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Baby sleep: 2-12 months

By Raising Children Network
 
 
The good news is that by around six months, your nocturnal duties are likely to decrease as baby starts waking less during the night. There’s still a lot of variety though, depending on your baby’s temperament and sleep routines.
Between two and 12 months, babies generally sleep 9-12 hours at night and from 2-4½ hours during the day, divided between morning and afternoon naps. Most babies aged 7-12 months go to bed between 6 pm and 10 pm.

Daytime sleeps decrease as babies get older. Your baby could have 1-4 naps tending to last from 30 minutes to two hours.

How babies sleep

Your baby is developing fast, and the make-up - or biological basis - of her sleep is changing. In the early months of life, sleep tends to be 50% active and 50% quiet with frequent wakings after active sleep. At around three months, the amount of active sleep decreases and babies begin to enter quiet sleep at the beginning of the sleep cycle. The sleep cycle for babies consists of alternating active and quiet sleep periods of 20–50 minutes each (compared with 90-minute sleep cycles for adults). By six months an infant’s sleep patterns are closer to those of an adult – which means less waking at night.

By the time your baby is six months old, she might be sleeping for stretches of six or more hours.

She may still be waking you during the night, but she should be doing so less often. By eight months, 60-70% of babies are able to self-soothe themselves back to sleep without their parent’s help. Others will continue to wake if they need help to settle back to sleep, or if their parents are continuing to feed them through the night.

Your baby's development and sleep

At around six months, your baby will develop lots of new abilities that can affect her sleep. Babies gain the ability to keep themselves awake. At the same time, they are learning many exciting new skills. The combination of being able to do exciting things and stay awake means your baby might wake more often during the night and be more reluctant to go back to sleep.

You may notice temporary disruptions to your baby’s sleep habits as she becomes more physically mobile. Researchers have noticed that settling difficulties can coincide with crawling.

At around six months, your baby will also figure out object permanence, which means that she can remember that things exist, even when they’re out of sight. This important cognitive development can affect your baby's sleep. While she used to think that you ceased to exist whenever you left the bedroom, she now knows you are still there … somewhere. This means that if she wakes during the night, she may call or cry out because she knows that you are there to come to her.

From 6-12 months, it is also common for babies to begin to experience separation anxiety. This may increase resistance to going to sleep and lead to a temporary increase in night waking.

Feeding

Once your baby is six months old, she does not physically need to be fed during the night.

From this time on, you can begin to teach your baby to go back to sleep without a feed if you wish. Equally, you can happily continue breastfeeds at night, feeding baby before settling her back to sleep, as many mothers do.

Some parents find that a rollover feed – a late feed somewhere between 10 pm and midnight – helps babies sleep longer towards morning. If this works for your baby, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with continuing a rollover. 


The challenge

Most parents of babies under six months of age are still on night duty to some degree. Many will continue to accommodate their baby’s night-time demands long into the future, and can continue to do so as long as they have adequate support and other opportunities for sleep.

For other parents, persistent night-time disturbance can have a serious impact on them and their family life.

Like all aspects of child development, the strength of your relationship with your baby, and the quality of your interactions during the day, can affect both the quality and quantity of your baby’s sleep.

And evidence is mounting that the reverse is also true – the quality of your sleep can affect your health and your mood, and being exhausted can make it hard to invest time and lavish affection on your baby during the day.

Infant sleep problems can affect mothers’ health. An Australian study found a strong association between sleep problems in infants and symptoms of depression in mothers. This relationship did not hold true when mothers of infants with sleep problems were getting adequate sleep.

 

If you are concerned about your baby’s sleep, you may find some useful strategies in our Guide to solving sleep problems. If you have tried these kinds of strategies, and there has been no improvement, or the difficulties are starting to cause you distress, seek professional help. There are effective methods to make sure that everyone gets the sleep they need.

 
 
 
  • Last reviewed16-05-2006
  • References

    Armstrong, K.L., Quinn, R.A., & Dadds, M.R. (1994). The sleep patterns of normal children. The Medical Journal of Australia, 161, 202-206.

    Hiscock, H., & Wake, M. (2001). Infant sleep problems in postnatal depression: A community-based study. Pediatrics, 107, 1317-1322.

    Iglowsten, I., Jenni, O.G., Molinari, L., & Largo, R.H. (2003). Sleep duration from infancy to adolescence: Reference values and generational trends. Pediatrics, 111:2, 302-307.

    Settling and Sleeping, Research Based Professional Resource. Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.