Increased bursts of sleep in infants are linked with
growth spurts. Little is known about the biology of growth spurts or the
mechanisms and pathways that underlie episodic
growth in babies. Findings from the first study of its kind measuring the link between daily growth and sleep show the two could be linked. Growth spurts are tied to an
increase in total
daily hours of sleep as well as an increase in the number of
daily sleep bouts, the time from the onset of sleep until awakening.
The findings revealed that infants had uneven bursts of sleep, with the amount of sleep over a 24-hour period increasing at irregular intervals by an average of 4.5 hours per day for two days. In addition, the infants' number of sleep episodes per day also increased in intermittent surges of an average of three extra naps per day for two days. There was a significant association between these increases in sleep and growth spurts in body length, which tended to occur within 48 hours of the sleep bursts. The researchers determined that the likelihood of a growth spurt increased by about 43 percent for each additional sleep episode and by 20 percent for each extra hour of sleep.
