All About: Wake Windows
As a new parent, figuring out baby sleep can be intimidating! When should they sleep? How long should they sleep? How will I know if they’re getting enough sleep?
The questions go on and on.
Learning about wake windows can answer these very questions.
To help you better understand wake windows, I’m discussing:
What wake windows are
Why use wake windows
Tips for using wake windows
Rules for adjusting wake windows
What are wake windows?
Wake windows are basically the time your child is awake between sleeps. As you can imagine, the length of the wake windows changes drastically as the baby gets older. For newborn babies, the length of their standard wake window is quite short. It can be as short as 45 minutes.
And, for some babies, all they do during their wake window is eat.
Those first few weeks when it seems all your baby does is eat, sleep, and poop, that’s what they’re doing. (Don’t worry—it will get better!)
The upper range of the 0-8 week wake window is around 60 minutes. That usually means that a baby moving into the infant stage can go longer between sleep periods. During this time, the sleep gets more organized and a responsive daily plan or schedule can start to develop.
As the infant gets older, the length of their wake windows increases. By 12 weeks, they could be awake for as long as 90 minutes. A wake window of 2-2.5 hours at 5 months means that your child will likely be transitioning to 3 naps per day.
By 1 year, you’ll find that your child can easily stay awake for 3.5-4 hours. They will have most likely transitioned to 2 naps a few months before this. Sometime before 18 months, the wake window lengthens and your child moves to one nap per day, usually in the early afternoon.
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To get a better estimate of your child’s wake windows, check out the chart below.
In my experience as a sleep consultant, I’ve found that these wake windows tend to apply to most children. They’re what I use as a starting point with my clients, which we can then tweak as needed. I’ll share more on how I tweak things later.
Now that we have an understanding of what wake windows are, it’s important to discuss why we use wake windows.
Why use wake windows at all?
The early days of sleep training were all about the set schedule. Your child should get up at a specific time, eat at a specific time, and sleep at a specific time. If your child didn’t match with this schedule, you were doing it wrong.
And it led to some parents forcing their child into a schedule that didn’t match with what the child actually needed. Which led to very tired infants and toddlers!
Wake windows recognize that babies, infants, and toddlers have different sleeping patterns and varying sleep needs. Some babies need more sleep than others. The wake windows provide parents with some general guidelines where they can begin, but they aren’t hard and fast rules.
For example, you might have a baby who is an early riser. They may consistently wake up at 6 am. If you follow a specific schedule, it might tell you they’re supposed to wake up at 7 am and go down for a nap at 9 am. When you try to keep them up until 9 am, you’ll have a very cranky, overtired infant on your hands.
But following wake windows, you’ll know your 5-month-old should be awake for about 2 hours, so naptime should happen around 8 am, not 9:00.
On the other hand, you might have a child that requires less sleep, so a schedule might try to make them go down for a nap before they’re ready. That makes for a long process of getting them to sleep and/or a short nap.
I’ve got rules for adjusting wake windows at the end of the post to help you figure out how to best adjust your little one’s schedule.
Tips for using wake windows
When working with wake windows, always remember these are guidelines. It does no good to take this chart and treat it like it’s written in stone. Every child’s needs are different. Some might do best with a shorter wake window, while others will do better with staying awake for a longer amount of time.
The ages listed can vary somewhat, as well. Your child might do better staying awake longer before their age matches the chart. And some kids might do the 3-2 nap transition later than others.
You are the one who knows your child the best, so you’re the one who needs to plan for what your child needs. And since wake windows are flexible, you can always adjust what you’re doing if it isn’t working.
For many kids, their sleep needs vary throughout the day. I usually suggest shorter wake windows in the morning and a longer wake window before bedtime. Others are more awake in the morning and need a shorter wake window in the late afternoon or evening.
Because life, there will be times when your baby falls asleep at the wrong time or wakes up too early. Don’t worry! You didn’t break the baby. If naptime is too short, shorten the next wake window. If the baby is showing signs of being overtired, you definitely want to adjust the wake window. Being overtired can lead to short naps, which leads to a very tired, and often fussy, kid. Watch for the signs and add or take away time from the wake window as the situation warrants.
A final tip is make sure you aren’t adjusting things constantly. I know that sounds like I’m contradicting what I just said, but I’m not. While there is some trial and error to finding the right wake windows for your child, don’t expect to know immediately if the changes need to happen or if they’re working.
Just because it took 20 minutes for your infant to fall asleep this morning, you shouldn’t automatically assume they’re ready for longer wake windows.
If you noticed they’re taking longer to fall asleep at all their naps for a few days, then you might try adjusting it.
Rules for adjusting wake windows
To help you out as you’re trying to figure out what your child’s wake window is, here are the rules that I use with my clients. I start with the amount of time listed in the chart above for the child’s age. I then give recommendations based on parent input to develop a more “by the clock” (BTC) plan.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
If a nap is 20-30 minutes long and waking happy, they’re likely undertired and you should try adding back 15 mins on the awake time
If a nap is 45 minutes long and waking unhappy, they’re overtired and you should subtract 15 minutes to the awake time.
If a nap time was working (good nap, happy, going down easily) is suddenly not working, add 15 minutes of awake time.
If they’re waking 45 minutes after bedtime, pull back 15 minutes of awake time from the awake time before bed.
If they take longer than 15 mins to fall asleep, add 15 minutes of awake time.
If they wake up super cranky and fussy, pull back 15 minutes of awake time.
That’s it.
Now that you understand what wake windows are and why we use them, you’re ready to identify your child’s wake windows and develop a plan for them!
Check out the determining sleep needs blog for more evidence based information AND charts!
Of course, if you’re looking for help developing a sleep plan for your child, check out my services to find the best one for your needs.
