How to set up a routine for your baby's sleep? Here're the fundamentals

Routine is a powerful tool for parents to keep their babies happy, healthy and secure. Here are the fundamentals of setting a routine for your baby.
 

The 12-hour rule
 

As the parent, you can aim to set a morning wake-up time, and it should be consistent every day (plus or minus half an hour). Bedtime will be 12 to 13 hours later. This means that if the baby is waking up at 7 am, bedtime will be between 7 pm and 8 pm.

Wake windows
 

Wake windows refers to how long the baby should be awake in the day before you offer a nap. Before 4 months, use wake windows to guide your daily activities so you don’t have an overtired baby on your hands. After 4 months, your nap timing will be more predictable, but you should still always be aware of age-appropriate awake times. Wake windows are a great guidepost.
 

These are approximate wake windows based on a baby’s age: 0 to 6 weeks: 45 minutes to 1 hour only; 7 to 12 weeks: 75 minutes only; 3 months: 75 to 90 minutes; 4 months: 1 hour 30 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes;5, 6 and 7 months: 2 to 2.5 hours; 8, 9 and 10 months: around 3 hours ; 11 months: around 3.5 hours; 12, 13, 14 months: 3.5 to 4 hours.
 

For children taking one nap per day (after 14 months), the wake window in the morning will be 5 to 6 hours and the wake window in the afternoon will be about 5 hours.
 

Of course, there will always be ranges with baby sleep. However, if your baby’s wake windows are significantly bigger than the ones described above, your baby may be overtired.
 

Sleep cues
 

Pay attention to your baby’s early sleep cues, such as a blank stare, frowning, rubbing eyes and yawning. That’s when you want to put the baby for a nap. Not when they enter the overtired “emergency zone” and start arching the back and howling. A good rule of thumb that I learned from Gina Ford is to put them for a nap after the first yawn… don’t wait until the third yawn.

Following wake windows plus watching for sleep cues is a powerful combination.
 

Don’t keep the baby up till late for a better sleep
 

If your child is struggling to sleep, you might be unsure if the baby is overtired or if they need more activity to tire them out. If you’re unsure, my advice from working with hundreds of families is to first assume the baby is overtired. Keeping the baby up till late in hope of a sleep better tends to backfire and cause lots of drama at bedtime in the night.
 

Let the sun set inside
 

When the sun sets in the evening, pull the curtains and turn off at least half of the bright overhead lights in the house. You can start to build the connection with your child that sunset = sleep time. It’s important because when it is dark, your child’s body will produce the sleep hormone melatonin. Bedtime can become much easier when you work with the rhythms of nature.

I hope these guidelines are able to help you and your baby sleep better.