If you’ve heard people talking about their babies’ wake windows recently and felt out of the loop, you’re not alone. The concept has gained popularity in the past few years, but it wasn’t commonly used until fairly recently. So your parents, midwife or health visitor may never have mentioned wake windows, but modern sleep consultants swear that it’s crucial to grasp the concept.
There is contradictory information out there, and it can be confusing. Fortunately, it’s a fairly simple concept, and one you can adapt to fit your needs and parenting style. It’s based on the experience of families and childcare providers rather than stringent scientific study, but it can still be helpful to think in terms of wake windows to guide you when caring for your baby.
Here are the basics on baby wake windows by age and how they work.
What are wake windows?
Put simply, a wake window represents the amount of time between periods of sleep, when a baby is awake and engaged. So if a baby wakes at 6 a.m. and then takes a nap at 8 a.m., their first wake window was two hours long.
In the most basic sense, noting wake windows is simply a way of observing a baby’s behaviour. For instance, you might notice that a newborn tends to be awake for about an hour in the morning before falling asleep again.
However, some take the idea a step further, arguing that carers should use wake windows to intentionally shape a baby’s sleep schedule so that they are optimally rested throughout the day. The idea is that there are appropriate wake windows for different ages of children, and allowing them to stay up for longer than those periods can lead them to be overtired and grizzly; therefore, parents and carers should encourage babies to nap or go to bed before they’ve been awake for too long.
What is the science behind wake windows?
While understanding the basic idea of wake windows can be helpful for some families, there has been little to no scientific research into the ideal length of wake windows for babies of different ages.
In other words, you can observe a baby’s wake and sleep times and try to follow their natural cues, but if you see a chart specifying that a 3-month-old should have a wake window of exactly 120 minutes, those guidelines are not based on scientific study, and they aren’t necessarily going to work for all kids.
That said, there is ample research showing that people of all ages need sufficient sleep to be healthy and thrive, and that babies under a year old need 12–16 hours of sleep, including naps. Napping can even help with word acquisition in toddlers. There is also evidence that babies under 6 months of age have highly variable sleep, but that their sleep patterns tend to stabilise as they grow older.
So, while wake windows themselves haven’t been studied, we do know that babies need a lot of sleep relative to adults and that much of it occurs during naps. We also know that paying close attention to your baby’s cues and offering regular naps can help the day go more smoothly.
How do you follow wake windows?
Even among those who fully believe in adhering to wake windows, knowing how to follow them can feel like an uncrackable code.
Sleep consultants often use the phrase “offer naps” to refer to creating conditions for a baby to sleep, such as laying them down in their cot or Moses basket in a dimly lit room. When following wake windows, the idea is to observe the amount of time a baby can comfortably stay awake, and then offer a nap just before the end of the wake window to avoid them becoming irritable.
The baby may or may not take you up on the offer to nap, but some people do find that by routinely offering naps at consistent times, they can nudge their baby to start adhering to that schedule.
A step-by-step guide to using wake windows
Steps you can take when offering naps and trying to implement wake windows include the following:
- Observe the baby’s sleep and wake times over a few days to look for patterns. Some find it helpful to jot down the length of naps and wake windows, or use an app such as Napper or Baby Connect to do so.
- Pay attention to sleep cues. These include rubbing eyes, staring into space, droopy eyes, reddened eyelids and yawning.
- Determine how long your baby can be awake before they get sleepy. That is their wake window (note: these will vary in length throughout the day. The first wake window might be much shorter than the last).
- Set up a safe, dark sleep space and offer a nap. You might use blackout curtains or a noise machine to help ease your baby to sleep.
Depending on how closely you want to follow a schedule, you may want to gently rouse your baby if they’re napping longer than they usually do. This is entirely a personal preference, however — there’s nothing wrong with letting them snooze.
For newborns (under 1 month old), wake windows are largely irrelevant because they can only stay awake for very short periods of time and often fall asleep on their own, even in a bright or loud setting. As they grow older, their wake windows gradually get longer, and you can start to offer naps to try to prevent them becoming too long.
Baby wake windows by age
While using charts isn’t necessarily the best strategy for all parents and carers, some find it useful to have basic guidelines around typical sleep patterns and then experiment to see what works best for them. If you are in that camp, you can use the below recommendations as a starting point, then experiment to see what works for your situation.
| Age | Wake window |
| 2 months or younger | 45-90 minutes (4-6 naps per day) |
| 4 months | 1-2 hours (3-4 naps per day) |
| 6 months | 2 1/2 hours (3 naps per day) |
| 9 months | 3-3 1/2 hours (2-3 naps per day) |
| 12-18 months | 3-4 hours (2 long naps per day) |
| 2 years | 5-6 hours (transition to 1 nap per day) |
Newborn wake windows
Newborns and babies younger than 3 months old have very short wake windows. Often, all they can manage to do is feed and have their nappy changed before nodding off yet again. They typically need around 16 hours of sleep in a 24-hour-period, with roughly half of that occurring during the day. It’s not uncommon for them to be awake for less than an hour between naps.
3-month-old wake windows
As babies grow older, their amount of daytime sleep gradually decreases. By 3 months old, many are sleeping four to five hours during the day, and are awake for roughly one to two hours between naps. However, at this age, sleep is still highly variable, and it is not uncommon for one day to be totally different from the next.
6-month-old wake windows and beyond
After 6 months, many (but not all) babies fall into more predictable patterns, often napping two or three times per day with two- to four-hour wake windows. If, by this age, you’re not seeing an improvement in their nap schedule and their ability to fall asleep and stay asleep for naps, you may decide to look into sleep training.
Do you need to follow wake windows?
It’s certainly important that a baby gets enough sleep overall, but as long as they’re falling within a typical range and your health visitor and GP aren’t concerned, whether to stick to specific wake windows largely depends on your parenting style. Some find it helpful, while others find that trying to follow a strict schedule just adds to their stress, as shown by a 2017 study published in Early Child Development and Care.
Particularly when a baby is younger than 6 months, there’s so much variability that you shouldn’t be too concerned about a schedule. You can set up their environment to encourage sleep (by making it dark or using a noise machine, for instance). You can make sure your baby is well-fed and has a clean nappy before naps. Maybe give swaddling a try, if you do it safely. The NHS website has some useful guidance on this.
But there may still be a lot of unpredictability at that age, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong if your child isn’t falling in with the “recommended” wake windows.
Are there ways to change wake windows?
If a child is falling asleep in a pattern that’s totally inconvenient for you, you can try to shift their schedule.
To do this, try moving their sleep periods back or forwards in 15-minute increments until you reach a better schedule. So, if they’re waking up at 8 am and you want to shift their schedule earlier, you might wake them at 7:45 am one day and 7:30 am the next.
The main thing is to observe your child’s behaviour to see whether they appear happy and well-rested during the day, and to avoid shifting their sleep schedule more than 15 minutes at a time.
The bottom line
Wake windows can be a useful tool for making sure babies get enough sleep and helping them develop a healthy sleep schedule as they grow. However, putting too much stock in charts that recommend super-specific schedules can be counterproductive.
That said, being aware of your baby’s typical wake windows can be really helpful in terms of maintaining your schedule — and sanity. For example, if you know your baby is likely to be awake from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., that’s probably a good time to schedule a doctor’s appointment or lunch date.
Wake windows work best when carers base them on their own observations and their baby’s cues, rather than trying to force a baby into a set schedule that is externally imposed.
