Can babies sleep with their arms as pillows?

Parents often hold their babies in their arms to sleep, and some let their babies sleep with their arms as pillows. Parenting experts say that this is okay to do so appropriately, but it must not be done for a long time. The baby's head is relatively delicate, so the baby should be given a softer pillow to sleep. Moreover, the baby's pillows are relatively short, and the adult's arm may be too high, so it is best not to let the baby sleep with his arm as pillow often.

Can babies sleep with their arms as pillows?

The quality of a baby's sleep ensures the child's growth and development needs. As long as the baby sleeps soundly at night, he will be more energetic during the day and his body will naturally be healthy. Some children like to sleep with their head resting on the adult’s arms. Will this affect their growth and development? How should babies sleep? Then read the following article carefully.

Is it okay for babies to sleep with their heads on an adult’s arm?

1. It is not conducive to the development of children’s head shape. Babies aged 0-4 months have soft bones and a not very beautiful head shape. Sleeping with an adult’s arm as a pillow can easily affect the development of the baby’s head shape. Babies under three months old should not use anything as a headrest when sleeping. A baby's head shape will usually be determined within 100 days and it will be difficult to change after that.

2. It is not conducive to the development of children’s spine. Because adults have higher arms and often sleep with their arms as pillows, the baby's cervical vertebrae and spine are easily deformed, affecting development. Infancy is the golden period for the baby's spinal development. In the first three months, the baby's spine has almost no curvature and is completely straight. It is only in the following months that the baby begins to strengthen the neck and back muscles by raising the head, etc., to form a curvature. Sleeping with your arms as a pillow can easily cause spinal damage and abnormal spinal curvature, or even deformity.

3. Not good for the mother’s health. When a child sleeps with his or her arm as a pillow, it is easy to cause pressure on the arm, causing numbness and soreness in the upper limbs, a sense of pressure on the spine and shoulders, affecting the quality of sleep, and you will not be able to take good care of the baby.

What should adults do when babies sleep?

1. When you feed your baby, he will stop crying and fall asleep after eating. This simple and convenient method is what many mothers like to do. However, if the baby develops such a habit, he will subconsciously suck the nipple every time he wakes up. This overly frequent eating habit can easily disrupt the baby's gastrointestinal function.

2. Because mothers need to wake up many times at night to take care of their babies, many mothers choose to keep the lights on all night to facilitate feeding and changing diapers for their babies. However, babies have poor ability to adjust to their surrounding environment. If the lights are on indoors all night, it will disrupt the baby's adaptation to the natural laws of day and night, affect the peak secretion of growth hormone at night, and slow down height growth.

3. Some mothers like to rock their babies to sleep while singing lullabies. This behavior is actually very dangerous. Rocking can cause the baby's immature brain to collide with the hard skull, causing small blood vessels to rupture and intracranial hemorrhage, resulting in "shaken baby syndrome". Accompanying symptoms include intellectual impairment, amblyopia or blindness. In severe cases, it can cause cerebral edema and even death.