How to Establish a Baby Sleep Routine: 0-12 Months

Baby sleep is at the top of the list of things new parents struggle with. "Why does my baby keep waking at night?" and "how do I establish a sleep routine?" are on nearly every family's mind. This guide covers how much sleep babies need from 0 to 12 months, the safe sleep rules, and how to build a healthy routine.

How Many Hours a Day Do Babies Sleep?

Sleep needs change with age, and every baby is different.

• Newborn period (0-3 months): babies sleep around 16-17 hours a day, in short 1-2 hour stretches. There's no official "target" for this period because the evidence is insufficient. That is entirely normal.
• 4-12 months: on the joint view of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), babies in this age range should sleep 12-16 hours in 24 hours, naps included.

Newborns haven't yet developed a circadian (day-night) rhythm. So in the first weeks it's perfectly ordinary for your baby to confuse day and night, and it isn't cause for concern.

Baby Sleep Table by Month

The table below summarises typical sleep distribution by age. The figures are averages; your baby seeming rested and content during the day matters more than matching the numbers exactly.

Age	Total sleep (24 h)	Night sleep	Daytime naps	Awake window
0-1 month	14-17 hours	In blocks	4-6 naps	45-60 minutes
1-3 months	14-17 hours	8-10 hours (broken)	3-5 naps	1-1.5 hours
4-6 months	12-16 hours	9-11 hours	3 naps	1.5-2.5 hours
7-9 months	12-15 hours	10-11 hours	2 naps	2.5-3 hours
10-12 months	12-15 hours	10-12 hours	2 naps	3-4 hours

The "awake window" is how long a baby can stay awake after a sleep without becoming overtired. Exceeding that window usually produces the classic "tired but can't sleep" picture — settling gets harder and the sleep is shorter.

0-3 Months: Observing Rather Than Scheduling

In this period, watching your baby is more realistic than trying to impose a schedule. Newborns sleep in 2-4 hour blocks and can't distinguish day from night. The most useful thing you can do is keep days bright and noisy and nights dark and quiet, laying the groundwork for the circadian rhythm to settle.

At this age feeding and sleeping are intertwined; babies often fall asleep at the breast or bottle. You'll find how feeding intervals widen with age in our baby feeding schedule by month.

4-6 Months: The First Real Pattern and the 4-Month Regression

The fourth month is a turning point. Your baby's sleep architecture starts resembling an adult's: they move between deep and light sleep stages and wake briefly at each transition. A baby who slept well can suddenly start waking several times a night — this is the 4-month sleep regression.

The regression usually lasts 2-6 weeks and isn't permanent. The approach that works best is to keep the routine unchanged and leave room for your baby to develop the ability to return to sleep on their own. Establishing new habits during this period — picking them up at every waking, rocking them to sleep — can turn into a dependency that outlasts the regression.

At this age naps are usually three a day, dropping to two over time.

7-9 Months: Moving to Two Naps

From the seventh month most babies move to two naps a day, morning and afternoon. Night sleep lengthens to 10-11 hours, but two new factors come into play:

• Separation anxiety. Your baby now knows you continue to exist when you leave the room, but isn't sure you'll come back. Crying at bedtime can increase.
• New motor skills. Having just learned to sit, crawl and pull up, your baby practises all of it in the cot at night too.

Both are temporary and developmentally expected.

10-12 Months: Towards a Single Nap

Night sleep reaches 10-12 hours in this period and some babies begin refusing the morning nap. The move to a single nap usually completes between 12 and 18 months; two naps is still typical between 10 and 12 months.

Rather than dropping the morning nap abruptly, a gradual transition — shortening the morning sleep and bringing the midday nap earlier — smooths the process.

When Does Sleeping Through the Night Start?

Many babies start moving to a longer night sleep (around 5-6 hours) at about 6 months. But most still wake between sleep cycles, and many don't sleep the night unbroken until close to their first birthday.

Avoid firm expectations like "my baby should sleep through by month X." When night sleep consolidates varies enormously from baby to baby, and that is a natural part of development.

Safe Sleep Rules (AAP 2022)

The most critical topic, ahead of any routine, is safe sleep. The AAP's safe sleep recommendations aren't suggestions but a safety requirement, and they reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS):

• Place your baby on their back for every sleep. This applies to every sleep throughout the first year.
• Use a firm, flat sleep surface (an approved cot or bassinet) with nothing on it but a fitted sheet. Bouncers and swings are not safe sleep surfaces.
• Keep pillows, blankets, soft toys, bumpers and weighted products out of the cot.
• Share a room but not a bed for at least 6 months (room sharing can reduce SIDS risk by around 50%). The AAP does not recommend bed-sharing.
• Prevent overheating, offer a dummy at sleep time, and keep vaccinations up to date.

How to Build a Healthy Sleep Routine

A consistent evening routine that prepares your baby for sleep helps them settle more easily over time. Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Teach the Difference Between Day and Night

Keep the curtains open for daytime naps and allow normal household noise. At night, dim the lights and create a quiet, calm environment. This supports your baby's circadian rhythm.

2. Establish a Consistent Pre-Sleep Routine

A simple routine repeated in the same order each night — a warm bath, a change of clothes, a soft lullaby or a book — signals to your baby that it's time to sleep.

3. Put Them Down Drowsy but Awake

Trying to put your baby into the cot while they're drowsy rather than fully asleep can help them learn to fall asleep on their own.

4. Learn to Read the Sleep Cues

Spotting tiredness signs like yawning, eye-rubbing and fussiness, and putting your baby down before they're overtired, makes settling easier.

The Value of Sleep Tracking

Recording your baby's sleep times and durations helps you understand their pattern and shape your routine around it. With Baby Wallie you can easily log sleep, feeds and daily routine, and follow development consistently. You can put general questions about baby sleep to the Wallie AI assistant too — it provides information and doesn't replace a medical assessment.

When Should You See a Doctor?

To work out whether night waking is about feeding or about sleep patterns, take a look at our baby feeding schedule by month. To decide which app suits you for keeping a sleep log, see our baby tracker app comparison.

If you have ongoing concerns about your baby's sleep, or observe unusual breathing sounds, extreme distress or feeding problems, talk to your paediatrician. This content is for general information and does not replace individual medical advice.

If you're wondering whether the night waking lines up with a leap, enter the due date into our leap week calculator to see the calendar.