Most babies sleep with grief, or rather, they sleep wonderfully well, in its own way, but to us parents we are doing pretty badly that his way of sleeping is waking up several times at night and asking for food or shelter. It is normal that they sleep like this, they are immature little people who also need to feed at night (you will tell me if not how they would triple their weight in a year) and that they also need to feel safe, knowing that we are close.
Now, there are parents who "is normal, will sleep better when he grows up" is not enough and need, or believe necessary, to do something for the baby to sleep better, something like giving cereals at night to sleep more, in suspicion that he wakes up because he is hungry. We will try to answer the question we ask you today: Should we give cereals at night to sleep more?
Do you really wake up from hunger?
Babies wake up at night, as we have said, for several reasons. They may be hungry, they will take the tit and not release it in a good while, but they may also wake up, give four lollipops and go back to sleep. In this case they have not woken up from hunger, but to make sure your mother is there next to you and be clear that you can continue to sleep peacefully in a safe way. Maybe they don't even wake up because of that, maybe the phases of sleep have changed at that time, reaching a very superficial dream, and they need to suck a little to get back to sleep.
With this I want to show you that many children wake up at night out of hunger, but that not all awakenings are due to hunger, far from it. It is not a matter of "the child is hungry," but rather a "now hungry, must eat" and a "now is not hungry, wakes up because he is still small."
Cereals are not the solution
A few days ago he arrived at the center where a woman worked, the mother of a two-month-old baby, asking if she could give her son cereal at night to sleep better. Obviously we said no, first because cereals should not be offered to a baby until at least four months of age, which is when you can start digesting them and second, because giving cereals to babies is not the solution to sleep better (taking into account, moreover, that sleeping like this is not a problem, but something normal).
Cereals do not usually make children sleep better because if that happened, if children slept better by eating cereals, there would be no books that say that the child must be allowed to cry for a little longer each night to stop bothering, or books that say you have to approach the baby and whisper until he falls asleep again. I would publish the book "No more tears, no more awakenings: how to make your child sleep better by eating cereals" and I would sell it like churros Explaining how magical cereals are. But that book does not exist because the technique does not work, or at least does not work globally.
Some children do sleep better with cereals
Many mothers explain that by giving them cereal their children sleep better, that they wake up less. I do not say that they lie, because it is possible that giving them cereals before going to sleep means that one of the awakenings due to hunger is a little late, but the other awakenings, those that depend on the phases of the brain and those that happen to see that everything remains Order will continue to occur. Let's say a child will not sleep for 4-5 hours in a row until he is ready for it, until you have matured to make it possible.
Who knows, maybe they won't even do anything to any child and everything is the Placebo effect which makes parents think that the thing has improved, since studies done in this regard seem to say that babies who eat cereals do not seem to sleep better, which is the same as saying that, to date, it could not be proven to be of any use.
The risk of obesity and sleep worse
Well, I lie, giving a cereal porridge to children at night can do something: to get more risk of obesity and to sleep worse.
Nature gave us thirst to know when we should drink water. No one has to tell us when to drink water or how much we should drink. We are thirsty, we take a glass of water and we drink it. To know when and how much we have to eat gave us hunger, a mechanism that works perfectly well in children too. Fill a baby's tummy of milk with cereals, trying to eat the more the better so that he sleeps the more the better a mistake, because Children do not need such a dose of calories to go to bed. Now, if we want our child to be at risk of becoming overweight or obese, yes, it is a good idea, because one of the ways to get a child to end up being fat is to ignore his hunger and make him eat More than you need.
The other thing that can be achieved by giving them cereals is they sleep worse. Getting a stomach full of bed is usually not pleasant for anyone, because the digestion becomes heavy and you end up sleeping worse. The same thing happens to many children: cereal carriages spend half the night moving from one place to another with a digestion that seems not to end, the remedy being worse than the disease.
What is recommended for adults?
Yes, I know that one thing is children and another is adults, but sometimes it is worth knowing what is recommended to do with some to get an idea of what can be done with others. When an adult says he can't sleep, someone could say, "Fill your stomach, friend. Eat bread, cereals and drink milk until you see that it no longer fits." Well, it's a tip, but does not seem the most suitable. It is very likely that most people would see it absurd and even more likely that, if they tried it, they would realize what was said, that sleeping with a full stomach is not something to repeat every day (it is usually said that of " don't make dinner too copious ").
Well, if with adults it is not acceptable advice I do not see why for children it will be better. So when someone suggests that you give cereal to the child at night to sleep better, you know, There is no evidence to support this advice, nor is it highly recommended.
