Understanding Split Nights

Split nights are when an infant or young child wakes up in the middle of night and stays awake for an hour or more. Often your child is perfectly content when they wake and ready to play, but the complete break in sleep can make it feel even harder for parents wanting to navigate a way forward. So what causes split nights and how to you solve them?

Sleep Environment

Noise, light and temperature are all factors that can contribute to night awakening and difficulties falling back asleep. Take a look at your child's sleep environment. If external noises or the heating switching on could be a cause, consider using white noise to help mask these disturbances. If a street lamp or car lights could be illuminating your child's bedroom, blackout blinds can make a real difference. If your child's room is too hot or too cold, adjusting the thermostat or their clothing is a good place to start.

Amount of Daytime Sleep

When your child spends an hour or more awake during the night, they will often catch up on the missed sleep during the day. The difficulty with this is they then get into a negative cycle of catching up in the day and so the split nights go on. Moving your child's first nap back by a little bit and/or capping their naps can help break this cycle.

Independent Sleep Skills

If your child needs your assistance to fall asleep at night, then they are likely to rely on the same for any night awakenings. The difficulty posed by early morning wake-ups is that you no longer have sleep hormones on your side, therefore making it harder to settle your child back to sleep. Have a look at your child is falling asleep and if necessary, choose a method to help move them toward independent settling.

Early Bedtime

For some children a bedtime that is too early for their sleep needs can contribute to split nights. Moving their bedtime later by even 15 minutes can help build more sleep pressure and therefore facilitate a better night's sleep.

Developmental Milestones

As babies and toddlers meet various milestones, such as talking, rolling or crawling, their body and brains can be more active and more ready to wake up and practise these skills. Providing plenty of time for them to practise these skills during the day, helps to reduce any desire to put these skills to use during the night!

Ready for a Nap Transition

If your child's split nights are new, it is likely that they need slight adjustments to the timing and length of their daytime sleep. Your child may benefit from some tweaks to their nap times and durations in order to help them meet the balance between adequate daytime rest and promoting longer stretches of nighttime sleep.

If you would like to find out more about sleep and in particular, how to address any specific difficulties your little one is encountering, check out our sleep packages.