Raise your hand if you want your offspring to grow up to be grumpy! No? None of you?  Thought not. This is a sentiment that no parent of sound mind would strive for, and for the sake of argument I’m assuming you are in that group. A new study says that there is one big [...]

When my son was a newborn, he slept in the middle of the daytime action. On the couch or glider in the living room, the floor, in our laps, or with the bassinet carted into the thick of things. I always assumed his little brain was in dream land. But it turns out he was [...]

I love watching new babies reveal their little personalities — and it happens so soon in the first year of life. Early on you can see the little extroverts, the more cautious ones, the highly selective, and the curious, watchful types. Our babies are all so different, and it’s neat (and frustrating, and confusing) to [...]

If you follow my writing, you know that I’m mildly obsessed with the subject of sleep. Baby and kid sleep, sleep biology, dreams — these topics are endlessly fascinating to me. But I’m also a parent, and I know that in practical terms, sleep is tricky and unpredictable. As I wrote recently, sleep deprivation has real [...]

Here’s a weird cause of baby sleep problems: marital stress. Problems in a marriage appear to cause sleep problems for babies, researchers say. Interestingly, the reverse is not true. You’re not fighting with your spouse because the baby keeps you up all night. But you might be keeping the baby up by fighting with your [...]

The first time my baby mysteriously slept – and slept, and slept – for what seemed like the whole day, I was worried. Was there something wrong? Of course not, my mom assured me. The baby was just having a growth spurt. Sure enough, she did seem bigger when she woke up. Now, science has [...]

When you’re drowsy, you may feel like your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders (it takes you longer to do work, you forget details, you aren’t as enthusiastic about playing tea party). But you’re still awake, right? Findings this week in the journal Nature tell us that may not actually be the case. When we’re [...]