Are you crushing the nap schedule or is the nap schedule crushing you? Do you have the right bedtime? Does your child get the sleep they need? Many (and I do mean many) parents are getting hung up on concerns about how their child is sleeping when really the problem is the gap between reality and their expectation for what should be happening. If you don’t know what realistic expectations are, it’s hard to know how well sleep is (or isn’t) going. And answering the “what is realistic” question is harder than you think.
This podcast episode will cover why realistic expectations are so challenging, what science and experience suggests are grounded expectations for the first year, and parameters to know if you and your child are on the right track. Full details are available in the episode with summary show notes are below.
Where Do Sleep Expectations for Kids Come From?
The shorter list is, where don’t they come from. Ask 3 people what normal sleep looks like and you’ll get 3 different answers. Some books suggest that your newborn should be sleeping 12 hours by 12 weeks. Others would tell you that waking to eat 3X a night by their 3rd birthday is a non-issue. Poke around well-intentioned comments in online communities and you’ll find unicorn babies sleeping 16 hours a day along with more challenging babies waking 8X a night and the casual reader has no good cues to understand which is a realistic guidepost for their child.
Why Are Solid Guidepost So Challenging?
Accurate and consistent guidelines for babies and toddlers and sleep are challenging for three key reasons:
- Many expectations for baby sleep are based on old understandings/books on baby sleep. Our understanding of how sleep works and what normal looks like have evolved.
- The normal range of sleep for most ages is +/- 3 hours. This is huge!
- Certain developmental issues (the maturation of the circadian rhythm, consolidated naps) take time and some babies will achieve them sooner than others.
A few readers have shared feedback on the book,“I wish it had more schedules/charts” but these are the reasons why concrete schedules/charts are a challenge. There is a wide range of normal!
What About The Sleep Through the Night Guidepost
One of the biggest guideposts parents are interest in is, “When will my child sleep through the night?” And to be clear there are a million things that can work against your child sleeping through the night. The lack of independent sleep is clearly the biggie. But if you establish independent sleep and gradually night wean (as outlined in the book), it is realistic for most kids to be reliably sleeping through then night by 6-9 months. And by STTN I mean sleeping solidly until a ~5 am snoozebutton wakeup.
Normal Sleep by Age
0-3 months – total crapshoot
3 – 6 months
- Less chaotic but naps still short/variable
- Consistent bedtime
- 0-2 feedings per night (sometimes 3)
- Night typically 11 hours but can be as short as 9 or as long as 13
6-12 months
- Naps more predictable
- Consistent bedtime and morning wake time
- Full night weaning (except for an early am snoozebutton) is possible here if you choose to do so
- Move towards a more BTC approach happens organically during this time
And know that no matter what you do there will be bad days or even bad weeks. Short naps and mysterious night wakings will plague even the most diligent parent. It will feel very uncomfortable when this happens. You might have a mini freakout, “I have done all the right things, why is this happening!” Resist the urge. A few rough nights or short nap days may mean nothing. It may mean that babies are variable and these things happen. It’s uncomfortable and unenjoyable. Sometimes parenting is like that.
As always you can listen to the podcast episode here or subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast aggregator. If you have any suggestions/questions for the podcast feel free to email me at alexis@preciouslittlesleep.com. And warm reviews are always welcome!
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I have a 10 month old who is sleep trained and still has some night wakings. I believe it’s usualyl caused by a schedule issue. She has one person who watches her and she still isn’t consistent with naps and i feel like she should be by now. Some days she is still taking 3 naps bc they are all short. We do 3 hour wake times. On the weekends I keep her on 2 naps but she won’t nap long. I do a wind down, white noise, pitch black room but during the week for my sitter her naps are usually 45 mins. How can I help fix this?
I think those are 2 separate issues – 1) short naps and 2) night waking, yes? Typically wake times are shorter in the mornings and later in the afternoon. So some experimentation might help – the 2:3:4 is common at this age. I would definitely aim for a longer wake time prior to bedtime. For example if bedtime is say 8 pm that would mean no sleep past 3:30 – 4 at the latest. Even on short nap days. So a starting point would be to make this a firm boundary – no sleep past X time in the afternoon to set you up for better night success. Then consider some experimentation to see if it’s possible to get naps longer than 45 minutes. It may NOT be (especially if she has a long night or is a low sleep needs kiddo) but independent sleep and the right schedule for your kid (again experiment here) would be the path forward. Good luck!
Hi Alexis.
I see you mention a low sleep needs kiddo. What does this mean and how do you know if you have one?
Thank you
What age is it reasonable to expect them to wean the snooze button feed?
Define reasonable 😉
Ultimately it comes down to who wants it more and (generally) sleep drive. You can try to get rid of it at any age. The snoozebutton is less about “omg must eat” and more about giving a boost of soothing to eek out that final hour or two of sleep. When you wean off it, some kids will simply sleep through and BOOM happy dance. Others will instead wake up at the previous snoozebutton time and now ARE AWAKE. In which case parents generally choose the lesser evil of going back to the snoozebutton.
Just to follow up: I got the sense from my pediatrician that it is better to wean off of snooze feeds sooner rather than later. Is there any reason we should wean off of snooze button feeds if it’s working for us?
Also, it sounds like from what you’ve said that it’s possible to “go back” to a snooze button feed. Does that engage the goddess of consistency? 🙂 is there danger in trying to wean off of the snooze button feed and restarting it if it seems like 5 am wakings aren’t going to work for our family?
Thank you!!
The key issue is…what happens if you wean off the snooze feed? Are they just up for the day at 5 am? Do sad mornings work to get PAST it? And the only way to get answers to these questions is to try it and see. So what happens if you give it 3 weeks and nope – everybody is up at 5 am and miserable and oh why oh why did we think this was a good idea – then what? Well you go BACK to the snoozebutton. Does this enrgage the Goddess? Eh…not generally no. But you aren’t really solving any thing so much as kicking it down to the road for later.
Nobody can say if it’s a good experiment or not but I’ll say this – if you want to end the snooze button then commit for weeks (not days) and combine with “sad mornings” and expect that it’ll take a while to see results. good luck!
Since I got my second baby girl Nora, I realized HOW different children can be. My firstborn, Linda, was magical-excellent sleeper, predictable, didn’t have any “normal” sleep issues and she is that way even now as a beautiful bright 3-year old. Nora was born od May 22 this year and boy was I surprised when she was joyfully watching me from 12-3 A.M. our third night at the hospital 🙂 She is 8 weeks now, she sleeps only in Ergobaby during the day. At night she sleeps beside me, but wakes up often due to Moro reflex, breastfeeds also often and there is no sign of cosolidated sleep. If it weren’t for this site and Alexis’ advice, I would have thought many times that I was doing something wrong, even though I am a doctor and have read literally everything on baby sleep and behaviour. But I am giving her as much cuddles and love as possible as I know this will pass quicker than I think. That’s why I can’t wait for your book to arrive to try to make things a bit better as we approach 3 month mark. Thank you!
My DD slept through the night quite consistently from 3.5 months until about 11.5 months, not even waking up to nurse. She has started waking frequently at night but settles quickly in arms then it is almost impossible to put her back in her crib, or if she does transfer, she wakes up again a few hours later. I’m seeing lots of info on starting to sleep through the night but what do I do if she has stopped when we had no issues before and we are following the same pattern? Its been like this for about 6 weeks now. After 4 weeks of struggle we moved her bed time a little earlier and now we are fighting less to get to sleep the first time.
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