We've all heard this piece of advice before, "Never wake a sleeping baby!" and as a sleep consultant I've gotten appalled looks when I confess you actually SHOULD wake a sleeping baby sometimes. I thought it'd be helpful to lay out all the reasons and situations where waking a sleeping baby is the right move. Keep reading to find out 4 times you should wake a sleeping baby.
Time #1 you should wake a sleeping baby: When you have a newborn sleeping long stretches during the day but not at night
Maybe you have a newborn who is up hourly at night but then daytime comes and they will sleep these big long stretches. Yikes! That's the opposite of what we want!
With newborns, this is usually due to the fact that their circadian rhythm hasn't yet developed (this starts happening around 8-12 weeks) and therefore they really have no clue what's day and what's night. To help them figure this out, our biggest tool is... you guessed it- waking them up during the day!
Daytime naps should be limited to 2 hours during the newborn phase and then baby needs to be woken up, fed, and kept awake for at least a short period of time before you let them fall back asleep. This will be hard work at first but totally worth the extra effort in the end, I promise.
Really struggling with your newborn's sleep? Check out my newborn sleep resources here.
Time #2 you should wake a sleeping baby: When your baby is sleeping crappy at night and then making up for it during the day with long, luxurious naps
Similar to #1, but this also applies to babies and toddlers. If they aren't getting good quality night sleep, they may try to make up for it by sleeping A LOT during the day. And if we aren't willing to wake them from naps, it will be really hard to break out of this cycle.
So first order of business is to start capping some those daytime naps so that they can build sleep pressure to sleep more during the night. This will also help you fit in necessary daytime feedings so that nighttime isn't when the bulk of their calories is happening. Download my free nap guide for more details on age-appropriate wake windows and how much daytime sleep is actually necessary.
After you start to shorten their daytime sleep, if you are still struggling with crappy nights, it's time to get to the root issue. Are they sleeping poorly at night because they haven't learned how to regulate their own sleep yet? Is the help you provide to get them to sleep actually hindering their sleep because they can't recreate it?
If you're thinking sleep coaching is the next step, check out my Sleep Coaching Crash Course- the affordable sleep course for tired moms who just want to stop stressing about sleep!
Time #3 you should wake a sleeping baby: When you need to stabilize the schedule
If you have a child who will wake up super late in the morning (8am or later) and then it throws your whole day off, then waking them in the morning to start their day is necessary.
Not only does have a consistent morning wake up time help you plan your day, it also helps their internal body clock to have that consistency day in and day out.
I always recommend having a 30 minute wake up range that you follow each and everyday. That could mean 6-6:30am or 6:30-7am, or 7:30-8am- you decide what works best for your family and your child. But then following that wake up range means you don't start your child's day before the early time and you wake them up if they are still sleeping at the later time.
If you have a child who is sleeping in late in the morning and it's making naps difficult and pushing bedtime way later than you'd like, then it absolutely makes sense to wake that sleeping baby!
Time #4 you should wake a sleeping baby: When you are close to a nap transition but not quite there yet
Over the course of your child's life you'll go through several nap transitions. These can be tricky but the key to making them successful is that you don't want to rush into them. The longer you can hold them off, the smoother they will go.
That's where waking a sleeping baby comes into play. Maybe you have a champion napper (which is great!) but now you're struggling to fit in that 3rd nap and it's really throwing a wrench in the schedule. You know that your child isn't really ready for a 2 nap schedule yet because they can't last 3 hours in between naps but you also can't seem to fit all three naps plus 4 wake windows in AND have bedtime not be ridiculously late.
It's okay to cap some of your baby's naps in order to make this 3 nap schedule work a little longer until they are more ready for the transition. Sit down and do some quick math. Count backward from your ideal bedtime and figure out what time you need to wake your child from each nap in order to fit everything in. Then take a deep breath and go for it!
Oh, I also get asked this question a lot when it comes to micromanaging a nap schedule like this: "Will this discourage my baby from taking longer naps when they do transition to less naps?" And the answer is no! You won't get your baby *stuck* at shorter naps by waking them now for a period of time.
Already stressing about future nap transition? Check out my Nap Transition Guide which walks you through everything you need to know for all the major nap transitions.