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Baby Sleep Schedule by Age

There is no timetable, only a shape. A 4-month-old usually fits three or four naps into the day with 1½ to 2¼ hours awake between them; a 9-month-old takes two or three naps on 2½ to 3½ hours; a toddler takes one. Every time here is a window, and by bedtime that window is over an hour wide.

Set your baby's age and the time she woke this morning, and this draws the shape of a day for a baby that age — a starting pattern, not a prescription. Every time on it is a window, and the windows get wider as the day goes on, because four estimates stacked end to end are wider than one. Print it for the fridge, or hand it to whoever has her next as a calendar file.

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Naps in this plan 3 Starts from the number most babies this age still take — three to four at this age. Move it and the whole day moves with it; change the age and it resets.
Feeds on the printed sheet The sheet will not put a time on a feed and this page will not either. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidance is to feed when she seems hungry rather than to a clock, so what the column adds is somewhere to record what happened — it changes the sheet’s layout, not the day.

Every awake stretch here comes from the same table as the wake window calculator on this site — that page answers how long one stretch runs and shows the band for every age; this one stacks those bands into a whole day. Neither has a table of its own, so they cannot disagree.

Three things this page will not do. It will not wake a sleeping baby to keep a plan. It has nothing useful to draw for a toddler who has stopped napping altogether — when the last nap goes, bedtime simply moves earlier, usually by roughly the length of the nap she lost, and there is no clever arithmetic to add. And under four months it will not check the day against a 24-hour total, because no consensus figure is published under 4 months: the sleep panel declined to publish one on the grounds that the normal variation is too wide, and inventing one to make this page’s own arithmetic look tidy would be the exact failure the rest of the site exists to avoid. Every window here is an estimate and the ranges around them are wide on purpose.

A starting pattern, not a prescription
Bed between 5:15pm and 8:30pm
The two edges are the day where every stretch runs short and the day where every stretch runs long, so most days land somewhere between them. The windows widen through the afternoon because the estimates stack. Your baby is the authority; this is a shape to start from, not a timetable to hit.
Wake to bedtime, one lane per sleep
7:00am8:30pm
Awake Could be napping Asleep in every version of the day Bedtime window

Each lane is wider than the nap in it, because both when it starts and how long it runs are ranges. The bright slice — the stretch she is asleep in the short version of the day and the long one at once — only shows up for the first nap and only at some ages. Everywhere else the honest answer is that the two versions of the day have already come apart.

Awake for the day
7:00am
The only fixed point here. Everything after it is arithmetic.
Nap 1
Down between 8:30am and 9:15am
Expect it to run 45m to 1h 30m, which puts her up somewhere between 9:15am and 10:45am.
Nap 2
Down between 10:45am and 1:00pm
Expect it to run 45m to 1h 30m, which puts her up somewhere between 11:30am and 2:30pm.
Nap 3
Down between 1:00pm and 4:45pm
Expect it to run 45m to 1h 30m, which puts her up somewhere between 1:45pm and 6:15pm.
Bedtime
Between 5:15pm and 8:30pm
The widest window on the page, because it is the sum of every window above it. If the last nap ran short, use the early end.

This day adds up to 12h 45m to 18h 15m of sleep in 24 hours — 2h 15m to 4h 30m in naps and 10h 30m to 13h 45m at night. The published figure for this age is 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, naps included, and this plan sits inside it. The early edge of the bedtime window is held back by that same figure: stacking every stretch at the short end would land bedtime in the middle of the afternoon and hand her more sleep than anybody publishes for the age, so the brake is on.

Take the day with you

The sheet below prints on one page for the fridge, with a blank column for what actually happened — because a starting pattern is only worth anything once you have written the real day next to it. The calendar file puts the same windows into whoever’s calendar has the baby next.

Download the caregiver calendar (.ics)
For whoever has her next

Hand the day over as a calendar

A nanny starting on Monday, a grandparent arriving at nine, the other parent taking Saturday. The file below puts the same windows into the calendar they already look at — one block per sleep, running from the earliest it could start to the latest it could end, so what they see is the shape of the uncertainty rather than a tidy slot somebody invented. Each block carries the range in words, the reminder not to wake a sleeping baby, and the safe-sleep line, because the file is what a caregiver will be reading and none of this page’s wording travels with it.

Download the caregiver calendar (.ics)

It opens in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook. The times are written without a time zone on purpose: a handover happens in the same house as the baby, so the blocks read the same on every phone in it.

For your own site

Embed this on your site

Paste these two lines into a page and readers get the day drawn for whatever age they pick, without leaving your site. The second line is the credit, and it has to stay outside the frame — a link inside an iframe is invisible to the page it sits in.

See what it looks like

What this is. A starting pattern, not a prescription. It stacks published age bands end to end and shows you where the arithmetic lands, and it cannot see your baby. The windows are wide because the ingredients are wide: an awake stretch is a range, a nap length is a range, and four of each laid end to end make a bedtime window over an hour across. Four days of your own notes will beat this page, which is why the printed sheet has a blank column next to every window.

What it refuses to do. It will not print a clock time as though somebody measured it, and it will not tell you what your baby should be doing by a given month. It attaches no month to sleeping through — waking at night is ordinary well past the first birthday. It has no opinion on any sleep-training method, no AI in it, and no way to know whether a day that fits the chart was a good day. Nothing here is promised to work, because nothing about a baby can be.

Safe sleep first, whatever the plan says. Every one of the naps drawn above happens the same way as the night: on their back, on a firm flat surface, in a cot clear of blankets, pillows, bumpers and soft toys, in your room for at least the first six months. Nothing weighted goes on or over a sleeping baby. If your baby is very hard to settle, unusually sleepy, feeding poorly or something simply feels wrong to you, that is a call to your pediatrician or health visitor rather than a scheduling problem — and none of this is medical advice.

How this is worked out

  1. You give it two things: your baby's age in whole months, and the time she woke this morning. The number of naps starts from what most babies that age still take, and you can nudge it.
  2. The awake stretches are the same bands as the wake window calculator on this site, and they come from the same place: total sleep per 24 hours from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus that the American Academy of Pediatrics endorses, divided by the number of naps babies that age usually take. No publisher this site may cite prints a wake-window table, so the bands are compiled rather than quoted, and they are wide.
  3. Nap lengths are the softest figures on this page and they are labelled as such. Nothing citable publishes a nap-length table either, so the ranges here are broad enough to hold what actually happens: the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that a newborn may only sleep 1 or 2 hours at a time, and a single long midday nap in a toddler is a different animal from a twenty-minute catnap in a pram.
  4. The day is then stacked: wake, awake stretch, nap, awake stretch, nap, and so on to bedtime. Each window is worked out twice — once with every stretch at the short end of its band and once with every stretch at the long end — and the two answers are the two edges of the window you see. That is why the first nap window is narrow and the bedtime window is over an hour wide by the afternoon.
  5. Finally the day is checked against itself. The naps and the resulting night are added up and compared with the published total sleep for that age, and if the plan lands outside it the page says so rather than quietly presenting a day that does not add up.
  6. The same day is then printed and handed over in two other shapes. The sheet is one page, A4 or US Letter, and it carries a blank column headed "what actually happened" beside every window — because a starting pattern is worth something only once you have written the real day next to it. The calendar file blocks out each sleep from the earliest it could start to the latest it could end, so what a caregiver sees is the shape of the uncertainty rather than a slot somebody invented, and every block carries the range in words. Neither is generated on a server and neither asks for anything.
  7. Feeds are the one thing this page will not put a time on. The American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance is to feed when a baby seems hungry rather than to a clock, so the sheet's optional feeds column is a place to record what happened and nothing more. It changes the sheet's layout, not the day.
Questions

The short answers

Like a shape rather than a timetable. A four-month-old usually gets three or four naps into a day with an hour and a half to a bit over two hours awake between them; a nine-month-old has two naps and can manage the best part of three hours awake; a toddler has one nap and a long afternoon. The chart above draws that shape from the age you set. What it will not do is hand you clock times, because the clock times depend on when your baby woke and how the first nap went, and both of those are known to you and not to this page.
Because every ingredient is a range. The awake stretch is a range, the nap length is a range, and by the time you have laid four of each end to end the honest answer for bedtime is more than an hour wide. A page that prints "bedtime: 7:00pm" has thrown that arithmetic away and kept the reassuring part. This one keeps the arithmetic and shows you what it costs.
Almost certainly not. The NHS puts it plainly: your baby will have their own pattern of waking and sleeping, and it is unlikely to be the same as other babies you know. A plan is a hypothesis for one day. If the naps land twenty minutes either side of the window, the plan was close enough; if the whole day runs early or late, move your own starting point rather than trying to move the baby. Three or four days of your own notes will beat this page, which is the entire argument for writing them down.
Slowly, and from where she already is rather than from where a chart says she should be. Write down what actually happens for four or five days, look for the rhythm that is already in there, and then move one thing at a time by ten or fifteen minutes every few days — usually the morning wake-up first, because everything else hangs off it. Nothing on this site suggests waking a sleeping baby to hit a number. If your baby was born early, most guidance is followed from the due date rather than the birth date for the first year.
Around four months most babies still take three or four; at six to seven months two or three; at eight to twelve months two, dropping to one somewhere in the second year. Those are descriptions of what babies that age usually do, not targets to hit, and the number moves for weeks either side of any transition. The chart above starts from that count for the age you set and lets you change it, because you can see what she is actually doing and this page cannot. If she is fighting one of them for a fortnight, the nap transition checker on this site is the page that will tell you to wait.
There is no published bedtime for any age, and anybody printing one has made it up. What there is, is arithmetic: bedtime falls one awake stretch after the last nap ends, so it moves with the morning wake-up and with how the naps went. That is why the bedtime line above is a window rather than a time, and why it is the widest window on the page — it is the sum of every window before it. If the last nap ran short, use the early end; if it ran long, use the late end. The one thing worth holding steady is the order of events before it rather than the clock time of it.
Yes, and both are the point of the page. The sheet prints on one page in A4 or US Letter — or saves as a PDF from the same dialog — with every window printed and a blank column beside it for what actually happened. The calendar file is a .ics that opens in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook, with one block per sleep running from the earliest it could start to the latest it could end. Nothing is generated on a server, nothing asks for an email address, and every block in the file carries the same caveat the page does.
Your baby's age, your usual wake-up time, any nap count you set and your paper size are saved in this browser under one key, so the day opens as you left it. The Clear button under the controls deletes it, and a private window forgets it on its own.

Where this comes from

  1. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (PubMed Central) (2016). Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations: A Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4877308/
  2. American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) (2024). Healthy Sleep Habits: How Many Hours Does Your Child Need?. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/sleep/Pages/healthy-sleep-habits-how-many-hours-does-your-child-need.aspx
  3. NHS (2025). Helping your baby to sleep. https://www.nhs.uk/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/helping-your-baby-to-sleep/
  4. American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) (2024). Getting Your Baby to Sleep. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/sleep/Pages/getting-your-baby-to-sleep.aspx
  5. American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) (2024). How Often and How Much Should Your Baby Eat?. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/feeding-nutrition/Pages/How-Often-and-How-Much-Should-Your-Baby-Eat.aspx
  6. American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) (2022). How to Keep Your Sleeping Baby Safe: AAP Policy Explained. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/sleep/Pages/A-Parents-Guide-to-Safe-Sleep.aspx
  7. NHS (2025). Reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). https://www.nhs.uk/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/reduce-the-risk-of-sudden-infant-death-syndrome/

Every link above was opened and read when this page was last updated. Snuggle is not affiliated with any of these organisations and none of them has reviewed this page. Nothing here is medical advice.

Go deeper

The reading behind this page

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How Much Sleep Does a Baby Need by Age

The one place in this subject where real numbers exist — printed at their published width, with the ages the sleep panel refused to cover left honestly blank.

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The Baby Bedtime Routine

Four steps in the same order every night, taking twenty minutes. It sounds too small to matter, and it is the one thing here that was tested on its own and worked.

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Wake Windows by Age

How long babies stay awake between sleeps at every age, drawn as bands — plus the part nobody else prints: where the numbers come from, and what they are not.

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Wake Windows for a 6 Month Old

Two to three hours awake, two or three naps, and the month the day changes size — with the published numbers on night waking, which is more ordinary than anybody tells you.

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The 3 to 2 Nap Transition

The third nap is the late-afternoon one, and it is being squeezed by a baby who can now stay awake for nearly three hours — but at this age the nights are worth ruling out first.

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The 2 to 1 Nap Transition

The day loses a whole sleep at an age when the child has opinions about it — which is why this one takes weeks, and why an early bedtime carries the whole thing.

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Sleep Regression at 4 Months

Sleep cycles arrive at about four months and they do not go away again — which is why this one is a maturation rather than a regression, and why it behaves differently from every age after it.

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Next door

Wake Window Calculator

Your baby's age in months, and the awake time to expect before the next sleep — drawn as a band, with the whole by-age table underneath it.

Open it

Nap Transition Checker

Age plus the signs you are actually seeing, and an honest read on which nap transition is near — including the answer that it is not one yet.

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Newborn Schedule Printable

The feed-awake-sleep cycle as a sheet: the order printed, the times blank, and a worked example beside it so nobody has to guess what the shape means.

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The app this site is for

Snuggle does this with your baby’s own pattern.

This page works from an age band, because an age band is all a web page knows about you. Snuggle starts from the same bands and then blends them with what your baby actually did today — how long she lasted, when she went down, how the last nap ran — and shows on the face of the ring how sure it is. Early estimates say they are early.

It logs sleep, feeds, nappies and growth in one tap on a dim red screen, and every caregiver in the household is on the same timeline in their own account. The arithmetic runs on the phone, on your baby’s own history. There are no AI features in it.

In development for iPhone and Android. Not released yet — when it is, it will be on this site.

What Snuggle is