Some babies – especially premature babies – have underdeveloped muscles above their stomach (sphincters), which means that acidic stomach contents can leak back up into the feeding tube (oesophagus) and the back of the mouth. This can be painful and more likely to happen in milk feeding babies as they have liquid food. Reflux strikes during sleep after a feed, especially when babies are lying down on their back to sleep. Usually, you see the milk coming back up, but not always.

Like tonsils in the back of your throat, adenoids help children keep infections in the nose at bay by trapping bacteria and viruses before you breathe them into your lungs or swallow them. Adenoids start to shrink by the time children start school. If your baby or child’s adenoids are very big they can get frequently infected this can really affect your baby or child’s sleep quality. Look out for:

• A stuffy or squeaky nose, so the child breathes through his mouth
• Snoring.
• Lots of waking up.
• Sleep apnea, where your child stops breathing for a few seconds.
• Sleepy during the day.

Swollen or big adenoids can also lead to problems with hearing, because they can press on the entrance of the Eustachian tubes (these tubes drain fluid from the middle ear and maintain air pressure in the ear). If the tubes get blocked fluid can build up in the middle ear and cause glue ear. Prolonged glue ear needs to be treated promptly to prevent hearing problems and language delay.

If you have any concerns that your child may have a sleep problem with an underlying medical issue, then the best thing to do is go is record videos of your baby or child’s disrupted sleep, keep a sleep diary to show patterns of the problem and take them along to show your child’s doctor.

For a list of useful contact details for The Portland Hospital, please click HERE.