crawlingbabyInfants who have started crawling wake up more often at night compared to the period before the crawling, reveals a new study by Dr Dina Cohen of the University of Haifa’s Department of Counseling and Human Development, Israel.

 

The doctoral study, conducted under the supervision of Prof Anat Scher, observed 28 healthy babies who were developing normally, examining them once every 2 to 3 weeks. Their motor development and sleeping habits were monitored from age 4 to 5 months and continued until age 11 months. Their sleep patterns were measured by actigraphy, taken together with parental reports from diaries and questionnaires. The infants’ crawling development and progress was observed and videoed by the researcher.

 

The study showed that the average age for the babies to begin crawling was 7 months, and that this was accompanied by an increase in the number of times they woke up at night, from an average of 1.55 times per night to 1.98 times (based on the actigraph measurements). The incidents of wakefulness also lasted longer, about 10 minutes on average, as per parental reports.

 

The study also found that the scope and complexity of the changes, which included waking more frequently and moving around a lot during sleep, were more pronounced among those who started crawling earlier. By contrast, those who started to crawl later demonstrated only one change—waking up more frequently.