As parents, no matter how tired and messy our kids are during active moments, we have always loved watching them as they peacefully sleep like an angel. That’s when we love showering them with kisses and giggles. But if you had been very observant, I’m sure you have witnessed your baby smiling and sometimes even laughing while sleeping. What could have been the reason for that? Is that natural or it’s something to worry about?
According to studies, there are few reasons why this physiological phenomenon happens.
•Part of Baby’s Development
During his waking hours, the baby gets to experience and explore a lot of things that are essential for their emotional development and brain development as well. When he sleeps this development doesn’t stop. Thus, even when he is already asleep, he’d still recognize and recall the emotions he experienced during the day, including the sad part, which explains why there are also times they seem to fake-cry during sleep for a few seconds. This is not something to worry about. This only goes to show that your baby is actively registering all the emotions he could remember and it is all just part of his development.
•Rapid Eye Movement Stage
When we sleep, there are 2 phases we experience. First is the Non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement), which happens from the moment we close our eyes, when we are still conscious, until the moment when we finally got to sleep. In this stage, our body adjusts. Our muscles relaxes, our brain waive tends to slow down and our heart rate and breathing slows down as well. The second phase is REM. This usually happens more than an hour after we drifted off to sleep. This is when we start deep sleeping and sometimes experience dreaming. For infants, it could be that they are already in this stage and they seem to have funny dream and they tend to react to it.
•Medical Issues
In some very rare cases, laughter while sleeping may indicate some medical issues. If your baby constantly (like ALWAYS) experience this and you could notice some issues as well such as weight loss, troubles in sleeping, loss of appetite, you may want to mention this to your doctor so you could get your baby properly consulted and checked by experts. But that is only on very rare cases so don’t stress yourself over it.
Overall, smiling and laughing while asleep doesn’t seem to be something scary or something we should worry about. Smiles and laughters manifests happiness so just think of it as their way of showing that even in their dreams, they recognize happiness. Give your little one a lot of happy experiences and happy moments he should remember even when he is drifted off to dreamland.
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