Sweet Dreams

Your baby dreams more than you! Discover what her night-time adventures are all about.

- Dr Alan Greene

Your baby sleeps a lot, though perhaps not exactly quite when you want her to! At one week old, she sleeps for a whopping 16 hours a day. Even at 12 months old, she’s clocking up 13 hours out of every 24. And during a lot of that snooze-time, she’s busy dreaming. That’s pretty amazing. What is she dreaming about, and why? Well, once you know, you’ll be leaning over your baby’s cot and smiling as you watch her having sweet dreams.

WHY DOES SHE DREAM SO MUCH?

“Just like adults, babies need sleep to restore their bodies and brains,” says Professor of Paediatrics Dr Alan Greene. “We all go through ‘sleep cycles’: when we first fall asleep, we’re in light sleep and during this stage it’s easy for us to wake up. Then we start to move into deeper sleep, which is when our brain is resting and recovering; and then we go back towards light sleep again.” Each of your adult sleep cycles takes about 90 minutes. But your baby’s sleep cycles are much shorter: she goes through her pattern of light sleep, deep sleep, light sleep every 50 minutes. And because dreams happen during the periods of light sleep, and babies have more of those than adults owing to their shorter sleep cycles, babies dream more than we do.

“As we surface from deep sleep into light sleep, we enter Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM),” explains Alan. “If you look at anyone in REM sleep, you’ll see their eyes darting about. Scientists have measured brainwaves during this stage of sleep and found distinct patterns of brain activity that show that we dream during REM sleep.”