For me, figuring out the right amounts of wake time was the most difficult thing to figure out in the eat/play/nap routine. At the same time, it was the most valuable piece of information I learned from Babywise. Learning baby’s optimal wake time is key in baby taking good naps.

Wake time is the time baby is awake from the time they wake up from a nap until the time they are laid down for another nap. Wake time includes feeding time.

You have to figure out your own baby’s optimal wake time, which can be very tricky. The Babywise Mom Blog has been a lifesaver to me in figuring out Little Bug’s optimal wake times over the first year.

She has an article with average optimal wake times for various ages. (I will list them below but read her article as well as there is information in her article that I do not mention in this post!) She tells you to remember the numbers are just averages, so some babies may need more wake time and some may need less. That’s what makes figuring out your baby’s wake time so tricky! But, at least these figures give us a starting place when we are trying to figure out our baby’s optimal wake time. Take the average and tweak it to the needs of the individual child. I always found that Little Bug needed less than average the amount of wake time suggested for each age group.

Here are the optimal wake time lengths from Babywise Mom’s polls on her blog and her own experiences with her three children:

0-4 weeks: 30-45 minutes

4-6 weeks: 40-60 minutes

6-8 weeks: 40-70 minutes

8-12 weeks: 50-80 minutes

3-4 months: 60-90 minutes

4-5 months: 1 hr to 1.5 hrs

5-6 months: 1.5 hours

6-7 months: 2 hours, give or take 15 minutes

7-8 months: 2 hours (there was much variation in the poll results for this age group and 8-9 months, but average was around 2 hours for both)

8-9 months: 2 hours

It is more critical that you know your baby’s optimal wake time when they are 0-6 months old. Being up 5 minutes too long can make a baby overstimulated and an overstimulated baby does not sleep well.

There was a phase (around 3-6 months) that it was imperative that Little Bug get to bed for a nap after X amount of minutes of wake time. If I got her to bed even 5-10 minutes late, her nap was short and she would have a very hard time settling down because of being overstimulated. Fortunately, this phase doesn’t last forever (I found it highly annoying!). Around 8-9 months I started noticing that Little Bug could handle being laid down late for a nap.

This is one of most valuable pieces of information I learned from Babywise: An overtired baby does not nap well or sleep well through the night. I love that Babywise’s philosophy is to prevent things from happening instead of reacting to things when they do happen. Obviously, (and Babywise will tell you the same thing) you can’t prevent every negative thing from happening to your baby! If only … :) However, as a parent, there is much that we can prevent. Little Bug getting overstimulated/overtired is something I tried to prevent at all costs.

To me, the consequences of having an overtired baby on my hands did not outweigh being able to participate in whatever it was that was keeping me out and keeping Little Bug from getting her naps in. As a result, Little Bug is a baby (or should I say, was a baby) that, as a general rule, went down for naps easily and rarely got overtired or overstimulated.

The Babywise Mom Blog has an article about an easy way to fix bad naps. Babywise mom says that if your baby is not napping well the first thing you should try to do to fix the problem is to decrease your baby’s wake time by 5 minute increments until naps are back to a normal length.

I remember I was having this problem with Little Bug. I can’t remember how old she was, but I do remember I shortened her wake time and just like that, she was back to normal napping. Her wake time had been too long and she was overtired when I was laying her down for naps and not sleeping well at all! It really is a simple fix!

Knowing Little Bug’s optimal wake time kept me from allowing Little Bug to get overtired and it helped me to help her get good naps!

- Elaine