Mother & Baby Magazine July 2018 Back Issue

SWEET DREAMS
Fact: it’s harder getting to sleep in the summer. Not just for babies, for everyone. ‘There are lots of reasons why,’ says baby sleep consultant Lucy Wolfe. ‘But the biggest is that the summer means longer, brighter days, and we’ve all evolved to be awake during the hours of daylight, and to sleep in darkness.’ As soon as light enters our eyes, it stimulates the hypothalamus, the part of our brain that controls our automatic nervous system. It works like a switch, prompting our brain to start raising our body temperature and unleashing the wake-up-and-get-moving hormone cortisol. ‘And when it gets dark, the opposite happens,’ says Lucy. ‘Our body temperature goes down and the brain releases the soothing, sleep-related hormone melatonin.’ In winter, that happy equation works beautifully, but in the summer, your baby needs to go to bed before it gets dark, so she doesn’t benefit from the sleep-inducing signals of the fading light.