, regardless of our age. As adults, we just have the ability to calmly assess the situation when we wake up in the dark, realize where we are, see that it’s still nighttime, and go right back to sleep. Most of the time we don’t even remember it the next morning.
So although we can’t prevent your baby from waking up at night, we can safely and effectively help your baby learn to recognize that they’re safe, in familiar territory, still tired, and capable of getting back to sleep on their own. If you’re ready to end these 3 AM struggles, but you aren’t sure where to start, book a free call with me so we can tackle this together!