If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
Drowsy signs — the early, subtle cues that your baby is ready for sleep — are the foundation of everything described in Blog Posts 9 and 10. Catching them early, before your baby tips into overtiredness, is the single most important timing skill a parent can develop. But what happens when you are watching carefully and the drowsy signs simply do not appear?
This is more common than most parents realize, and it is not a failure of observation. There are specific situations in which drowsy signs are genuinely difficult to see — or are not there to be seen at all.
When Drowsy Signs Are Absent or Hard to See
A full-term newborn is very sleepy for the first two to three days of life, and then wakes up — sometimes dramatically, with wide, searching eyes and a newly alert presence. But that calm-alert state may be brief and infrequent in the early weeks. Over time, your baby will have longer and more frequent periods of calm alertness, and the drowsy signs that follow will become clearer. Be patient with yourself and with your baby during this early period. You are both learning.
Here are the specific situations where drowsy signs may be absent, subtle, or easy to miss.
The first days of life, or longer in a premature baby. A premature baby may remain very sleepy until close to their original due date. Drowsy signs in this period may be nearly indistinguishable from the baby’s baseline state. Follow your baby’s lead and prioritize sleep above almost everything else.
A colicky baby during the first two to four months. These babies fuss and cry a great deal and require sustained, intensive soothing. They may move very quickly from calm-alert directly into fussing or crying, with little or no drowsy period in between. If this describes your baby, do not wait for drowsy signs that may never appear. Instead, watch the clock and begin soothing before your baby reaches the end of their comfortable period of wakefulness.
A parent with good timing. Sometimes drowsy signs are not seen because an experienced parent has already begun soothing before they appear — instinctively, based on knowing how long their baby comfortably tolerates wakefulness. This is not a problem. It is good parenting.
A distracted parent. Drowsy signs are subtle, and they pass quickly. A parent who is multitasking, looking at a screen, caring for an older sibling, or momentarily occupied elsewhere can easily miss them. This is not a character flaw — it is the reality of caring for more than one need at a time. Video-recording your baby during the transition from alert to drowsy, as suggested in Blog Post 9, is especially helpful for parents who find themselves consistently missing the window.
A baby who is never left alone to play quietly. Drowsy signs are most visible when a baby is in a calm, low-stimulation environment. When a baby is constantly interacting with a parent, older sibling, nanny, or screen, that stimulation can temporarily mask the drowsiness that is building underneath. A baby who always has something exciting happening around them may appear alert right up until they become overtired, with no visible transition in between.
A baby who is chronically but mildly sleep-deprived. This is perhaps the most important situation on this list. When a baby is carrying a sleep debt — not dramatically sleep-deprived, just consistently a little short — the calm-alert state becomes briefer and the transition to fussiness becomes faster. There is little or no drowsy period because the baby is already operating near empty. The drowsy signs are not missing because they were skipped; they are missing because the baby moved through them too quickly to catch.
If this last situation sounds familiar, the solution is not to watch more carefully. It is to repay the sleep debt — through an earlier bedtime, better-protected naps, or a temporary reset — so that the calm-alert state has room to exist and the drowsy period has time to be seen.
A Parent’s Own Words
One mother described what happened when she made these adjustments for her son:
“It’s been about six days since we implemented your advice of a consistent wake-up at 6:30 a.m., nap at 9:00 a.m., and earlier bedtime. Even having him in bed by 6:30 and having a nap by 9:00 a.m., there was already a significant improvement. He was no longer crying when he was put down for a nap. The last three days he has been going to bed between 6:00 and 6:15 p.m., falling asleep almost immediately and waking up on his own at 6:30 a.m. He plays for less than five minutes in his crib before falling asleep when he is put down for his morning and afternoon nap. I am also finding his drowsy cues to be a little clearer — he has clear yawns and a quietness that comes over him that is more obvious than it has been the last couple of weeks.”
Notice what she observed: as her son’s sleep debt was repaid and his sleep tank was fuller, his drowsy signs became visible again. They had not disappeared permanently. They had been obscured by overtiredness. When the overtiredness lifted, the drowsy signs returned.
She also found this passage from my book particularly apt: “Children who slip in and out of good sleeping patterns are usually going to bed slightly too late every day. They don’t have major problems, but they are always on the edge of becoming overtired and they easily and quickly become very overtired whenever there is a disruption of sleep routines.”
That description — always on the edge — captures exactly what chronic mild sleep deprivation looks like from the inside of a family living with it. Not a crisis. Just a persistent low-grade difficulty that resolves, sometimes remarkably quickly, when the bedtime moves earlier and the schedule holds.
See Blog Post 252 for this mother’s full account.
— Marc Weissbluth, M.D.
