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“My baby seems to sleep thru the day and night, only waking up to eat and goes right back to sleep. Is this normal?” Questions like these are common for new parents. There is no set amount of time or schedule that an infant to stick to when sleeping, because every infant is different. Some infants need up to 2 hours more or less sleep than the average infant. Here are the averages:
1 month -8 ½ hours nighttime, 7 hours daytime
3 months -10 hours nighttime, 5 hours daytime
6 months -11 hours nighttime, 3 ¼ hours daytime
9 months -11 hours nighttime, 3 hours daytime
12 months -11 ¼ hours nighttime, 2 ½ hours daytime
18 months -11 ¼ hours nighttime, 2 ¼ hours daytime
2 years -11 hours nighttime, 2 hours daytime
3 years -10 ½ hours nighttime, 1 ½ hours daytime
Remember that most infants will need large amounts of sleep. If your baby refuses to go to bed before 11 at night or has poor sleep habits, it is not because he doesn’t need a lot of sleep. Quite the reverse, he is probably sleep-deprived and needs your help to learn good sleeping habits to sleep better. Here are a few questions to help you figure out if your infant is sleep-deprived:
Does your infant go to bed much earlier than usual, on occasion?
Is your infant cranky, irritable, or overtired during the day?
Do you have to wake your infant up in the mornings?
Does your infant go to sleep on every car trip?
If “yes” was answered to any of these questions, your infant may be getting less sleep than he needs. In order to change this you need to help him develop good sleeping habits and set a bedtime. Your infant will then get better sleep and feel more up to learning about the world around him. In time he will stop taking naps during the day and sleep only at night. With preschoolers and young elementary school students they still need close to 10 or 11 hours of sleep at night. This will lessen as he gets older.
