Does darkness/light affect sleep?

[Cydonia]

DS is 10 weeks and still in a cot in our room. At the moment he generally goes to bed about 11pm, wakes for a feed any time between 3am and 5.30am, then takes a while to settle, then sleeps another couple of hours or so and is usually awake and wanting up by about 7am. This does vary a lot though, sometimes hell wake every 2/3 hours.I would ideally like him to sleep longer and was just wondering how much light affects their sleep? I can't decide whether he's best with the room in darkness ( worry that he 'panics' when he wakes up and its dark? ) or with my bedside light on ( too light and making him wake up? ) Would a night light be better, I'm not sure how much light they give off. I tend not to change him at night if I don't have to as that means going into another room and putting the 'big light' on which makes him startle. We have a blackout blind in our room which fell down last week and I think he was worse getting back to sleep in the morning when it was light.
Just wondered what everyone does and what works best!

I don't have an answer for you, except that in the womb he didn't ever have any light, so I don't think waking up in the dark is scary for him! Also, humans are diurnal, meaning we're up with the sun and down with the sun, he'll probably get more like that, but babies need more sleep then they could get being like adults. I'm guessing proximity to you will be a bigger issue for him than light.

I am due in December, so my kidlet will have lots and lots of darkness to start out with.

trust me he won't be scared of the dark at this age! fear of darkness typically develops between age 2-3, & like PP said it was dark in the womb.

Dark/light DOES affect sleep, the human body regulates with the sun, so when its dark we want to sleep, when its light we wake up. At night I used to leave the room dark, only putting on a dim light if I absolutely had to change him, & I wouldn't interact/speak with him, it was down to feeding business & straight back to bed so he got the message that night was night. Also I definitely found blackout blinds help my DS to sleep better in the early mornings & for longer during daytime naps too. So I'd recommend getting that fixed lol!

WRT helping him sleep longer, he is still so young & it will come.xx

Blind is fixed, and going to get a night light for the spare room where I change him. Think I'll keep my light off too then so he learns that dark = night time = sleep. Well, hopefully anyway!