Five out of 10 Filipino babies go through more than one diaper change every night. Fifty-eight percent of them who had a second change and 56 percent who had a third change, actually wake up.
These were among the insights gathered from the first-ever Philippines Baby Sleep Survey, which was presented by Pampers in a recent symposium entitled "Discovering the Secrets of Baby Sleep."
The study was validated by Dr. Luis Rivera Jr., a noted pediatric sleep specialist from the Makati Medical Center.
Dr. Rivera told mothers and media representatives who attended the symposium that there are actual studies suggesting that a relationship exists between the importance of sleep and a child’s learning and memory.
On the other hand, lack of sleep, Dr. Rivera said, may bring about a deficiency in a baby’s memory, language and numerical skills, and other cognitive abilities.
While sleep is defined as "a state of perceptual disengagement from and responsiveness to the environment," it is also, Dr. Rivera said, "an active and dynamic process that actually becomes the primary activity of the developing brain. It is during sleep when a child’s developing brain processes the events of the day and stores them in his memory."
How much sleep does a child need then?
It varies according to age, Dr. Rivera said, citing his own experience and proven theories.
An average child sleeps for up to 10 to 12 hours daily, while four-year-olds sleep for up to 10 hours at night, and from one to two hours at daytime. Infants, he continued, sleep up to 16 hours daily.
Talking about the full results of the Pampers baby sleep survey, Ms. Joy Casuga of TNS Trends disclosed that while 100 percent of Filipino moms believe in the importance of uninterrupted sleep for babies, most Filipino babies are not sleeping well through the night.
"There continues to be an opportunity to educate Filipino mothers on how to best provide babies with better sleep," she pointed out.
Procter & Gamble has come up with Pampers All Night designed to provide babies with superior dryness for up to 12 hours. Noting the importance of sleep to a baby’s overall development, P&G said Pampers All Night can protect babies overnight from wetness, which wakes six times more babies than a typical disturbance factor such as noise, according to the sleep survey.
