Baby sleep needs are highly variable and decrease throughout the first year of life (which is why 'wake windows' are unscientific!)

Essential facts about how much sleep babies need

Here are four things to know about baby sleep needs.

1. Some babies need twice as much sleep in a 24-hour period as other babies.

2. Baby sleep needs decrease throughout the first year of life.

3. Low sleep need babies develop normally.

4. Accidentally expecting a baby to sleep for longer than she needs in a 24-hour period can result in excessive night waking after a few weeks.

Estimates of your baby's total sleep needs are unscientific

Multiple large research studies prove that baby sleep needs are incredibly variable.

• Some babies need a lot of sleep, even up to a total of 20 hours in a 24-hour period. These little ones are at the high sleep need end of the bell curve.

• But a total of only nine hours sleep in 24 hours is normal for other babies, even as newborns. These babies are at the low sleep need end of the bell curve.

In other words, quite amazingly, some normal healthy babies need twice as much sleep in a 24 hour period as other normal healthy babies, right throughout the first year of life!

Yet you might still hear, for example, that good parents should have their baby in bed for 12 hours overnight, or for 14 hours in a 24-hour period. Some sleep educators advise you to add up your baby's hours of sleep over a 24-hour period, saying this gives you something to work towards.

This advice is not just unscientific. It can make sleep worse for your family. Baby sleep needs are not only highly variable between babies. Sleep is highly flexible and adaptive in the one baby, over time. One day your baby might take less sleep, the next day more.

If you're thinking that your baby should be in a sleep situation for longer than she actually needs biologically, you might accidentally make baby's sleep more disrupted over the coming weeks or months. The expectation that your baby should have big long naps during the day or early bed-times can gradually disrupt your baby’s body clock settings, especially if you have a low sleep need baby.

Being given estimates of how much sleep their baby needs, or asking them to count up baby's hours of sleep, actually causes many families a great deal of unnecessary stress and distress.

It's normal to watch the clock, hoping your baby will go to sleep soon - but try not to!

Even when we're not worried about total amounts of sleep, it’s completely normal to find ourselves watching the clock during the day or the evening, longing for our precious little person to fall asleep! I remember doing that myself, all those years ago. Trying to get baby to sleep is a normal coping mechanism when we're exhausted. (And a mother or primary carer is often exhausted in a society where carers are expected to spend very long hours alone with a baby.)

Or we might find that we can only really get things done when the baby is sleeping, and we're hanging out to do something else, other than endlessly tending to the baby.

In The Possums Sleep Program, I invite you to practice a great deal of self-compassion, as you begin to experiment with a different way of thinking about the days and nights. My aim is to help you

• Have the most enjoyable day you can create (outside the house as much as possible), letting your baby's sleep look after itself, and

• Make your baby's night-time wakes just as easy as possible, so you're all back to sleep quickly.

If this sounds weird or unrealistic, I invite you to hang in there with me, and start checking the program out in greater depth. It will all make sense in the end.

Selected references

Galland BC, Taylor BJ, Elder DE, Herbison P. Normal sleep patterns in infants and children: a systematic review of observational studies. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2012;16:213-222.

Paavonen JE, Saarenpaa-Heikkila O, Morales-Munoz I, Virta M, Hakala N, Polkki P, et al. Normal sleep development in infants: findings from two large birth cohorts. Sleep Medicine. 2020;69:145-154.

Pennestri M-H, Laganiere C, Bouvette-Turcot A-A, Pokhvisneva I, Steiner M, Jeaney MJ, et al. Uninterrupted infant sleep, development, and maternal mood. Pediatrics. 2018;142(6):e20174330.

Price A, Brown JE, Bittman M, Wake M, Quach J, Hiscock H. Children's sleep patterns from 0-9 years: Australian population longitudinal study. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2014;99:119-125.

Teng A, Bartle A, Sadeh A, Mindell J. Infant and toddler sleep in Australia and New Zealand. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. 2011;48:268-273.

Williams JA, Zimmerman FJ, Bell JF. Norms and trends of sleep time among US children and adolescents. JAMA Pediatrics. 2013;167:55-60.