Baby Sleep Schedules by Age: Realistic Ranges From Newborn to Two Years

Most sleep-schedule charts show you one number per age. The research shows a range, and it is far wider than any chart admits: at six months, healthy babies sleep anywhere from about nine to seventeen hours a day. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine declines to recommend any amount at all under four months, because normal variation is so large. So this is a guide to the ranges, what is changing underneath them, and what a realistic day looks like at each stage.

One caution that applies throughout: wake windows are a useful heuristic and not a research finding. There is no published evidence for any specific minute range; every chart with minutes on it comes from a commercial site. Watch the baby and the clock together, and expect your baby to be somewhere in a wide band.

Newborn to three months

The range. About 14.6 hours a day on average, anywhere from roughly 9 to 20. Around three naps, though one to five is normal. The longest stretch averages under six hours and can be under two. Sleep comes in chunks of up to about three and a half hours with no real day-night pattern yet.

What is changing. The body clock is being installed: the melatonin rhythm establishes somewhere between about six and fifteen weeks, and the sleep-pressure system emerges around the second month. Schedules do not work yet because there is nothing to schedule against. More than half of all sleep is the noisy, active kind: grunting, grimacing, twitching, irregular breathing, brief eye-opening. That is sleep, not waking.

A realistic day. Feed, a short awake window of roughly forty-five to ninety minutes, sleep, repeat, around the clock. Bright light by day and real darkness at night is the one intervention with a mechanism behind it for day-night confusion. Start a short wind-down from the beginning, the same two or three calm things, even though it will not “work” for weeks.

Stop worrying about. Noise in sleep (do not pick up at the first sound). Feeding to sleep, which seven in ten mothers do at this age. Not being on a schedule. Spitting up.

Not appropriate. Any settling method, night weaning, or scheduling by the clock.

Three to six months

The range. About 13.6 hours at three months, 12.9 at six, with a six-month range of roughly 9 to 17 hours. Night wakings are at their lowest of the whole first year, under one on average. Daytime sleep at six months runs from under half an hour to over six hours in healthy babies.

What is changing. Between about two and five months sleep reorganises: babies start entering sleep through deep quiet sleep rather than light active sleep, which is why the baby who used to fall asleep in your arms and transfer now wakes the moment you move. Every population dataset shows the longest night stretch growing fastest in exactly this window, about forty minutes a month. It is a progression in the physiology even when it feels like a regression in the house. From about five months the morning wake time becomes remarkably fixed.

A realistic day. Waking around the same time each morning, three to four naps of varying length with awake windows of roughly an hour and a half to two and a half hours, and by five to seven months a settling into about two naps of an hour and a half plus a night of around ten and a half hours. Because wake time barely moves, a later bedtime subtracts sleep: in one study each hour earlier was worth about half an hour more night sleep.

What helps. The bedtime routine, now more than ever. Stop swaddling at the first attempt to roll, usually three to four months. A pacifier at sleep times if it suits. Drowsy-when-tolerated as a direction, not a rule.

Not appropriate yet. Checks-based or extinction methods; they have never been tested under six months.

Six to twelve months

The range. About 12.6 hours at nine months and 12.9 at twelve, with a twelve-month range of roughly 10 to 16 hours. Around two naps. The longest stretch averages a little over eight hours across the second half of the first year, ranging from three to nearly fourteen. Night waking goes up in this window, to about one a night on average, and that is in the population data, not a failure. At six to twelve months about four in five babies still wake at least once and three in five still have a milk feed.

What is changing. Motor milestones: newly crawling and newly walking babies wake more often and for longer. Separation awareness around nine months goes with more night waking. Babies who settled themselves at six months commonly become signallers again between nine and twelve. You did not undo your work.

A realistic day. Wake around 6 to 7, a morning nap after roughly two to three hours awake, an afternoon nap after another two and a half to three and a half, bedtime that keeps the night at around ten to eleven hours. Two naps of an hour to an hour and a half each is typical; a thirty-minute nap is also normal.

What helps. Everything from before, plus this is the first age at which settling methods have an evidence base. Match the method to the baby. Check the bedtime is plausible before treating resistance as a problem. Room-sharing is still recommended through at least six months, and the AAP’s preference extends towards a year. More solids will not buy a longer night; more daytime calories reduce night feeds without reducing night wakings.

Stop worrying about. The increase in waking. Still feeding at night. Standing in the crib at 2am. Practising skills instead of sleeping.

Twelve to eighteen months

The range. About 12.6 hours across the second year, from roughly 10 to 15. Between one and two naps, with day sleep around two to two and a half hours. Night wakings under one on average. Sleep terrors peak now, in about one child in three at eighteen months, and they are strongly inherited.

What is changing. Walking, and everything that follows it. The move from two naps to one is coming but usually not yet: the published evidence puts it at fifteen to twenty-four months, with the population shifting around eighteen. Bedtime resistance becomes possible, and it is very often a timing problem.

A realistic day. Wake around 6 to 7, two naps with awake windows of roughly three to four hours, or once the transition happens one midday nap after five to six hours awake, bedtime around 7 to 8.

What helps. The routine, now with a book. Check the bedtime before treating resistance as defiance: a temporarily later bedtime, walked back. Protect naps; fewer than one child in forty stops napping before two, so a toddler who “won’t nap” has a settling problem, not a transition. Keep them in the crib: toddlers in cribs at this age had earlier bedtimes, shorter settling and fewer wakings, and there is no evidence of benefit to moving early. For sleep terrors, do nothing and protect sleep quantity; intervening tends to make them worse.

Eighteen to twenty-four months

The range. About 12.6 hours, roughly 10 to 15. One nap for most, around an hour and three quarters at two, with a range from under an hour to nearly three. Night wakings under one on average. Almost all children this age still nap; most stop between three and five.

What is changing. Mostly the child, not the sleep: climbing, talking, objecting, negotiating, leaving the room.

A realistic day. Wake around 6 to 7, one nap after roughly five to six hours awake, bedtime around 7 to 8. Set bedtime against what actually happened at childcare rather than the theoretical schedule.

What helps. Consistency across the week matters more than perfection on one night. Timing over technique when bedtime is a fight. Calm, consistent limits; this age is the centre of the behavioural treatment literature. A comfort object is reasonable and low-risk now.

Stop worrying about. Still napping. Still in a crib. Curtain calls and stalling. Nightmares, which a child under about two cannot report.

Nap transitions, honestly

The only nap transition with a published anchor is two-to-one, at fifteen to twenty-four months. No peer-reviewed study identifies an age for four-to-three or three-to-two. When a chart tells you your baby should drop a nap at a given month, it is telling you what the chart’s author believes.

How to use any of this

• Anchor the day on a fixed morning wake time; it is the most stable point in a baby’s sleep from about five months.
• Set bedtime by when your baby is actually sleepy, then hold it steady.
• Use wake windows as a rough guide to when to start looking for tiredness, not as a timer.
• Expect the range, not the average, and a bad night after good ones.
• Do the routine every night. It is the one thing on this page with a randomised trial behind it and most of its benefit shows within three nights.

If you would like the schedule worked out for your baby’s actual age, wake time and naps, with the routine and the settling approach written in, that is what a Lamplight sleep plan is: ten minutes of questions, a plan in minutes, from $79.