[blindkid] Sleep pattern for blind 5 month old

[DrV]

Hi Alicia,
As a general rule it's normal for a 6 month old to sleep roughly 12 hours
per night & take 2 one hour naps during the day. There is of course a wide
range. A 5 month old will likely sleep a bit more. The exact amount of
sleep probably isn't as important as the quality of how a child acts &
engages while awake.
I trained in General Pediatrics many many many moons ago at a great
program. Based on experience & our interactions with Pediatricians &
Pediatric sub specialists over the years, I think it is fair to say that
most of them have had little training in blindness/VI & most have a
suboptimal functional understanding of blindness & the true spectrum of how
it may impact developmental milestones. There are Developmental
Pediatricians, even some with experience in blindness, but they too may
have misconceptions.
Developmental milestones the first year of life tend to focus on birth, 2m,
4m, 6m, 9m & 1yr. There is a lot of overlap & you need to extrapolate for a
5 m/o. Here are links to the CDC Developmental Milestones (
www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-4mo.html &
www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-6mo.html). These
milestones aren't written in stone & vary a bit from site to site & chart
to chart.
A good place to start is with your Pediatrician, though there is a decent
chance he/she won't really be experienced with blindness & the blindness
may throw them off, so make sure that what he/she says seems to make sense.
An early childhood interventionist should also know, but their experience
with totally blind children & judgment can also vary greatly.
Best wishes,
Eric V



On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Alicia Trust <aliciatrust08 at gmail.com>wrote:

> All,
>
> We have a blind baby girl who is 5 months old now. I hate to seem like I'm
> complaining, but she seems to be sleeping a lot. We don't want to be
> missing signs of a problem. How much really is too much? I don't remember
> our sighted daughter (now 4 years old) sleeping so much.
>
> Thanks,
> Alicia and Matt
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