Split Nights

- Laura Thompson | 18th June 2021 -

 Is your little one awake for hours at a time over night? Almost as though their body is just ‘done sleeping’ and they are ready to play, chat, dance and be AWAKE! You are experiencing split nights and today we’re going to talk all about the what, why and how to fix them!

Is It A Split Night?

We all wake overnight, it’s very normal and healthy! The challenge comes for parents when their little one cannot put themselves back to sleep and needs lots of help. This in itself though is not a split night, if your baby is waking frequently but you can settle them back to sleep pretty easily within a few minutes whilst that’s exhausting (and I can help you with it?) it’s not what we’re talking about today.

A split night will look like 2 solid chunks of sleep ‘split’ by a big old chunk of awake time! The awake time usually happens sometime after midnight and can last for an hour or two! Typically little one will not be upset or distressed at all, just awake and showing no signs of being ready to go back to sleep.

Why Does It Happen?

Split nights occur when something goes slightly awry with the two biological processes that drive sleep. First we have our circadian rhythm, which is our internal body clock and causes us to feel wakeful or sleepy at the right times of day. Then we have homeostatic sleep pressure which builds up as we are awake. Sleep pressure is what allows us to fall asleep at bedtime and sleep for a long stretch, as we sleep and recharge the sleep pressure decreases and so the circadian rhythm takes over to keep us asleep until a regular wake time (in the morning!) When there are split nights present this is not happening for children and the circadian rhythm is not taking over, therefore once the sleep pressure has dissipated they are wide awake! Essentially the two sleep drives has become misaligned, now this can all sound a bit serious and scary but with a few scheduling tweaks, consistency and a little patience everything will get back on track.

The Split Night Cycle

Let’s take the example that a child does not nap well and therefore is unable to make it to their regular bedtime and goes to bed at 6pm and this happens consistently over a number of weeks. This also leads to a prolonged night waking from say 2am-4am, the child then falls back to sleep and sleeps until 8am to make up for the lost night sleep. This child’s night is now 14 hours long! In most cases we can reasonably expect 11-12 hours sleep from children over night, so this night is just far too long and so the cycle continues.

Now I LOVE an early bedtime! It’s an amazing tool to have up your sleeve to overcome over tiredness but it should be used as a temporary measure and not as a substitute for good naps!

The Solution

The first step is to shorten that night and establish a regular bed and wake time for your child. This calls for a little tough love to get things back on track so you need to shorten your child’s night to 11 hours. This will probably look like 7:15pm in bed asleep and 6:15am awake.

Now that you are shortening the night those naps are crucial for your child to make it to this later bedtime. Make them a priority - check out my blog on extending short naps here.

It will take a little time for everything to get back in sync so allow around 4-7 days to see a change. Until then you will need a consistent approach to responding to any night waking from your child so as not to reinforce the habit.

If you would like some support with a plan to handling night waking book a free call here and we can chat!