Premature babies and sleep
Premature babies almost always have sleep problems, and with good reason. The pregnancy is more likely to have been difficult or stressful, and their birth is sometimes traumatic. Special care baby units are alienating, frightening places, for babies as well as for their parents.
The whole atmosphere of high-tech expertise surrounding your premature baby inevitably undermines your confidence in your own ability to care for him. Taking responsibility for him, and the everyday handling and feeding that builds communication between, is delayed. When it does begin, it's complicated by problems stemming from your baby's early stressful experiences.
However brave and cheerful you manage to be about it, it is harrowing to have a premature baby, and of course, to be one. It is only expected that high levels of anxiety colour the first few weeks at home. When you have seen your baby need help to breathe and feed, it's natural to feel you can't trust him to breathe on his own, or to let you know when he needs food. He is likely to have to be woken for feeding at first, so it's impossible for you to begin the process of letting him sleep.
In due course you have to move from this stage to learning to treat your baby as a normal, healthy infant. This can be very difficult to do. Once your doctor reassures you your baby is healthy, it is a good idea to begin taking small steps towards this transition. Any demonstration of your confidence in him will help your baby make more rapid progress. If you continue to treat him as fragile and unreliable when it's no longer true, he will sense that it's not safe to sleep. The consolidation of his sleep into long stretches at night, the bone and muscle growth that goes on while he sleeps, and the hearty appetite which follows good sleep, all of which especially benefit a premature baby, will be unnecessarily delayed.
If, for example, you have been waking your baby for a feed every two hours, after you get the green light from you doctor, try letting him sleep for three hours before you wake him. If he wakes on his own and cries for food, you are on the way to learning to understand his cries, and are on the way to discovering his needs and how to communicate them.
The anxiety that afflicts parents of a premature baby can make everything seem terribly difficult. It helps to acknowledge your own feelings, and then consciously decide to do something you know is good for your baby, rather than what you instinctively feel like doing yourself. You could call it doing what your baby needs instead of what you want. For example, you could say to yourself 'I know I want to wake him up, because when he's awake, I'm certain he's all right. But I also know he needs good sleep. So, I'm going to do what he needs, not what I want.' Then decide what time you will wake up to check on him and go to sleep yourself.
On top of all the worry caused by what you and your baby have been through, you will have to wean him off the hospital regime, his whole experience of the world until now. If he has been accustomed to noise, disturbance and light around the clock, he may have trouble adjusting to normal rhythms of day and night. Make the distinction as clear as you can. Keep his night feeds very quiet, in the dimmest possible light - candlelight is especially peaceful. When he stops taking a really good feed when he wakes, he is ready to begin to sleep for longer stretches at night, just like a full-term baby.
Extract taken from Sleep. The secret of problem-free nights. Beatrice Hollyer & Lucy Smith (1996) UK.