If you are reading this in the middle of the night then you may be experiencing a split night with your little one. And for those of you who aren’t and are a little less familiar with the term it relates to your child waking at some point in the night normally in the earlier hours of the morning and then taking several hours before they eventually go back to sleep. Normally when you experience a split night your child will be in a perfectly good mood and no amount of feeding or soothing will send them back to sleep.

Interestingly it was only a few hundreds of years ago that a split night rather than being a sleep issue to face millions of families would have in fact been the norm and this was very much down to the simple fact that before the dawn of the electric light and the industrial revolution, we would have got up with the sun and gone to bed at sunset waking for several hours in the middle of the night to reflect, pray, feed our babies, have sex or to read by candlelight.

Today however, societal expectations are such that we expect our children to sleep for a consolidated period of time overnight.  Therefore if your child is awake for long periods of time in the night while you are trying to sleep this is not typically seen as conducive to modern day living. Despite the fact that babies are probably doing what is historically and biologically normal unlike older infants and adults who have adapted to the modern day phenomenon of monophasic sleep.

So, what defines a split night?
To put it simply a split night is caused when our two biological sleep drives; sleep pressure and our sleep circadian rhythm become separated from one another. What normally happens to enable us to have a consolidated night sleep is as sleep pressure dissipates towards midnight the circadian rhythm takes over.

However, sometimes when sleep pressure and the circadian sleep rhythm are no longer in sync with each other this can result in your baby waking up ready to go in the middle of the night and then having to stay up for a while before the circadian rhythm takes over enabling them to go back to sleep.

There are two primary causes of a split night

1. Poor napping during the day often leads to parents needing to put their baby to bed early. This is fine once or twice as the increased sleep drive to sleep debt will mean initially your baby will sleep through to their normal wake up time however over a number of days the early bedtime can either result in an earlier than normal wake up time as the circadian rhythm shifts earlier or alternatively a split night i.e. your baby has had all the sleep they need by 2AM in the morning and wakes up ready to play.

2. The other cause of a split night can be caused by night disruptors such as learning new motor skills, illness, or stimulation after feeding or sleep associations which may mean they are up longer than normal.

How can you fix a split night?

As ultimately a split night is caused by a misalignment of the two biological sleep drives the best way forward is to restrict your baby’s time in bed to ensure that sleep is achieved.

This may mean that you will need to wake your baby potentially earlier than you have been doing so in order to maintain a consistent wake time with morning light exposure.

If your baby is napping at 9am for 45 minutes and then again at 1pm for 45 minutes meaning you are left with no other option than to put them to bed early to prevent an overly long awake window before bedtime you may also need to manipulate their naps to try and enable a bedtime closer to 7.15 PM. One option may be to try to extend their naps using increased soothing halfway through or just before the time that they would normally wake.

If you find that your baby is waking due to night disturbances such as a developmental leap then ensuring they have plenty of opportunity to practice their new skills during the day this way they have less need to wake up during the night to do so.

If you found this helpful and would like more help with your baby’s sleep – Emma Gawne practises as holistic sleep coach with Help Baby Sleep and supports many families both nationally and internationally to get a more settled night sleep. For more information please visit the Help Baby Sleep Services Page