Parents shouldn’t worry about their baby’s inconsistent sleep patterns

New parents often expect their baby to start sleeping through the night around the time they reach six months of age. But according to a new study led by Professor Marie-Hélène Pennestri, parents should view sleep consolidation as a process, instead of a milestone to be achieved at a specific age. Tracking 44 infants over a period of two weeks, she found that sleeping patterns vary greatly - not only for different babies, but also night to night for the same baby. In the study published in Sleep Medicine , researchers asked mothers to keep a sleep diary about their six-month-old infant for two weeks. On average, mothers reported that their infant slept 6 hours consecutively for about 5 nights out of a two-week period, and 8 consecutive hours for about 3 nights out of the same period. Half of the infants, however, never slept 8 hours consecutively. "Although previous research has shown that infants start sleeping through the night at different stages of development, little is known about individual sleep patterns night after night," says Marie-Hélène Pennestri , who is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University and researcher at the Hôpital en santé mentale Rivière-des-Prairies (CIUSSS-NIM).