Newborn Sleep Schedule

Newborns sleep a lot – somewhere around 16 – 20 hours a day! It seems that they only sleep when being held or breastfeeding. And if you dare try to transfer them to their own bed, watch out! Yet, as the weeks pass by, they seem to settle into a routine. Generally they fall into a pretty regular newborn sleep schedule. But just as soon as you think you have their schedule down and begin to make plans, the little one throws you for a loop and changes their ways. As they grow, the kind of sleep, length of sleep, and even timing of their sleep changes. But there is some help for parents trying to encourage newborn sleep.

These changes are completely natural and normal. Sometimes your baby will make a consistent change, sometimes the change will occur for only a few days. The best tip we have is to protect your newborn’s sleep as much as you can. This is sacred time, even when you have additional children. Our second important tip is this will pass. Place a star on your calendar three weeks from today and by the time you arrive at the starred day, your baby will most likely be more consistent with their newborn sleep schedule.

Encouraging Newborn Sleep

To encourage your little one to begin to sleep through the night and develop healthy sleep habits, it is important to notice your little ones sleep cues and stay true to allowing them to nap. Many babies begin sleeping longer stretches of 5 – 6 hours at a time once a day between 2 and 3 months of age (some even a little younger). But it’s not magic, babies need sleep in order to sleep. It seems silly, but an over-tired baby will find it difficult to falling asleep.

Each baby’s sleep cues are different and unique to the little one. However, over time you begin to recognize your little ones cues. My little ones showed many of the same sleep cues. So keep an eye out for a baby who rubs their eyes, lays their head down, yawns, and sucks fingers. Over tired babies may show signs of fussiness too.

To encourage our little one to sleep, we set up a special place for the baby to sleep. Also, try to be as consistent as possible. Our baby had their own bed, which we kept in our room for the first few months for nighttime breastfeeding. Within their bed we always placed a snuggle toy. During the first few months of life, it was out of the baby’s reach but still nearby.

Sleep is a Must for a Newborn

As a new parent, you need to do what you must to help your baby get on a sleep schedule. Yes, while sleeping in their own bed is best for baby, sometimes we need to do what we must. Our little one has slept on us, slept with us in our bed, slept in their car seat, and even napped in their swing. If your newborn falls asleep in the swing, try your best to turn the motion off so your baby doesn’t become dependent on motion to sleep. So long as your little one is safe and secure, take the nap where you can take them as your work to getting your newborn to sleep in their own bed.

With enough time and perseverance, it will happen. Your newborn will sleep and they will sleep in their own bed.

Swaddle Me

When our little one began sleeping more regularly, usually around 3 months, we would swaddle the baby before placing the baby to bed. A blanket swaddle is nice if you have a nice still sleeper. However, my children would thrash their arms and legs and be out of the blanket within moments.

So we found the Swaddle Me blanket, which allows you to easily swaddle your little one. It adds some Velcro to keep the swaddle tight even when they thrash about. It worked magically to keep our little one in their nice swaddle and help encourage them to sleep when tired for as long as the baby needed.

The Newborn Sleep Schedule

We also adhered to the baby’s schedule. Now, our schedule was never set by the clock, but by our little one. Yes, sometimes the baby would sleep at the same time for a week or two, but we never allowed the time on the clock to dictate our baby’s sleep time. Instead, we watched the clock to see how long our little one had been awake. Most babies are only awake for 1 – 2 hours at most. Generally around an hour and a half, we would see signs of sleepiness and begin to get baby ready for a nap or bed.

It’s also important to keep in mind the calendar of life. Special events and holidays often times take your baby off schedule. To recover from these days, it might take your little one some time to work back to their sleep schedule. Daylight Saving Time changes can be particularly difficult for babies too. Check out our post on Planning for Daylight Saving Time.

If your child moves off their sleep schedule, make a mark on your calendar, then place a star three weeks later. Most children will have recovered their schedule or set a new one by this point. We can survive lack of sleep for three weeks!

Baby’s Awake Time

Being aware of baby’s awake time, helped us learn the individual sleep signs of each of our children. Which then helped us to get them to nap before they became overtired. And we did our best to let our little one always sleep in the same place, which often meant foregoing other things to be home during naptime or rushing through the errands to be home in time for nap.

Use your newborns awake time to engage with your baby. Sing songs, plan tummy time, read stories, play with some of their toys. Read our post on Newborn Tummy Time for more ideas on engaging your little one while they are awake. But don’t fret if much of this time is spent breastfeeding. Your little one will need to eat and so many newborns love to breastfeed for most of their awake time as they sleep so much. Be sure to read our Breastfeeding Tips for Month 1 for some ideas and piece of mind.

Remember, awake time is between 1 – 2 hours between naps and bedtime. This means that you should start looking for newborn sleep cues around the hour or hour and a half mark. Getting your baby down while they are drowsy but not overtired is key.

Newborn Sleep Schedule in the First 3 Months

Between 1 and 3 months of age, our little ones always began to lay out their nap schedule. Generally they enjoyed 3 naps a day. The early morning nap was usually the longest, around 2 – 3 hours. The mid-afternoon nap was generally 1 – 2 hours. And the early evening nap was usually around 45m – 1 hour.

Followed by overnight sleep, which was generally two different stretches. The first stretch was the 5 – 6 hour stretch, followed by a 3 -4 hour stretch with a quick feeding in the middle. As baby grew, generally the overnight sleep changed first with the first stretch becoming longer and longer until we were finally able to get a full night’s sleep.

A Caution for Parents when Determine a Newborn Sleep Schedule

Sometimes your baby will sleep a full 8 hours at night, but it might only be a fluke. Don’t be discouraged if you get one good night and then are back to waking up in the middle of the night. One night of 8 hours and you will feel like a million bucks. Try not to overdo it until your baby is more consistently sleeping through the night.

Remember, every baby’s schedule will be different and each day it may change a little. The times of the day’s schedule depend on when your baby wakes up in the morning and your newborn’s sleep cues. Trying to force a baby onto a timed schedule may work for some infants, but for others it will only bring stress for the whole family.

Newborn Sleep Schedule Between 3 and 6 Months

By now, you have really gotten into the groove of getting your child to sleep and hopefully you are getting some sleep too. Thank goodness for most nights of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep!

Your child will begin to to lengthen their awake time increasing to closer to the 2 hour mark of wakefulness. This is the perfect time to add songs, fingerplays, baby movement, and more tummy time into the schedule. Don’t feel like you need to do it all every day, but add in what you can where you can. Nap times will become more consistent, with your baby taking between 1 and 3 hour naps at a time. Usually napping around 5 – 6 hours a day.

Newborn Sleep Schedule After 6 Months

Around 7 – 9 months, our little ones stopped needing that third nap a day. They transitioned to the morning and afternoon nap schedule on their own. The morning nap was usually still longer than the afternoon nap in our home. What prompted that switch? We stopped seeing the signs of tiredness during the early evening. Some babies might even start fighting their normal bedtime.

Bedtime was a little earlier when this first started as we would see the nighttime cues begin a little earlier than usual. We followed our baby and began bedtime sooner. Yes, that means sometimes I was in bed by 6pm to try to get some sleep. But it never lasted long because soon our little one was sleeping 10 – 12 hours overnight, so I could go to sleep a little later. And with time, we could slowly move our baby’s bedtime a little later.

Sleep for Baby is a Must

There are so many wonderful things that you can give your little one in their first few weeks of life, and sleep is one of the best. A baby who gets enough sleep tends to be happier, calmer, and more playful. They also tend to sleep more. So, create a special place for baby to sleep and follow your little one’s sleep cues as much as possible. Keep an eye on the clock to watch how long your baby has been awake, and allow them to sleep as much as you can.

Helping our baby sleep wasn’t something that we pieced together on our own. A good friend of ours recommended a book while we were pregnant with our first baby. This book was an easy read with chapters divided up by the baby’s age, so you could focus only on what you needed right now. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child helped us to develop a plan that worked for our family and allowed everyone to get the sleep they needed.

Leave us a comment below with your best survival tips for new parents or areas where you struggle the most with helping your child sleep. We’d love to hear from you.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.