5 Sleep Secrets You Should Steal From Babies

Yes, you’re the adult in this relationship. But when it comes to catching zzz’s, babies know what’s up. Heather Turgeon, a child sleep expert and author of The Happy Sleeper, tells all.  (Photo: Annie Engel/cultura/Corbis)

When it comes to sleep, we have a lot to learn from our littlest companions. In many ways, babies reveal basic human tendencies and teach us about the natural sleep mechanisms deep in our brains.

It comes as no surprise, then, that baby whispering advice can also help us grownups sleep through the night.

1. Go To Sleep In The Same Environment Every Night

Watch an infant drift to sleep — breathing peacefully with arms splayed out in full relaxation. Sleep is a basic biological function that we’re programmed to do. The circadian system (telling our bodies to sleep at night and controlling our internal rhythms) matures naturally. Humans, after the age of about 6 months, are built to sleep well at night.

Related: The Science-Backed Guide To Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night’s Sleep 

Even though sleep itself isn’t learned, the habits and associations around sleep are — especially as we fall asleep at the beginning of the night. We grow attached to the sights, sounds, and feelings in the environment at bedtime. If they change throughout the night, our natural stages of light sleep turn into full awakenings; if they stay consistent, we sail smoothly into deep sleep again.

This is why an older baby who falls asleep outside the crib and is transferred in asleep is more likely to wake up in the night; An adult who falls asleep in front of the television, with the lights on, or while scrolling on her phone in bed might have the same problem.

2. Realize Your Pre-Bed Routine (Because Yes, You Do Have One) 

Okay, maybe it doesn’t include a bubble bath and footie pajamas, but you do have a bedtime routine, whether you know it or not. The question is whether it’s helping you sleep. The same criteria that tell you if a 2-year-old’s routine is sleep-conducive also apply to grown ups. Routines should:

• Start at least 30 minutes before bed.
  
  

• Stay the same every night. Having a small snack, putting pajamas on, reading on the couch, washing your face — these steps are your routine. Do them the same way every night and you’ve harnessed the power of habit and conditioning.
  
  

• Steer clear of any and all up-close electronic gadgets for 60 minutes prior to bed, including texting on a phone, reading on an iPad, or answering work emails on a laptop.
  
  

• Lower stress. Ordering a toddler to get into bed with an anxious tone will make her stress chemicals rise and block the drowsy-making ones from doing their job.  If you talk about finances, check news feeds, or research a worrisome problem instead of leaving it for the next morning, your drowsy-making chemicals are also blocked.

3. Don’t Trust Your Inner “Tired” Sensors

Children are notoriously bad judges of their own sleepiness. In a famous series of sleep studies at Stanford, researchers restricted kids’ sleep to just 4 hours and they still said they weren’t sleepy — kids need grown ups to set their sleep schedules.

Related: How To Tell If Your Child Is Getting Enough Sleep 

But studies suggest the same to be true of adults — we’re not aware of how tired we are. The more sleep deprived we become, the less accurate our gauge. When research subjects sleep only 4 to 6 hours a night, they decline in attention span and other cognitive functions, but even after 2 weeks of this, they say they’re only slightly sleepy and that it’s not affecting them. That means just like we do with kids, we need to set a bedtime based on our nightly sleep needs (7-9 hours), not on how tired we feel in the moment.

4. Dim The Lights Before Bed

One of the first signs that a newborn’s circadian system is maturing is a rise in the drowsy-making chemical melatonin in the evenings. Melatonin (otherwise known as the “hormone of darkness”) begins to rise more or less as the sun goes down. In other words, humans are built to sleep with the darkness.

Of course we don’t spend 10-12 hours asleep like babies do — in fact there is evidence that humans historically slept in two segments (one as darkness falls and the other before day breaks, with a “quiet awake” time in between). Modern life is incredibly bright after sunset, though, which tricks our brains and suppresses this natural drowsiness cue.

For babies and kids, dimming the lights in the house an hour before bed and reading a book is the ticket to allowing natural sleep chemicals to rise. The same applies to adults.

5. Design Your Own Nursery  

You’ve seen how parents go to herculean efforts designing baby nurseries: picking out wall colors, buying nice linens, choosing the right feeding chair and lighting.

But often they neglect their own bedroom and leave it poorly lit or designed, stacked with papers, computers and more. The light, temperature, sound, look and feel of a bedroom highly impacts your sleep. Give your bedroom the TLC you would a baby’s: blackout shades, white noise, a good mattress with comfortable sheets, and an uncluttered design that feels peaceful.

Heather Turgeon is a psychotherapist and co-author of the new book The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night’s Sleep—Newborn to School Age (Tarcher/Penguin Random House). Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @TheHappySleeper.