What the heck is breastsleeping?

In other words: how do babies sleep?
🤱 Up close with babies: taking short naps close to mom
🥱 When babies sleep close to their moms, they tend to sleep more often, but in between these short naps, they often wake up. Why would that be? It’s because they spend 50% of their total sleep in 24 hours in an REM mode (rapid eye movement, meaning light sleep).

Let’s take a closer look and do some math! ⏰
This light sleeping mode makes up for about the first 20 minutes of their sleep – during which they are very likely to awaken. This is the 20-minute timeslot that most parents refer to as “lulling/rocking the baby to sleep” feeling that this is not real sleep. ‼️Parents tend to think that only long, deep sleep matters for babies. As infants enjoy being rocked and are likely to be making sucking and smacking sounds during this 20 minutes they cannot possibly sleep properly. 💤

After this initial period spent in REM sleep babies sometimes wake up and stay awake for a while. Other times, they move into a deeper sleep lasting for about another 20 to 40 minutes. When this first sleep cycle (20 minutes dozing and about half an hour deeper sleep) is over, they are likely to awaken. Or they may pass back to sleep and start another similar cycle, you would never know.