Why is my baby awake for hours at night

https://youtu.be/XA3ONxvt-ZY In this week’s blog we continue our series on night wakings, looking specifically at long periods where your baby is awake for hours at night, what causes it and how can we prevent it. What do we mean when we talk about long, wakeful periods in the night? Some little ones will go to sleep, they’ll sleep really well for a number of hours, and then they wake up. But they don’t just wake up for a bit, they wake up for perhaps three hours, and it has us as parents scratching our heads. Wondering, why? What’s going on? Why are they awake? What do they need for that length of time? And quite often, they’re not actually upset, they’re not seeking anything in particular, and there’s no obvious reason for the waking. They don’t seem hungry. They don’t seem like they’re looking for their parents or looking for any help. Sometimes, this can be that they just wake up and they’re quite content. They’re quite content and happy. They’re just lying there, sometimes babbling or cooing if they’re a baby, or maybe even sort of chatting or singing if they’re a bit older. They’re just awake, for no real reason. And sometimes if they’re awake for long enough, possibly heading into hours awake, they might start to get a bit fussy, because they can get fed up. They want to be back asleep. They don’t really know why they’re awake. Sound familiar? Have you experienced this with your little one? If so, let’s see if we can overcome this once and for all. Why does it happen? There are a number of possible reasons for this, and there are even some medical reasons, which I’m not going to go into here today, because that’s not my job. If you think or suspect there could be a medical reason, or you’ve exhausted all the possible behavioral reasons that I’m going to talk about, then definitely go and seek some help from the relevant medical service that can explore that a bit further for you. But when it’s not medical, if it is behavioral, what could be causing it? What might be going on? One of the possible reasons, weirdly enough, can be over-tiredness. So it would be really easy to look at a little one who’s just wide awake and doesn’t seem sleepy and think they’re not tired. They’re just not tired. Maybe they’ve had too much sleep during the day. Let’s cut that nap out, or, oh, maybe we should put them to bed later. That’s almost like the obvious and easy answer. But be careful with that idea, because quite often, this wakefulness in the night is the complete opposite. It’s because they are overtired. So why would they be awake if they’re overtired? Surely, if they’re overtired, they should be zonked out, but that often is not the case. They wake up because of the amount of stimulation they may be having. If they’re having extra stimulation because they’re awake too much, perhaps they’re not getting enough daytime sleep or nap time, or they’re awake too late and not going to bed till too late, for whatever reason it may be it means they are consuming more daylight, activity, engagement, possibly screen time, all kinds of stimulants that could be causing this. So they get tired, they fall asleep, but then, they suddenly are like, “Oh, I’m awake again now.” Which then means they don’t feel sleepy. This has probably happened to you. You’ve probably experienced this yourself, it happens to all of us at times. You’re bound to have had one of those nights where you wake up and then for no apparent reason you can’t get back to sleep. As adults we know full well that it’s not because we are under-tired. We know we’re tired. Generally it happens because you’re over stimulated and that can also come from dietary reasons, things like too much sugar or caffeine. Caffeine and sugar in particular, while they may allow us to fall asleep remain there in your system, when we wake up they can kick back in and still have the same effect as when you were awake, providing stimulants. So consider dietary elements as well. Are there c