Parents should resist the urge to rush to comfort their baby when it cries at night, instead, infants should be left to soothe themselves back to sleep, experts say.
In a new study, researchers asked parents of more than 1,200 infants about their children’s sleeping habits and found that
by the age of six months there were two distinct groups.
While two-thirds slept through the night, a third woke up at least once a night, the Daily Mail reported.
The majority who failed to sleep through were boys, more likely to be breastfed and had mothers who were more likely to be depressed and have greater maternal sensitivity.
According to the study, babies move through a sleep cycle every one-and-a-half to two hours, where they briefly wake before nodding off again.
“When mothers tune in to these night time awakenings then he or she may not be learning how to self-soothe,” experts say.