Split Nights

Is your little one waking up in the middle of the night?

Now you might think yes – but I mean really waking up. Like waking up and it’s party time. They’re up. For hours.

If you’re the parent of a baby who is dealing with segmented sleep, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. This isn’t middle of the night “go in and comfort/feed/help baby for a few minutes until he gets back to sleep” wakeup. This is a full blown dance party.

Whether you refer to it as segmented sleep, split nights, or broken sleep… the situation describes your little one sleeping for a long stretch, then waking up happy and energetic in the middle of the night, and staying that way for at least an hour, or more.

This isn’t new or unnatural. Back before the widespread use of the light bulb, people would regularly sleep for a few hours, wake up for another hour or two (using that time to read, smoke, pray, have sex), and then go back to sleep until morning.

Nowadays, however, the vast majority of us go to sleep at night and, hopefully, stay asleep straight through until morning.

But in your case – your baby didn’t get the memo.

So this is actually a pretty common issue. Baby goes down at 7:30 at night, wakes up at 3 in the morning, wide awake for an hour and a half, then goes back to sleep, apparently careless about the miserable day mom and dad are about to endure.

Let’s take a look at why this happens and move on to how to solve the problem.

There are 2 major drivers when it comes to sleep. Our circadian rhythm, which is our natural tendency to fall asleep when it’s dark and wake up when it’s light, and our homeostatic sleep drive, known as sleep pressure, which builds up during the time we are awake.

Ideally, over the course of the day, sleep pressure builds up enough so that at bedtime, when the pressure is at a sweet spot, baby puts their head down and goes to sleep. As that sleep pressure begins to subside, circadian rhythm takes over and baby stays asleep until morning.

In the case of a split night, we’re looking at baby waking up for one of two reasons.

Not going to bed early enough OR going to bed too early.

Now it might seem like the explanation won’t make sense, but stay with me!

If baby is getting to bed too late, if too much sleep pressure has built up (an overtired baby) the brain has an instinctive response that goes something like this, “Hey, you’re tired, but you’re not sleeping. There must be some reason for this, maybe there’s some scary predator around, so we better up the cortisol levels.

The brain obviously means well, but it’s a little behind the times on our need for scary predatory alerts.

So this can make it really tough for baby to get to sleep at bedtime since that cortisol got them a lotta bit jacked up. This can also cause a full wake up at the end of a sleep cycle, which commonly happens around 3 in the morning. Which sucks.

If this is the case, you’re one of the lucky ones. You can treat this like any other nighttime wake up, reassure baby that it’s still bedtime, comfort them, and let them get back to sleep on their own. Consider moving bedtime earlier over the course of the next few nights.

But what about our alternate scenario? What if baby is getting into bed too early?

In a situation where baby is getting lots of daytime sleep and going to bed early, it is possible that not enough sleep pressure gets a chance to build up to keep them sleeping through the night. Their circadian rhythm doesn’t get a chance to take over fully and provide enough horsepower to keep them asleep. So up they get, suddenly active for an hour, or three, until that pressure builds back up.

I’m all for early bedtimes. Too little sleep is definitely a much bigger problem than too much. But if your baby is experiencing this kind of split night sleep, it’s worth looking into their schedule to ensure that you’re hitting the optimum sleep pressure right at the same time that baby is going down for the night.

I know there are plenty of situations that can arise where baby needs to get to bed early. A day of lousy naps or a few weeks during a nap transition can definitely call for moving bedtime ahead of schedule.

But we also have to be aware of how much sleep we are expecting from our little ones, and what they’re actually capable of sleeping. It’s also important to remember the need for balance between day sleep and night sleep. Too much day sleep will take away night sleep. If you’re getting tons of day sleep out of your little one (examples below), and then still expecting a full 11-12 hour night…well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s just not possible.

Here are two scenarios when too much day sleep can take away from night sleep and therefore lead to split nights:

• Around 4-6 months of age, it’s common for some babies to sleep about 4 hours in the daytime, and 12 hours at night. Around 5-7 months, most babies begin to only need about 15 hours of total sleep, so if they continue to get 4 hours in the day, putting them to bed at the same bedtime as before and expecting to still get 12 hours can lead to split nights (or early mornings).

• Around 2.5-4 years old, most children’s total day sleep needs lessen to 11-12 hours. That’s total sleep. Not just for the night. So if your little one is still napping 1-2 hour in the day, sleep pressure for nighttime is greatly reduced, and they will either experience split nights, struggles with falling asleep at bedtime, or early mornings.

This can definitely start to sound complicated, but the more you understand the nuances and where/when to make adjustments, the better your baby will sleep, and the less they’ll run into these setbacks and sleep interruptions.

One final thing to consider as you’re getting ready to tackle this situation… you may not have an overnight fix. Once baby gets into this habit, getting them out of it can take some time.

Remember your goal though and stay the course.

And if you’re in need of help, I’m here for you.