Over-tired and under-tired babies
Over-tired babies
Your Baby has an internal body clock called the “circadian rhythm” the younger the baby the more sensitive they are to awake windows and can easily be overstimulated and start to loose the plot, needing your help to be settled to sleep. All babies and toddlers need sleep to overcome over-tiredness and is how your baby supports their mood, development and feeding through sleep.
Keeping a younger baby awake for too long between naps leads to them becoming overtired. Older babies and toddlers are a little more robust and can handle more awake time but can still definitely become overtired too.
Some babies will give very clear tired signs that you will recognise and be able to get them ready for asleep at the right ‘sleep window’.
Baby is becoming sleepy: - red eyes - red eyebrows - blank look into the distance - turns head away
Baby needs to sleep now: - Rubbing eyes - pulling ears - becoming grumpy - Making fists - hiccuping
However some babies can be very difficult to read and you can often keep them awake thinking there is plenty of time to get ready for sleep. Then there is this scenario where your baby is showing true tired signs, but in fact this doesn't necessarily mean they're ready for bed, they may just be bored and need a change of scenery. So its important to work out is baby just “tired - overtired - undertired.
An over-tired baby/toddler looks like this:
Crying (even after feeding so you know they aren’t hungry)
Difficult to calm down.
They well resist you when settling.
Waking 45 minutes after settling at night.
Waking a lot in the night and early morning.
Older babies and toddlers can seem hyperactive or like they have a second wind.
Tantrums and bedtime battles in toddlers.
Over-tiredness causes the body to have a build-up of a hormone called cortisol. This is similar to adrenaline and stops your baby or toddler from achieving asleep easily and will wake them once they have fallen asleep. This cortisol acts like caffeine in the body and is why your baby can seem wide awake when you know they should be ready to sleep.
Cortisol reduces the release of the hormone called melatonin (the sleep hormone). Melatonin is what helps us to settle to sleep and stay asleep. The more overtired your baby is, the less likely they are to settle well and the more likely they are to wake frequently and in the early morning.
Some parents, whilst trying all they can to prevent their babies from becoming overtired, end up popping them down to bed too soon and then end up spending the next 45 minutes trying to settle their baby to sleep. This is under-tiredness.
Under-tired babies
An under-tired baby may stare off into space with wide open eyes as you are trying to settle them, or they can also be grumpy and fighting you. This leads you to think baby is overtired because they are grumpy and won’t sleep. But in fact they needed a little more awake time and this can be hard with some babies to work out.
For newborns sometimes they are waking soon after they go down, say as early as 20 minutes after you put them down, and you end up having to assist baby back to sleep, things to look for are - make sure you are offering some awake time “on the floor” so baby can move and gain true sleep debt. Then watch to make sure they aren’t having micro naps at the feed, this is sometimes unavoidable with a very new baby but as they grow try to encourage them to stay awake while feeding as this can create an under-tired baby that wont nap well.
Under-tiredness will cause catnapping that will leading to an overtired baby.
An under-tired baby/toddler looks like this:
Crying (even after a feed so not hungry).
Fighting settling/cat nap/short naps.
Nap protests bedtime battles / toddlers getting out of bed constantly.
Waking and playing in the cot day or night.
Early morning waking.
Make sure your older baby or toddler is getting outside and having plenty of movement and free play outside of the carseat/pram/front pack, spending too much time in this situation will lead to an under-tired child that wont nap well or will wake early in the morning.
Under-tiredness & over-tiredness often create the same symptoms of cat-napping and a difficult to settle baby or toddler, let me show you how Sleep Works so your baby and family get the sleep it needs! Contact us today for your free 10 minute explore call.