2006 - The Year in Sleep

New Year's Day, a time for parades, bowl games, and year in review articles. Here on our humble little baby blog, it's time to look back on one of the hot button topics of 2006: Owen's sleeping patterns.

Back in September we analyzed the first month of Owen's sleeping patterns. We've kept up the trixie tracking, and now we bring you 2006 - The Year in Sleep! As a refresher, each row in the graphic on the right is 24 hours worth of sleep patterns, starting at midnight, with more recent days at the top. The blue areas represent times when Owen was asleep, and yellow areas are periods of wakefulness.

So what's happened in the world of sleep since that first month of sleepless nights? A quick glance will tell you they've become a lot more restful. The almost random pattern of blue and yellow from the first month has separated into distinct days and nights. Owen's bedtime has marched steadily back from midnight to about nine o'clock, and hopefully the trend will continue for a bit longer. Those painful patches of yellow between 2 and 4 am have shrunk considerably. An ultra reliable 2 to 3 hour swing nap developed, and was only disrupted by travel and daycare. And, the blue stretches have on occasion lasted all through the night (9 h 8 min on Dec. 21st and 7 h 57 min on Dec. 28th).

Looking ahead to 2007, Owen will keep on sleeping, and we'll keep tracking, and with any luck our nights will be nothing but blue.