What Can You Expect?
A child’s body develops faster during the first year of life than any other
time. To help facilitate healthy growth, a baby needs restful periods of
sleep. The long standing debate is whether or not parents can help
organize these sleep periods. The question has stumped researchers for a
quarter of a century. We will confidently tell you that getting a baby to
take good naps or sleep through the night consistently is not as difficult
as the American public has been led to believe. While we cannot offer
you any guarantees, we can offer you the following statistics that
represent Babywise norms.
How do feedings distributed equally throughout the day affect
nighttime sleep habits? Our study objective was to establish sleep norms
for PDF participants. Conclusions were drawn from a convenient
sampling of 520 infants (266 males, 254 females), of which 380 were
exclusively breast-fed, 59 formula-fed, and 81 fed a combination of
breast milk and formula. There were 468 babies with no medical
conditions and 52 with some medical conditions detected at birth or
shortly after birth. Included in the medical conditions profile were 15
premature infants. All parents followed a parent-directed feeding
strategy.
Routine feedings for participants were defined as feeding newborns
every 2½ to 3 hours for the first eight weeks for breast-fed babies and
every 3 to 4 hours for formula fed babies. Continuous nighttime sleep
was defined as sleeping through the night 7–8 hours continuously.
Volunteer subjects were drawn from the United States, Canada, and New
Zealand. The study revealed the following:
Category: Exclusively Breast-fed Babies
Of the breast-fed girls, 86.9% were sleeping through the night between 7
and 9 weeks and 97% were sleeping through the night by 12 weeks.
Of the breast-fed boys, 76.8% were sleeping through the night
between 7 and 9 weeks and 96% were sleeping through the night by 12