Why have a baby sleep routine? Babies and children function better when they know what is coming next. They don’t like surprises and usually fight against it. Children often have other ideas of what they want to do next and sleep is not part of it especially when they get that little bit older, they may have had plans to redecorate the house and you are going to ruin it by suggesting putting him to SLEEP! Hence you need a baby sleep routine.

As a general rule of thumb, new born babies will need a nap every 2 hours from when they awake.  As they get older the naps are either reduced or pushed out gradually by 10 to 15 minutes.

The following are the baby sleep routines that I find work best as it allows for your baby to sleep and eat at times that are the most beneficial for him/her. However if you have a routine that works for you stick with it.

Short Nappers

If you find your child will only sleep for 40 minutes when he/she should be having a 2 hour nap then you need to listen to your child when she awakes. Is your child crying? If she isn’t then leave her be, she may well return to sleep. If she is fussing a lot, go to her and try patting/rubbing/shushing her back to sleep. Do this for the period until it is the time you want her to get up. For short nappers it is very important that their nap times are pretty much the same time every day so that their body clock can develop. You need to be patient with this and continue doing this until your baby learns to sleep longer.

Early Risers

If your child is awakening too early for you, (the normal wakening time would be between 6 & 7) you need to look at the naps. However, if your child is up at 5am then your child will not last until 9am for their next nap so you will need to put your child for a nap earlier. You should try and hold off on the nap until about 8ish if you can and let your child sleep a bit longer (max 20mins longer). This will have a knock on effect to the lunchtime nap so you may have to put her to bed 15 minutes earlier at lunch then try and keep to the rest of your routine as normal. Also if your child starts wakening at 5am only give enough of a feed to get her through to 7am and give the rest then.  If you start giving a full feed at 5am her body will start to expect it and then it will become the norm.

Happy Babies

Once you have your child in a routine that works for you then be very happy with yourself. However, do remember that things do change and you do need to tweak the routine frequently to keep up with your child’s developments.

When babies reach developmental milestones it often affect’s sleep. One very common issue is when your child starts to crawl or move about on their own around 8/9 months they can suffer from separation anxiety and may begin to wake during the night. Normally they just want reassurance that you are there and everything is ok. Be careful how you handle this, always reassure your child but be careful not to start any negative sleep associations such as staying with them until they fall off to sleep, giving a bottle or bringing him to your bed. This is normally just a phase that you have to grin and bear for maybe 2/3 weeks and then he will move on.

The following sleep routine is suitable for new born babies from about 4 weeks:-

(5 hours total daytime sleep)

During the night if your baby wakes before 4am give your baby a full feed otherwise ½ and give the rest at 7am.

The following sleep routine is suitable for babies between 2 and 3 months old:-

(4 hrs sleep in total)

At this stage it is worth introducing water during the day from time to time between feeds as sometimes your baby may be thirsty rather than hungry.

If your baby wakes at about 5am and seems hungry but then does not drink well at 7am I would advise that you start offering water at 5am instead of milk.

The following sleep routine is suitable for babies between 4 and 5 months old:-

(4 hours total daytime sleep)

If you find at 7am your child is not hungry for his milk feed, this is an indication that you can reduce/cut the last feed your baby had during the night.

The following sleep routine is suitable for babies between 6 and 9 months old:-

(3.5 hours sleep in total during the day)

As your child gets older his naps will change, over a period of time you will be cutting out the morning nap. An indication that your child no longer needs a morning nap is a) is harder to settle for the nap or b) is harder to settle for the lunch time nap.

Your child will need a lunchtime nap of some sort probably until he is about 2.5/3. A sign that he is getting to much sleep during the day would be that he is harder to settle at night or wakening earlier in the morning. You should always monitor your child over a 3 day period to get a true picture and rule out teething etc.

So, if you find your child is consistently harder to put to sleep at night then you should reduce his daytime nap. You do this gradually by reducing it by 10/15 minutes (depending on how long the nap is) every 3/4 days until you have resolved the problem.  Now you do need to be realistic, if your child is 1 and you have been shortening the naps every 3 / 4 days so that he is getting less that 1 hour of a nap and you still do not see a result then there is something else wrong.

You should always reduce the nap rather than push out the bedtime while your child is having naps.

Now you may feel by reading this that your child is similar to a robot! As I read it back to myself it sort of sounds like that, sorry! Your child is not a robot and you will have days where everything goes to pot! You will have days where you can’t stay at home or it is just not possible that your child sleeps at certain times etc. Don’t panic, that is absolutely fine, if you have established a good routine that works for you, be it what I have suggested or not, and you need to go out or do something else, don’t worry, once it is in place you can go and do things. However your child may be a bit fussy that day, but you will know why and the next day get back to the routine. If you have your routine in place 5/6 out of 7 days then you are doing fine.