Individual Sleep Needs and Wake Windows: How to Calculate Your Baby's Ideal Schedule

To improve your baby's sleep and solve most sleep struggles, we first need to work out your baby's individual sleep needs and wake windows.

How do we do it?

I recommend keeping a sleep diary for 5–7 days. I use this app, but you can also track on paper or in a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Here's what we note down:

• morning wake-up time;
• the times of all daytime naps, including any resettles of up to 20 minutes;
• bedtime — the moment your baby is fully asleep;
• night wakings, if your baby stays awake for more than 40 minutes.

Then we calculate the average — yes, math has entered the chat.

Daytime sleep

Add up all the naps over 5 days and divide by 5 — that's your average.

For example:

(2:35 + 2:10 + 2:20 + 2:05 + 2:20) / 5 = 2 hours 18 minutes

Night sleep

Add up all night sleep over 5 days and divide by 5.

For example:

(10:30 + 10:30 + 10:20 + 10:40 + 10:40) / 5 = 10 hours 32 minutes

Awake time

Add together the average daytime and night sleep:

2:18 + 10:32 = 12:50

Then subtract it from 24 hours:

24:00 − 12:50 = 11:10

Now, to find the length of one wake window, divide the total daily awake time by the number of windows between sleeps:

• with 5 naps, your baby has 6 wake windows;
• with 4 naps — 5 windows;
• with 3 naps — 4 windows;
• with 2 naps — 3 windows;
• with 1 nap — 2 windows.

For example, with three naps:

11:10 / 4 = 2:47

Now that we know your baby's individual sleep and awake-time numbers, we can move on to building the right schedule.

What do we do next?

Fix the morning wake-up time

We always fix the morning wake-up time, give or take 20 minutes.

First, watch when your baby usually wakes up. If it varies a lot, pick the average — say, 7:30.

Set an alarm, and for a week or two get up and run a little morning ritual so your baby understands the day has started: morning stretches, washing up, some quiet, calm music.

Spread day and night sleep across the day

Distribute daytime and night sleep so there's no oversleeping and no sleep debt. All the numbers come from your individual calculations.

Spread the awake time across the day

If the optimal awake time is 11:00 and you have 2 naps and 3 wake windows, it looks like this:

• 1st window — 3:00;
• 2nd window — 4:00;
• 3rd window — 4:00.

Make awake time count

Aim for about 80% active awake time and 20% calm time — this builds healthy sleep pressure.

Activity ideas for active awake time

1–3 months

• tummy time;
• bath time;
• exercises on a fitness ball;
• finger massage with nursery rhymes.

4–6 months

• playing and scooting on the tummy;
• swimming pool;
• mirror play;
• looking at bright pictures and books.

7–9 months

• active crawling;
• pulling up to stand;
• crawling through an obstacle course.

10 months and older

• walking or crawling;
• chase games;
• peekaboo and hide-and-seek.

If you've read this far, it means you haven't given up on your nights. You want better for your baby. And for yourself, too.

One important reminder

💫 Calculating a schedule is not a magic pill.

It gives you a powerful head start, but for truly stable sleep you'll need to go deeper:

• rituals;
• overtiredness;
• sleep environment;
• sleep associations;
• regressions.

It's this whole toolkit that creates the result:

• 📌 calm nights;
• 📌 long naps;
• 📌 a predictable day — and an evening for yourself.