Baby Naps: When, Where, and How Long They Should Be

Babies sleep somewhere between 13 and 18 hours a day, depending on their age. And a large share of that happens in daylight. As soon as your baby has settled into a sleep rhythm, a midday nap becomes a fixed part of their day, and it will stay that way until around age three. A good nap does not just top your child back up with energy for the rest of the day. It is also when they process everything they have taken in so far.

In this article you will find everything you need to know about your baby's daytime sleep: How long should a nap be for babies and toddlers? When is the best time for it? Where should your baby sleep, and what do you do when naps just refuse to work the way you hoped?

Here are the answers.

Baby Naps: The Land of Little Dreamers Overview

A midday nap (along with the other naps of the day) belongs to a settled daily rhythm for babies from around 6 months. Like any other ritual, it gives your baby a sense of safety and of knowing what comes next.

What matters most is finding the right balance between too little and too much daytime sleep.

If babies sleep too little during the day, the stress hormone cortisol builds up in the body. It works much like adrenaline, and it makes it harder for a baby to calm down. On top of that, they will wake more often at night or be up too early in the morning.

If a baby sleeps too much during the day, on the other hand, it can do more than make bedtime a struggle. It also frequently leads to more night waking.

So for your baby's midday nap and all the other naps, it is worth paying attention both to the right number of naps and to their overall sleep needs.

What Suits Your Baby's Age: Sleep Needs and Number of Naps

The table below shows how sleep needs and the number of naps depend on a child's age. Every child has their own needs, of course, so there will be variation around these averages.

Notes: *The fourth month is the much-dreaded short-nap month, when a baby usually manages only one longer nap and the rest come in at 30 to 45 minutes. That is completely normal. By month 6 most babies have settled onto three naps, which makes your days predictable and plannable again. Once you are down to 3 naps, it gets easier (and is usually a relief for everyone) to bring in a daily rhythm that is fixed but still flexible.

You will find more on this in Wake Windows and Baby Sleep Needs: Charts and Overview (0 to 5 Years).

Here is what to keep in mind for your baby's midday nap:

Your Baby's Daily Rhythm and Sleep Rhythm

Most children only develop a sleep rhythm at 6 to 7 months. So it only really makes sense to talk about a baby's midday nap, or to establish a daily rhythm, from that age onward. Before then, babies simply sleep when they are tired.

Nap Transitions

The months when babies change the number of naps they take can be especially demanding. (These stretches are usually called nap regressions.)

That is why it helps to build and encourage a settled daily rhythm for your baby early on. It will help your little one get through the transition well.

These transitions are rarely a smooth line, so it is worth knowing what the pattern usually looks like. A nap gets refused for a few days, bedtime slides later, night sleep gets patchy for a week or two, and then the new rhythm settles. Expecting that in advance takes a lot of the worry out of it, and it stops you from dropping a nap for good on the strength of three difficult days.

Let's look at the different age stages next, to see how a baby's midday nap develops.

Babies Between 5 and 10 Months (on 3 Naps a Day)

When Does Each Nap Happen?

Once a daily rhythm has settled in, babies from around 5 to 6 months take three naps a day:

• A morning nap (about 2 hours after waking up),
• a midday nap (about 2.5 hours after the morning nap), and
• an afternoon nap (about 3 hours after the midday nap)

How Long Should the Midday Nap Be?

Like the morning nap, the midday nap should be on the longer side. Sleep consultants recommend at least an hour. (For the afternoon nap, on the other hand, 30 minutes is often plenty.)

Do make sure your baby has had a feed before each nap.

Babies Between 8 and 18 Months (on 2 Naps a Day)

When Does Each Nap Happen?

At around 8 to 10 months, most babies give up the third nap. What remains is a morning nap (about 2.5 hours after waking up) and the midday nap (about 3 hours after the morning nap).

How Long Should a Baby's Midday Nap Be?

Both daytime naps should last at least 60 minutes.

Which means the midday nap usually falls between 1:30 and 2:30 PM (assuming a 7:00 AM wake-up).

Babies Between 14 and 30 Months (on 1 Nap a Day)

When Does the Midday Nap Happen?

The next nap transition, from 2 to 1, comes at around 14 to 18 months. From then on babies take only a midday nap, which should fall roughly 4.5 to 5 hours after they wake up. (So around 12:00 PM if your child wakes at 7:00 AM.)

For the best bedtime, watch your child's sleepy cues and do everything you can to keep them from getting overtired. An overtired toddler fights sleep harder rather than falling into it, which is exactly what makes evenings difficult.

How Long Should the Nap Be?

Depending on their age, your toddler may nap anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. From the age of 2, children only need 1 to 2 hours of daytime sleep.

But your child's individuality plays a big part here too. Some children need more, some less.

See here for more on your baby's sleep needs and the wake windows that match their age.

Important Questions About Your Baby's Naps

Should Babies Nap in the Dark? (and Other Sleep Conditions for Daytime Sleep)

In general, I recommend the same preparations for a nap as for the night:

• Put your baby down not too early, and under no circumstances too late. Overtiredness can throw the nap, the rest of the day, and the night that follows completely off course.
• Where possible, use the same sleep space during the day as at night.
• Darken the room. Your baby will be able to sleep far more calmly and far more deeply. This is one of my strongest recommendations for daytime sleep, because daylight works directly against the body's sleep signals, and the difference a dark room makes is often visible on the very first day.
• Use the same wind-down rituals you use before the night (a shortened version is fine). This helps your baby shift into sleep mode and settle more easily.

Where Should the Nap Happen?

Where possible, the midday nap should happen in your baby's own crib. The stroller is certainly not wrong either. But I have often seen that babies (depending on their age) wake too early there, and then get fussy far too quickly in the evening.

(For us the tricky part was usually when the walk had already ended but our little one was supposed to keep sleeping in the stroller. As soon as the stroller stopped moving, they woke straight back up.)

The same problem (a nap that is too short) can also come up at daycare or with a childminder, depending on the circumstances. When that happened, we would sometimes simply put our baby to bed at 6:30 PM.

How Do I Get My Baby Used to Napping in the Crib?

In most cases, a baby's daytime sleep is much better in their own crib. Which of course raises the question of how to get them used to sleeping there in the first place.

A lot of it comes down to rituals, a well-fitted wind-down routine, and putting your baby down at the right moment.

A few things that make it easier:

• Start with the first nap of the day. The drive to sleep is strongest in the morning, so the morning nap is by far the easiest one to move into the crib. Once that one works, the others tend to follow.
• Put your baby down drowsy but still awake. If they are already fast asleep in your arms when they go down, waking up somewhere unfamiliar is a shock. Being put down while still half-awake lets them recognize where they are.
• Keep the same short ritual every single time. Curtains closed, sleep sack on, one song or a few quiet words. After a few days that sequence itself tells your baby what is about to happen.
• Stay nearby at first. A hand on the chest, a quiet voice, your presence in the room. You can gradually step back once the crib feels familiar.
• Give it a week or two. Something new rarely works on day one. Consistency does more here than any single trick.

How Do You Know Your Child Is Tired?

As I mentioned, it is very important to spot your baby's sleepy signals so that they do not go down already overtired.

Signs of tiredness are eye rubbing, fussiness, yawning, and no longer wanting to lie or sit anywhere on their own.

By that point it is often almost too late, so you need to react quickly. What works even better, though, is having a daily routine, so that you already know exactly when your baby gets tired and when they need to go down.

The simplest way there is to note the time your baby woke up and count the wake window forward from that. Start the wind-down about ten minutes before the window is up, rather than waiting for the eye rubbing to appear. After a week of doing that you will have a fairly reliable picture of your baby's nap times, and you will find yourself getting ahead of the tiredness instead of chasing it.

Naps Aren't Going the Way They Should! Why?

Sometimes things go wrong when your child is supposed to be napping.

They refuse to fall asleep, they are tearful and fussy, the nap is far too short, or they wake up crying. The reasons behind poor naps can be varied.

Below is an overview of the most common ones.

1. No Steady Daily Rhythm

Plenty of babies are sensitive to change and to too much flexibility in how the day runs.

So do help your baby build an "internal clock" early on. Their body will then find it much easier to switch into sleeping, waking, or eating.

2. The "Wrong" Daily Rhythm

If the daily rhythm is not adapted to your baby's needs, falling asleep (and naps in general) can turn difficult.

Worth knowing: at 4 to 5 months in particular, lots of short naps spread across the day are entirely "normal." In most cases a settled rhythm with a longer nap only becomes possible one or two months later.

3. Overtiredness

As I said, overtiredness is one of the main problems when it comes to falling asleep. Try to avoid it as best you can.

It is worth understanding why it works that way: once a baby is past the point of easy tiredness, the body releases cortisol and adrenaline to keep them going. Those hormones do not switch off the moment you put your baby down. That is why an overtired baby cries harder, takes far longer to settle, and then often sleeps a shorter, more restless nap than a baby who went down on time.

4. Sleep Associations

Probably the most common cause of poor naps is sleep associations, especially once your baby is older than 5 to 6 months. A sleep association is a firmly established falling-asleep habit without which your child cannot get to sleep or get back to sleep. So it covers anything your child "needs" in order to drop off, whether that is your help or an object.

These bits of help at bedtime often get in the way of sleeping on after a sleep cycle ends.

Resolving sleep associations therefore means teaching your child to fall asleep on their own.

Worth reading alongside this: When and How Babies Learn to Fall Asleep on Their Own

Do note: sleep associations are completely normal in the first few months, and they only become a "problem" once they have turned into an obstacle to good sleep by day and by night.

5. Sleep Regression

If your baby is generally having a hard stretch, is fussy and clingy and sleeping badly on top of that, there is a good chance they are in a sleep regression.

These 2 to 4 week phases can throw sleep behavior (and with it, naps) thoroughly off course.

The good news is that the effects are temporary. Within a few weeks things should settle back down. What helps most in the meantime is staying close and keeping your usual routines running, even when the timings slip.

6. Nap Regression

At certain ages, babies can start fighting a nap. Which is to say, they boycott it, or try to.

What is remarkable about this situation is that babies are often not remotely ready for it yet. (It comes up especially at 10 to 12 months.)

Many parents assume, wrongly, that a baby refusing a nap is a sign they are now ready to sleep less during the day. But that is a mistaken conclusion.

The result in these cases is an overtired baby, demanding evenings, and unsettled nights in which your little one may wake many times over.

I saw exactly this case not long ago in my work as a sleep consultant. A baby dropped a nap too early and started waking up crying at night on a regular basis from that point on.

See also: What Is a Nap Regression and How Do I Handle It?

More Frequently Asked Questions About Naps for Babies and Toddlers

How Many Hours Should There Be Between the Midday Nap and Bedtime?

That depends entirely on your baby's or toddler's age. Once your child stops taking another nap after the midday one (from 8 months), it is worth aiming for at least 3.5 hours between the midday nap and bedtime.

In special circumstances such as a cold or a sleep regression, that gap can occasionally be shorter. But over the following months it will stretch out to 5 hours and more.

Should You Wake a Baby or Toddler from Their Nap?

Under normal circumstances there is no need to wake babies from their midday nap.

What matters most is having a daily rhythm that suits your baby. If your child then goes to bed at roughly the same time every evening, the exact length of the midday nap is not so important. (A baby's body has a good sense of how much sleep it needs.)

That said, there are circumstances where waking your child from their nap does make sense. For example, when they fell asleep too late for some reason and the nap is stretching out a long way. (A very typical situation.)

To stop them sleeping into the evening and losing their daily rhythm entirely, try to let them wake gently, for instance by letting sound and light into their room. Heading straight out for a walk often worked well for us, too.

What Do You Do When Your Child Won't Take a Nap Anymore?

In general it is worth children napping until around age three (with exceptions proving the rule). Often they give it up by themselves somewhere between 24 and 30 months.

Even so, it is worth keeping a quiet period at midday. What often happens is that toddlers only sleep every 2 to 3 days. If they have a rest time, spent on a mattress with a few books for example, we give them the chance to sleep when they need it.

How Long Does a 1-Year-Old Nap?

Most babies at this age take a midday nap of 1 to 1.5 hours.

When Do Babies Move to Just One Nap (and No Other Naps)?

At 14 to 18 months, most babies switch from two daytime naps to one. The midday nap then stays a fixed part of your child's day until around age three.

Watch out at around 11 months. Many babies try to give up their second nap then, even though they are not really ready for it. If you stay persistent, though, your little one will go back to sleeping twice a day within a few weeks of that boycott phase.

How Can I Get My Baby Into the Habit of Napping?

The key here is establishing a settled daily rhythm, so that your baby can get used to the phases of sleeping, being awake, and eating. Rituals and regularity are everything.

I hope this helps, and that you get to enjoy the middle of the day as a lovely quiet stretch.

Your Sarah