Have you noticed that your baby is waking up earlier and earlier recently? Often at 4 or 5 o'clock, the baby wakes up before the parents have had enough sleep.

This is probably because we overlooked a small detail——

 illumination!

 If your baby is like this: with the advent of summer, the wake-up time automatically advances, and gradually advances, and does not suddenly wake up early and stop sleeping, then there is a high probability of "seasonal early awakening".

 Although babies wake up early, they still have plenty of time to catch up on sleep during the day. The same is not true for adults. The rhythm of the whole day may be disrupted because of waking up early.

So today we will learn about why babies experience such changes and how to solve the annoying "seasonal early awakening".

Babies like to wake up early in summer,

The culprit is "illumination"

Parents may have experience: it is easier to wake up in the morning in winter, but naturally wake up earlier in summer.

An important factor causing this change is the difference in lighting.

A research paper published in the "Journal of Sleep Research" shows that people's nighttime and wake-up times will show obvious "seasonal" characteristics due to changes in light duration throughout the day (January to August).

When the sunshine time throughout the day increases, the time to wake up in the morning has a clear tendency to advance, while the time to fall into the night only slightly advances [1].

Under different lengths of light, the time to fall asleep is only slightly advanced (the trend is the solid black line in the left picture), while the time to wake up is significantly advanced (the black solid line in the right picture).

This seasonal change also happens to babies.

Generally, after 6 months, babies will establish a relatively regular circadian rhythm of "waking up during the day and sleeping at night". At this time, the daily "light-dark" cycle becomes an important factor affecting their sleep.

Once the baby senses light in the morning, the brain will follow the circadian rhythm and send a "get up quickly" signal, and seasonal early awakening will naturally occur.

If you want to make adjustments, the easiest way to start is with the lighting.

Improve the bedroom environment and reduce the impact of light

Solve the problem of seasonal early awakening of babies

The key to changing the bedroom environment is to block light. This is also the simplest and most direct solution, and the most effective for most babies.

We can first replace the curtains in the bedroom with blackout curtains to minimize the awakening effect of dawn on the baby.

When using blackout curtains, you must pay attention to the shading degree of the curtains. It is recommended to be able to reach a state where you can't see your fingers.

Many adults think that a bedroom environment that is dark enough is actually not enough for babies, such as the following -

Also check to see if there are any light leaks, such as above the curtain rod and around and below the curtains. You can install a self-adhesive Velcro curtain head on the curtains in your baby's bedroom.

In addition to the light environment in the bedroom, temperature and noise issues also need to be paid attention to.

You can consider using an air conditioner in your baby's bedroom all night. In summer, the temperature in the air-conditioned room is kept at 22-26°C, so that the baby is not affected by temperature changes.

Try to keep it as quiet as possible in the early morning. If the external environment where you live is noisy (for example, your neighbors have pets or there are birds chirping around the community), you can consider using white noise continuously in the bedroom during the early morning hours.

This method is very useful when most babies first have seasonal early awakenings; but if early awakenings have been occurring for a period of time, we need to adjust the baby's routine and rest on the basis of adjusting the sleep environment. To improve the situation of waking up early.