One of the most frequently asked questions we hear from parents is “do I need to wake my baby, or should I let them sleep?” The answer to this may contradict the age-old wives’ tale of never waking a sleeping baby.
Based on the current evidence, the answer is yes – well sometimes.
Waking your baby in the morning can actually help to regulate their natural sleep-wake cycle, known as their circadian rhythm. This can help to consolidate night sleep, and make it easier to keep the rest of the day’s timings on track for naps, feeds and bedtime. In some cases, gently waking your baby from a nap can help to support better sleep!
Here’s how waking your baby might help to improve their overall sleep:
1. Missed day feeds can lead to night wakes
Babies have an innate ability to regulate their milk intake to meet their energy and growth needs, typically balancing this over a 24-hour period. So if they sleep through a feed during the day, they’ll typically wake overnight to make up for it.
2. Sleep pressure matters
Babies need the right balance of awake time to build enough sleep pressure for bedtime. If they nap too long during the day or sleep too close to bedtime, they simply won’t be tired enough to fall asleep easily or stay asleep for long stretches. That’s when you start seeing bedtime resistance and false starts.
3. Babies have a natural ‘sleep cap’
Which is roughly the max amount of sleep a baby will have over a rough 24-hour period. Once they reach that cap, they simply won’t sleep any longer. So, too much day sleep can lead to early morning wakes or long periods of wakefulness overnight. It’s also a big contributor to day and night confusion in the early weeks.
How do I know if my baby has overslept?
If you're putting your baby down in their crib for naps, it's not as common that they'll oversleep. But oversleeping in the day can be common for babies that will only sleep while being held. Because when holding them, when they start to stir we’ll often try and get them back to sleep with shushing or jiggling to extend the nap. And sometimes we’ll be forcing sleep when it didn’t need to happen.
The key is knowing that while adequate sleep is important, they also need plenty of age-appropriate awake time to sleep well overall. Deprive them of the awake time they need during the day, and they’ll simply wake in the night to practice all their new skills instead!
That’s exactly where our age-appropriate Nap and Feeding routines come in, giving you step-by-step clarity on when to wake, when to let sleep roll on, and how to balance naps and feeds at every age.
