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Health insurance
- Australian Health Insurance: The top 10 things you need to know
- Don't cancel your health insurance
- Private Health Insurance Explained
- I’m young and healthy, why do I need health insurance?
- The Costs of Pregnancy
- How to Select a Health Insurance Provider
- Osteo vs. Chiro: What’s the Difference?
- What Private Health Insurance is Right for Me?
- Your handy checklist to Private Health Insurance
- Getting Health Insurance for the first time
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Health, Food & Diet
- Sugar content in alcohol - best & worst
- Coconut oil: the science
- Guilt free snacks
- 5 Post workout recipes
- Losing Weight Without a Fad Diet
- Cheat Days: Worth it?
- Light Milk: Healthier than Full Cream?
- Protein Shakes – Do they really work?
- All About the IIFYM Diet
- 8 Superfoods You’ve Never Heard Of
- 5 Surprising Facts About Coffee
- The Changes Your Body Goes through When you Quit Sugar
- Does Detoxing Actually Work?
- Delicious Sugar Free Recipes
- The Low-Down on Artificial Sweeteners
- The Health Benefits of Smoothies
- Breaking Sugar Addiction
- Organic vs Non Organic Foods
- 7 Healthy Kids Lunchbox Snacks
- The Great Weight Debate
- Fast or Feast? The Guide to the 5:2 Diet
- Medical Spotlight: Heart Disease
- Healthy Fast Food Options
- Salt – Friend or Foe?
- Spotlight on Sugar – how much sugar is in your favourite drinks?
- Are saturated fats and cholesterol really the bad guys?
- Nutritional Truths About Sushi
- What are Macrobiotics?
- Feeding fitness: Eating and exercise tips for breastfeeding mums
- The Raw Food Diet
- Foods and Asthma
- Kids and Food Allergies
- The Lowdown on Homeopathy
- Happy Valentines Day, Every Day! The Benefits of Chocolate
- Don’t worry – Eat happy! 5 mood enhancing foods
- Five foods for a healthy brain
- Minimize the Effects of Alcohol on Your Health
- Weight-loss TV, patience is not its virtue
- Parenting & children
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Sports & Fitness
- HIIT – Train Smarter, Not Harder!
- Crossfit – What’s all the hype about?
- This Year’s Hottest Fitness Trends
- Body Weight Workouts
- Training for a Triathlon – Where to Start
- Physical Culture: Let’s Get Physical
- Exercise at home
- Tips to get your kids moving
- Pregnancy and Exercise: Is it safe?Pregnancy and Exercise: Is it safe?
- 5 Ways to Train like an Olympic Athlete
- 3 Reasons To Stand Up At Work
Sleep in Infants
There is something heavenly blissful about watching an infant sleep. Their peaceful little faces, lost in dreams of breast milk. Now, if you’re that baby’s parent, then blissful is an understatement! This is because you know that not only does a sleeping baby give you a little ‘me-time’ but a well-rested baby is a happy baby and that makes everyone in the family happy.
Importance of Sleep in Infancy
In infancy, sleep is at a lifetime maximum with infants spending up to 70% of each 24 hours asleep. It is during sleep that growth of a child’s brain and body occurs, as well as consolidation of memory and learning. Ensuring adequate, uninterrupted sleep is extremely important for growth and development in infancy. As such, anything that disrupts sleep can have negative impacts on physical health as well as cognitive development.
Development of Sleep
During infancy, sleep patterns are immature and distinctly different to those seen in adults. Infants experience two sleep states known as quiet sleep and active sleep and spend approximately 50% of sleep time in each with a sleep cycle of approximately 45-50 minutes. Between 6 and 12 months, sleep begins to mature into a more adult pattern characterised by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. Quiet sleep is the immature equivalent of non-REM sleep whilst active sleep is the pre-cursor of REM sleep. Babies experience a much higher drive to sleep than adults in order to ensure that adequate sleep quantity is achieved.
Sleep distribution is also significantly different during infancy. In newborn infants, sleep occurs at any time of the day or night and sleep-wake cycles are largely influenced by feed times. From approximately 6 months sleep begins to consolidate during the night with a longer sleep period overnight and a few short naps during the day.
Sleep Disorders in Infancy
Some babies will have difficulty settling as they become reluctant to disengage from a care-giver, with some even experiencing separation anxiety, resulting in a resistance of sleep. In order to help avoid this, it is important to encourage children to self-soothe by placing them in their cot to sleep when they become drowsy and allowing them to fall asleep independent of a parent or care-giver.
During infancy, the main sleep disorder is the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, also known as SIDS or cot death. This devastating condition occurs when an otherwise healthy infant dies during sleep with no explanation for the death found following a thorough investigation. Despite years of research the exact mechanisms underlying SIDS remain unclear, however, a number of risk factors have been identified, many of which include unsafe sleeping practices. In order to reduce the risk of SIDS, parents can create a safe sleeping environment for their baby by ensuring that the infant is always placed on its back to sleep, the baby's face and head are free of bedding, the infant is in a smoke-free environment both before birth and after and the infant has its own cot to sleep in but is in the same room as an adult for the first 6-12 months. Following implementation of safe sleeping public education campaigns, the incidence of SIDS has been dramatically reduced.
Tips on How to Get Babies to Sleep
As in adults, creating a bedtime routine and a healthy sleep environment are important for good sleep during infancy. Some tips to help your baby sleep include:
- Make sure baby is well fed and comfortable, with a clean nappy
- Ensure the sleep environment is safe, quiet and dark
- Ensure baby isn’t too hot or cold
- Observe baby’s sleep and learn to recognise signs of sleepiness
- Put baby in cot when drowsy, not asleep
- Encourage baby to fall asleep independently and self-soothe