Baby’s sleep is a HUGE TOPIC! Understandably so, as it’s such an important topic. How well (or not) a baby’s sleeping can impact an entire family’s well-being. It can also cause a great divide between parents who believe differently than other parents. But what many parents don’t initially understand about the topic: if you can avoid having an overtired baby, it is a game-changer in the world of baby’s sleep!
As a mom, many people ask me how my babies are sleeping. As a Sleep Consultant, even more so, people are curious about my baby’s sleeping patterns. Because you know, when you become a Sleep Consultant, you get a magic wand so that your babies sleep perfectly every day. NO! Like you, I am just a mom with good and bad days. Even I had to learn how to avoid having an overtired baby!
With my job, I have learned a lot about sleep and how different factors impact sleep quality. This allows me to create consistency when we have off days or sleep falls off track. We can work on getting it balanced again without unneeded stress. I am passionate about discussing the information that helps families keep their sleep balanced because sometimes simple tips can make such a big difference.
How to Avoid Having an Overtired Baby
When working on sleep, one key factor is keeping your baby well-rested and preventing them from becoming overtired. An overtired baby usually suffers from frequent night wakings, early mornings, and short naps. They seem stuck in an overtired cycle where they wake up frequently at night, which leads to them waking early in the morning and not being rested. This leads to shorter naps and a pushed bedtime that further encourages more night-wakings. It sucks! I want to share some tips to help break the overtired cycle and get more balanced sleep.
1. Set Up a Morning Wake-Up Range!
This may seem counterintuitive since we are trying to increase their sleep hours to help your baby feel more rested. But it can help! The morning wake-up sets the pace for the day. This is not always beautiful to hear when you have an early riser!
I like to encourage a morning wake-up between 6:00 and 7:30 a.m. I like this range because it sets up a decent nap schedule and helps keep balance throughout the day. If your baby wakes up before 6 a.m., treat it like a night waking! Do whatever you can to help them go back to sleep and start the day a little later. If they are still sleeping at 7:30 a.m., wake them up to start the day to avoid reinforcing night wakings. If they wake up between this range, then rise and shine!
A consistent morning wake-up range helps lead to consistent naps and nights.
2. Don’t Keep Your Baby Awake Too Long During the Day!
We want to balance enough daytime sleep and awake time hours each day. Keeping your baby awake for more extended periods during the day will not always help lead to longer, more restful naps unless their awake times are way too short. Developmentally, babies do best with consistent and short awake spacings between sleep periods. Their bodies get overtired if we keep them awake too long between sleep periods. This leads to Adrenaline being released in the body, which disrupts sleep.
These are recommendations for the maximum amount of time between sleep periods. Anything under these is best!
Birth to 3 Months: 60-90 minutes max
4 Months: 2 hours max on 4 naps, 2.5 hours max on 3 naps
5 Months: 2.5 hours max
6 Months: 2.75 hours max
7 Months: 3 hours max on 3 naps, 3.5 hours max on 2 naps
8-9 Months: 3.5 hours max
10-12 Months: 4 hours max
1 Nap Schedule: 6 hours max
3. Help Your Baby Extend Short Naps
When stuck in an overtired cycle, it can be beneficial for your baby to get some longer spurts. Sometimes, we need to break the cycle somewhere and set up new patterns for the body to recognize. Short naps can become habitual, meaning the body gets used to shorter naps, and we reinforce them by getting our baby up after 30-45 minutes.
If your baby wakes up in under 1 hour for the first or second nap of the day, then go in and try and extend it. You can do this by doing whatever works best, as the goal is to help teach them what it feels like to have longer stretches of sleep. Try for 10 minutes, and if they are still awake, then no worries, move on to the next awake time. And if they do fall back asleep, then great! See if they will get an extra sleep cycle to help push the day later and catch up on sleep.
I suggest doing this for the first two naps of the day only because the earlier naps are more restorative and have a higher sleep drive. Once your baby extends some of those naps with your help, you can use strategies to help them do more on their own. It is a great start! In some cases, just breaking the cycle is enough to improve sleep.
**Do this one time per nap.
4. Don’t Push bedtime!
To avoid having an overtired baby, you must focus on bedtime. Bedtime is a crucial part of the day that significantly impacts night sleep and can influence the following morning. When our baby is stuck in an overtired cycle, we usually end up having to push bedtime just to get them to a more acceptable bedtime, even if this means an awake time that is too long. This usually backfires and causes your baby to go to bed overtired, leading to more night wakings and another early morning.
I like to keep bedtime between 6:15–8:00 p.m., but I am not afraid to use a 6:15/6:30 p.m. bedtime when needed! Bedtime is a reflection of nap quality. Good naps naturally mean a later bedtime, and bad naps lead to an earlier bedtime. I call this a “swinging bedtime” that allows your baby to go to bed at a time that will enable them to get the most rest. If they didn’t reach good daytime sleep hours, we would add those lost hours to the beginning of the night. If they slept great during the day, we could put them to bed later as they got a good amount of sleep during the day.
Using these tips in an overall system is what works best. Setting up a consistent morning routine, using appropriate spacings between sleep periods, helping your baby extend naps, and not pushing bedtime too late will allow your baby’s body to be balanced and break the overtired cycle. A restful bedtime can lead to a more restorative night and skipping that early morning waking, which will help push the day back. Then we can extend naps to catch up on sleep, which will naturally push bedtime back, and you will be back on schedule!
Getting your baby to sleep soundly and restoratively can be a tough job. But breaking bad sleep habits to avoid an overtired baby is a great place to begin. You can do this, mama! One day at a time!
