Back to Basics Part 1: Reasons Why Babies Don't Sleep Through the Night

By Jennifer Goldbronn, RD


Today, we start a 4-part series that takes us back to the basics of baby behavior as we revisit the first series that started this blog back in June 2009. The 4-part series included: 3 Reasons Why Babies Don’t Sleep through Night, the Many Moods of Babies, Learning and Creating Your Baby’s Special Language, and Crying: Your Baby’s Super Power.

As our readership grows and new topics emerge, we strive to continue to help parents understand why babies behave the way they do and to share tools to help moms and dads cope with the ups and downs of starting a new family. Remember, babies are born with the skills and desire to communicate with you!

Secrets Posts about Babies and Sleep

Let’s start with the first Basics post: 3 Reasons Why Babies Don’t Sleep through Night. Infant sleep has been one of the most popular (and controversial) topics on our blog. Because our readers had so much interest in infant sleep and the fact that there is so much conflicting information on this topic, we shared a 4-part series on The Science of Infant Sleep that helped parents understand how their babies' sleep patterns change as babies get older.

Since we've written these early posts, we stepped into some controversy by writing about why we don’t like "sleep training" systems for babies . On a lighter note, we provided tips for helping parents with nap time and explained why babies might wake up when they are older even if they've been sleeping for longer stretches. I shared my own personal sleep story in the series: Thoughts from a Sleep Deprived Mom. We also shared an alarming report about the use of cough and cold medicines to treat “sleep problems” in infants. Last but not least, we provided an explanation of the findings of a well publicized study about nighttime waking and babies' risk for childhood obesity.

We hope that we have covered everything you might have wanted to know about how babies sleep. If not, please let us know!

Next time: Back to Basics Part 2: The Many Moods of Babies