How to recognise your baby’s tired signs
Guest blog by Cindy, Safe Sleep Space
When your baby’s brain is preparing for sleep, their brain waves change. We see these changes as tired signs. Tired signs are the cues or signals which your baby will give when they are ready for a sleep.
Missing earlier tired cues can mean your baby becomes overtired and increasingly difficult to settle. Younger babies tend to grizzle, show some facial grimacing, clench their fists and may go pale in the face.
Some other tired signs are:
- Glazed eyes or long blank stares
- Redness around the eyes and eyebrows
- Jerky movements
- Fast breathing
- Tense extended arms or legs
- Hiccups
Your baby may look at you briefly but then turn their head and look away. This cue could be misread as a sign they want to engage with you when they are in fact tired.
Less subtle — or late tired cues are:
- Yawning and rubbing their face.
- Squirming vigorously
- Crying
When your baby is showing you their tired signs, it’s important not to keep them up. But remember, strict sleep and settling routines are not ideal as they don’t allow for individual babies needs and for their own personality and temperament. It’s all about responding to their cues and being emotionally available for them.
Young babies can be unpredictable. They are too immature and their nervous system not yet developed enough to behave the same way, every day and for every sleep and settling period.
It’s normal for young babies to sleep for varying periods of time. Sometimes they may only need a short sleep and sometimes a longer one. They will often have what can be quite long periods of being awake and calm or even grizzling when they just don’t respond to all the usual calming measures. It’s so important to read your baby’s cues and respond appropriately.
About the author:
Cindy is a registered midwife, IBCLC, maternal and child health nurse and Director of Safe Sleep Space, an early parenting consultancy group based in Balwyn who specialise in sleep and settling of infants and toddlers. She is also member of the Lactation Consultants of Australia and New Zealand (LCANZ) and the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) and has worked in the early parenting field since 1998.
About Safe Sleep Space:
With an emphasis on caregiver interaction, social-emotional development and an understanding that every infant, toddler and parent is unique, we help families reach sustainable change in a loving and informed way.
Safe Sleep Space offers you a better understanding of your baby’s needs, cues and capabilities, then provides a step-by-step guide to workable strategies for creating an emotional and physical safe sleep space.
We are able to support you and your family with a range of early parenting concerns including:
- Infant and toddler sleep
- baby sleep patterns
- toddler sleep problems
- Feeding struggles
- Adjustment to parenthood
- Irritable infant
Contact us to learn more.
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