Nap Schedule by Age Sample Days, Wake Windows & Nap Charts From Newborn to 24 Months

🌙 How a Nap Schedule by Age Actually Works

A nap schedule is not really about the clock. It is about wake windows — how long your baby can happily stay awake before they need sleep again. A newborn manages 45 minutes to an hour and a half. A 6 month old manages about 2 to 2.5 hours. A toddler can stretch to 5 or 6 hours. The sample days on this page are just wake windows laid out on a clock that starts at a 7:00 a.m. wake-up, so if your baby wakes at 6:30 or 7:45, shift everything by the same amount.

Two honest warnings before the charts. First, these are typical ranges, not targets to hit. A baby who takes two long naps and a baby who takes three shorter ones can both be perfectly well rested at the same age. Second, naps change in steps, not smoothly — your baby will drop naps one at a time (4 to 3, then 3 to 2, then 2 to 1), and each change takes a week or two of wobbly days before it settles. The signs section below tells you how to spot a real nap drop coming, instead of guessing after one bad day.

📋 The Nap Schedule by Age Chart

Every age at a glance — find your baby's row, then read their section below for a full sample day.

Total sleep across the whole day matters as much as the naps themselves. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 12–16 hours of sleep in total (naps included) for babies 4–12 months old, and 11–14 hours for children 1–2 years old. If your baby's naps look different from the chart but their total sleep lands in that range and they wake up happy, you are probably fine — see the note at the bottom of this page.

👶 0–3 Month Old Nap Schedule: Little and Often

Newborns do not have a schedule so much as a rhythm: wake, feed, a short happy window, sleep, repeat. Across the first three months most babies take 4–6 naps a day, anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours each, and can only stay awake 45 minutes to 1.5 hours at a time. A sleep schedule for an 8 week old and a sleep schedule for a 3 month old look similar on paper — the difference is that by 3 months the wake windows stretch a little and the first nap of the day starts to become predictable.

• Naps per day: 4–6
• Nap length: 30 minutes – 2 hours (catnaps are normal)
• Wake windows: 45 minutes – 1.5 hours
• Feeds: Every 2–3 hours, including between naps — a 3 month old sleep and feeding schedule is really one combined rhythm

Do not fight for clock times at this age — some days will have five naps, some will have a bonus evening catnap, and cluster feeding can move everything. What helps most is watching the clock just enough to start the wind-down before the wake window ends, and keeping nights dark, quiet and boring so daytime stays the lively part.

🌤️ 4 Month Old Nap Schedule (4–5 Months)

Around 4 months, sleep matures and naps start to organize into a real pattern — often just as the famous 4-month sleep regression scrambles a few weeks. Most 4 month olds take 3–4 naps: two longer ones and one or two short catnaps. Wake windows stretch to about 1.5–2.25 hours. Sleep for a 5 month old usually looks like the steadier end of this band: three naps most days, with the fourth appearing only on short-nap days.

• Naps per day: 3–4
• Nap length: 1–2 hours for the main naps, 30–45 minutes for the last one
• Wake windows: 1.5–2.5 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 3.5–4.5 hours

If your 4 month old still needs a fourth short nap around 5:30 p.m. to reach bedtime without melting down, that is completely normal — take it. The catnap is the first nap to disappear, usually somewhere in the fifth or sixth month, and bedtime simply moves a little earlier on three-nap days while it does.

⭐ 6 Month Old Nap Schedule

The 6 month old nap schedule is the one most parents search for, because this is when the day finally becomes predictable: most babies are on 3 naps — a morning nap, an afternoon nap and a short late catnap — with wake windows of about 2–2.5 hours. A 3 nap schedule at this age typically gives 3.5–4 hours of daytime sleep, leaving room for an 11–12 hour night.

• Naps per day: 3
• Nap length: 1–1.5 hours for naps 1 and 2, 30–45 minutes for the catnap
• Wake windows: 2–2.5 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 3.5–4 hours

The catnap is doing one job: bridging the long stretch to bedtime. When it starts pushing bedtime later and later — your baby is wide awake at 7:30 p.m. but exhausted by 5 — that is your first sign the 3-to-2 nap transition is coming, usually in the next month or two.

🐣 7 Month Old Nap Schedule (7–8 Months)

Somewhere in this band, most babies drop the catnap and move to 2 naps. A 2 nap schedule for a 7 month old only works if your baby can comfortably stay awake about 3 hours — if the second nap keeps collapsing at 30 minutes or bedtime turns into a wrestling match, keep the catnap a few weeks longer. There is no prize for dropping it early; sleep for a 7 month old totals roughly the same either way, it is just packaged differently.

• Naps per day: 2–3 (dropping to 2)
• Nap length: 1–1.5 hours each
• Wake windows: 2.5–3.5 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 3–3.5 hours

During the transition, expect a mix: two-nap days when naps are long, three-nap days when they are not. An early bedtime — 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. — on two-nap days protects the night far better than forcing a late catnap your baby no longer wants.

🌈 9 Month Old Nap Schedule (8–9 Months)

By 8–9 months the 2-nap day is well established. Sleep for an 8 month old and a 9 month old nap schedule look almost identical: two solid naps of 1–1.5 hours, wake windows around 3–3.5 hours, and the longest wake window usually the one before bed. This is often the steadiest sleep stage of the first year — enjoy it.

• Naps per day: 2
• Nap length: 1–1.5 hours each
• Wake windows: 3–3.5 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 3–3.5 hours

Around 8–10 months many babies briefly protest the second nap while learning to crawl, pull up or babble — a practice session in the crib instead of sleep. If your baby is still falling asleep at a reasonable bedtime and waking happy, ride it out for a week or two before changing anything; true nap drops rarely happen this early.

🚀 10 Month Old Nap Schedule (10–12 Months)

A nap schedule for a 10 month old is the 2-nap pattern with longer legs: wake windows stretch to 3–4 hours, and each nap is usually 1–1.5 hours, for about 2.5–3 hours of daytime sleep. Ten month old sleep stays in this shape right through the first birthday for most babies, with the morning nap slowly shortening near 12 months.

• Naps per day: 2
• Nap length: 1–1.5 hours each
• Wake windows: 3–4 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 2.5–3 hours

If the second nap starts ending after 5 p.m. and bedtime slides with it, cap the morning nap at about an hour before you cap the afternoon one — protecting the run-up to bedtime keeps nights intact while the schedule slowly reshapes itself toward one nap.

🎂 Nap Schedule for 13 Month Old Toddlers (13–18 Months)

The nap schedule for a 13 month old is usually a work in progress: this is the classic window for the 2-to-1 nap transition, and a nap schedule for a 14 month old often alternates — one nap on good days, two on short-nap days. The end state is one long midday nap of 1.5–2.5 hours, with wake windows of 4–5.5 hours on either side.

• Naps per day: 1–2 (settling to 1)
• Nap length: 1.5–2.5 hours for the single nap
• Wake windows: 4–5.5 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 2–2.5 hours

This transition is the slowest of them all — two to four weeks of alternating days is normal, and an early bedtime is your best tool on one-nap days. Push the single nap later by 15 minutes every few days until it lands after lunch; a nap that starts at 11 a.m. leaves a very long, cranky evening.

🌳 19–24 Month Old Nap Schedule: The One-Nap Toddler

By 19–24 months the day has one clear shape: a big morning of play, one nap of 1.5–2.5 hours after lunch, and wake windows of about 5–6 hours. This 1 nap schedule typically holds steady until somewhere between ages 2.5 and 4, when the nap itself starts to go.

• Naps per day: 1
• Nap length: 1.5–2.5 hours
• Wake windows: 5–6 hours
• Total daytime sleep: About 1.5–2.5 hours

If bedtime battles appear at this age, the nap is usually ending too late rather than being too long overall — try finishing the nap by 3 p.m. before you shorten it. And keep offering quiet time on the rare no-nap day; toddlers often pick the nap back up after a day or two.

🔁 Signs Your Baby Is Ready to Drop a Nap

Nap drops announce themselves gradually. One skipped nap proves nothing — illness, travel, teething and exciting days all cause blips. A real transition shows up as a pattern across one to two weeks:

• Fights the nap itself — plays, chats or stands in the crib for 30 minutes or more instead of sleeping, several days in a row.
• Takes the nap but bedtime breaks — suddenly wide awake until 9 p.m. because the last nap ended too late in the day.
• Wakes unusually early — 5 a.m. starts appearing when total daytime sleep runs too high.
• Skips a nap and stays cheerful — no late-afternoon meltdown on the day the nap never happened.
• The catnap keeps shrinking the evening — the classic sign at 6–8 months that 3 naps are becoming 2.

How to make the drop easier, whichever nap is going: drop the last nap of the day first, stretch the remaining wake windows by just 15 minutes at a time, and lean on an early bedtime while things settle. For the 2-to-1 transition, alternating one-nap and two-nap days for a few weeks is not a failure — it is how most toddlers actually do it.

🧮 Turn These Charts Into Your Baby's Actual Day

The charts above assume a 7:00 a.m. start and a textbook baby. Yours is neither, which is exactly what our free Baby Sleep Tracker & Wake Window Calculator is for. Enter your baby's age and the time they actually woke up this morning, and it works out today's wake windows and shows the next sleep sweet spot — the window when your baby is most likely to fall asleep easily. Then you can log the day's real naps as they happen and watch the rest of the day reshape itself around them.

It is free, needs no account, and saves everything on your own device. Use the chart on this page to understand the pattern for your baby's age, then use the calculator to run today — especially during nap transitions, when the right answer changes from day to day.

📖 How to Use This Nap Schedule by Age Chart

1. Find your baby's age band. Use the chart at the top, then read that age's section for its full sample day.
2. Anchor the day to your real wake-up time. Every sample day starts at 7:00 a.m. — shift all the times by the difference if your baby wakes earlier or later.
3. Try it for three or four days. One day proves nothing. Give a new pattern a few days before judging it, unless your baby is clearly miserable.
4. Adjust in 15-minute steps. Nap too early or too late? Move one thing by 15 minutes, not the whole day by an hour, and wait two days before moving it again.
5. Watch your baby, not just the clock. Yawning, staring into space, jerky movements and sudden fussiness beat any chart. If the cues and the chart disagree, follow the cues — then check whether your baby is telling you a nap drop is near.

💛 Every Baby Is Different — and a Note on Safety

These schedules describe the middle of a wide range of normal. Twins, premature babies, big babies, small babies, daycare babies and home babies all nap a little differently, and a happy, growing baby who sleeps a different pattern from the chart is not a problem to fix. What matters most is total sleep over 24 hours, a baby who wakes reasonably content, and a rhythm your family can actually live with.

Two things are not ranges, though. Always place your baby on their back to sleep, on a firm, flat sleep surface, with nothing soft in the crib — that is the American Academy of Pediatrics' safe-sleep guidance for the first year. And this page is general information from published sleep ranges, not medical advice. If you are worried about your baby's sleep — loud snoring, pauses in breathing, poor weight gain, extreme sleepiness, or a schedule worry that just will not settle — talk to your pediatrician. That is always the right call.