Baby sleep: needs, naps and daily rhythms
Look at naps and nighttime sleep together, alongside feeding and how your baby seems when awake. One short nap does not tell you whether the whole day is working.
Sleep needs by age
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 12–16 hours in 24 hours, including naps, for ages 4–12 months, and 11–14 hours for ages 1–2 years. These are population recommendations, not a daily target for every baby. It gives no fixed recommendation under four months because variation is wide.
Naps and nights develop together
Young babies sleep in short stretches and need feeds and help overnight. As they grow, more sleep tends to happen at night. Development can interrupt a familiar pattern without meaning you have done anything wrong.
Give your sleep log a purpose
Compare days with an early last nap against days with a later one. Record when sleep actually began and ended, then look at bedtime. A pattern can give you a useful question to explore; it cannot establish why something happened.
Keep safe sleep separate from tracking
Place babies on their backs on a firm, flat sleep surface and follow local safe-sleep advice. A sleep log records what you enter. It does not monitor breathing or make a sleeping environment safe.
SleepStart
Keep track of sleep.
When to ask for advice
Ask your doctor, pediatrician, or local healthcare professional if sleep, feeding or exhaustion is causing concern. Seek urgent help if your baby is unusually difficult to wake. For breathing difficulty, call your local emergency number.
Sources
Content prepared by LilleStart.
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine: Sleep duration (US)
- American Academy of Pediatrics: Getting your baby to sleep (US)
- Raising Children Network: Baby sleep at 2–12 months (Australia)
- NHS: When to get urgent medical help for babies (UK)