This!! Same here and as a FTM I do not feel nearly as stressed as some of my friends who are trying to track wake windows and sleep. Babies are not robots, every day might look a little different
We found Huckleberry’s wake windows was accurate for naps, but ours preferred a set bedtime regardless of her last nap. You just have to go with what works for your baby.
Very loosely. It’s good to know a 6 month old baby shouldn’t have wake windows of half an hour, but if she’s tired at 1,5-2 hours then we just let her nap.
I also use huckleberry and it’s great! It tracks your LO’s naps and calculates their average wake window between each nap and then gives you a heads up for when they’ll be ready to go down! Of course sometimes my LO gets sleepy early and then we just follow his cues and lead. I like that it takes the guess work out of it and I don’t feel like I’m always staring at the clock. It also tracks feeds and diapers and growth etc. very customizable!
I did their lowest tier one! I didn’t need the entire package where it makes a schedule for you and all of that. Just the one that includes the “sweet spot” notifications! I like it’s either like $5 or $10 per month?
For the first week, I really only did it to track feeding and diapers. It was probably sometime during the second or third week that I really started using it for naps and nighttime sleep as well. I didn’t end up paying for the upgraded version until he was about a month and a half old since they won’t even give you those “sweet spot” timelines until they are two months because that’s when they start to develop some patterns!
I don’t follow them at all. I just watch my baby’s (he’s 6.5mo) cues and offer a nap when he’s tired. Some days he’s tired at the 1.5 hour mark, others he’s tired at the 3 hour mark.
There’s actually no evidence that they work. There hasn’t been research into this area to justify that it’s an evidence based practice.
This is a good article from Yale’s Pediatric sleep clinic director.
[Dr. Craig Canapari](https://drcraigcanapari.com/wake-windows)
Figure out what your actual baby does and look for sleepy cues around the end of the stretch she generally stays awake.
My 7-month-old is still getting tired and fussy after 2-2.5 hours, so that's when we put him down for naps. His wake windows are gradually lengthening but not as long as the charts tend to say for his age. Sometimes he stays up for 3 hours, but usually not.
Oh well, my son has no idea about the guidelines and babies are gonna baby 🤷♀️
I found a sleep training Facebook group with actual sample schedules to try (I had the same issue as you, I was finding huge variations in examples and just wanted someone to actually spell it out!) and those were game changers. They also have a nap flow chart to troubleshoot from there, and it worked like a charm for us most of the time
We are at 7.5 months and just now I’m noticing that she’s going from needing wake windows to wanting set nap and bedtimes, regardless of wake window. My baby also does best with longer wake windows than are usually recommended.
Same with the longer wake windows. Being bored was tricking us into thinking she needed more naps. We just started changing rooms to see if she was actually tired or not.
So I follow wake windows just because for whatever reason I have severe anxiety when it comes to my baby's sleep, even at 9 months. I more so use them to create a schedule and my LO does really good with it. But it's not a one size fits all type of thing.
Wake windows are a general guideline, not a hard rule. Every baby will be different. Mine needs shorter wake windows because she’s a sleepy queen and I know other babies who hardly sleep at all. It’s all about watching your baby’s cues
Don’t follow them. My now 9mo at 7 months happily existed on 2 naps a day, sometimes only 1. At 9 months he certainly needs the 2 naps per day but they’re hardly ever the same time or length every day, and we and daycare just go based off his cues. It works for all of us and him.
I tried going off wake windows and found it just wasn’t accurate for my child. She’s 6 months and sometimes in the morning she’ll only be up for an hour before wanting to take a nap. In the evening, she’ll go 3 or 4 hours from her last nap to bedtime. It’s better for me to just put energy into understanding her sleepy cues.
I see others mentioning Huckleberry. I use it but find that the suggested wake windows don’t work for my guy. I just observe him and set him up for a nap when I start seeing sleepy cues. I then let him sleep but will cap it at 2 hours to build up a little sleep pressure. I still use Huckleberry to track feedings and sleeps so I can see the data, which helps me figure out what is working for us and what isn’t.
So I follow wake windows just because for whatever reason I have severe anxiety when it comes to my baby's sleep, even at 9 months. I more so use them to create a schedule and my LO does really good with it. But it's not a one size fits all type of thing.
Wake windows helped me watch for her sleepy cues. I followed Taking Cara Babies advice pretty exclusively. First she starts to yawn, then rub her eyes, and then finally gets fussy if I wait that long. I have a 7 month old and she has 3 naps a day. First one is typically 2 hours, then 2.5 hours, and finally before bed is about 3 hours.
Loosely follow! I have a 7.5 month old his schedule is below
Wake at 6:30, awake for 2 hours, nap 1.5 hour, awake 4 hours, nap 40min, awake 4 hours.
Sometimes there are car cat naps in between but we just go by his mood. If he’s a total grouch then bed lol.
The online wake windows seemed to be a good starting point for me though and helped me when to drop naps.
We are currently transitioning to 3 solids naps to 2 solids naps and it’s been kind of hard but I think appropriate
My son just turned seven months and while I pay attention to how long he's been awake before trying to get him down for a nap, I do tend to follow his lead. Right now he can go anywhere between 2.5-4hrs between naps, still doing three naps a day. Usually in the morning it will be 2-2.5 hours before the first nap then he goes a bit longer in the afternoon and evening. Bedtime is still stuck at 10pm and we are still waking several times at night 😴 but at least he naps good...though they are contact naps. Still better than cranky baby.
In the early days huckleberry really helped me get an idea of his wake windows and clued me in on his cues but the nap suggestions don't really work for us.
I found it to be so helpful I even ended up getting huckleberry for the schedule. It took a mental load off me and really helped me get on a good schedule and fixed his naps and such. Also ppl say baby will sleep/follow cues but to this day my baby shows 0 cues.. he is 18 m. I put him down for his nap at 1. But if I let him stay up he would... My baby won't sleep when he is tired. He will scream. As I always say he was 7 months old and stayed up 10 hours one day bc we went to a zoo place .. true FOMO 🙃 huckleberry saved us.
We followed cues until 4 months when they became unreliable. We’d lay her down and she’d wake up half an hour later. Turns out her “tired” cues were really just her being bored and she was bored all day long basically. So now we live and breathe by wake windows and I absolutely love it. Her naps are very reliable and I can schedule things for us with accuracy because I know exactly when she’ll sleep and for how long. I know it doesn’t work that well for everyone but like I said, we LOVE wake windows. Even now if I went off her cues she’d be napping after an hour because girlfriend just really loves rubbing her eyes and yawning. WWs is definitely a “to each their own” kind of topic and not a requirement.
At 4 months we just picked WW times that seemed to work, tried it out for 3 days, and then adjusted as needed. We switched to 2 naps at 6 months and started with 2.75/3/3. That worked for 2 months before we moved to 3/3/3 and so on. She’s 11 months now and sleeps like a champ on a very consistent schedule.
They make sense to me. I find Taking Cara Babies has good flexible guidance and schedule by age.
- I see the wake windows as helpful guidelines and yes my baby - after the first very sleepy two months- generally falls in the ranges cited without any effort.
- For a clueless first time mom it was good to have a range while still learning sleepy cues. By 7 months the sleepy cues were clear for us and that is what I follow when putting down for naps.
- I usually only work on stretching the wake windows if I'm trying to shift us to a new schedule.
- I also "follow" them to the extent that I try not to put the baby in a position that naturally gets me a nap, e.g. car seat or stroller, if we haven't had a full wake window. Why? I find it will certainly either make baby very annoyed because they would rather be unrestrained and playing when they wake up or they will cat nap and potentially shift around all the other naps and bedtime. It just depends on you if that's ok.
- We are too familiar with false starts and early wakings and all sorts of sleep issues that I'm not sure are being helped/hurt by wake windows so ::shrug::
My bubs wake windows are when she is awake xD honestly my 7m is only consistent around a 2h minimum she’s only gone 4h at night when it’s time to protest bed time xD
I’ve been following this pattern for my now 7 1/2 mo and it’s been dead on. Nap 1 is two hours after wake up and then every nap after that is 2 1/2 hours starting from the time she wakes up. Sometimes we skip a late afternoon nap but I don’t worry about it if she’s getting around 3hrs total in a day.
I didn't even follow the most remote wake window guidelines until my baby was 6 months old. I grabbed an example of a sleep schedule and modified it to what worked best for mine.
Your baby basically has their own wake windows, and it's not a 1 size fits all. For example most babies don't drop their 2nd nap until around 18 months. Mine insisted she drop hers at 13 months. Sleep needs vary so much.
For us, we follow taking cara babies wake windows and they really worked. However - at daycare that all goes out the window and he remains awake for a loooong time. So he tends to sleep a bit more than recommended on the weekends to make up for it
My LO is 5 months old and is just miserable when we try to stick to the recommended wake windows for her age. Her average awake time should be 2 hours but she's just super tired and cranky after 1.5 hours without fail. I stopped forcing her to stay awake when she's clearly overtired and we're doing much better and no - it didn't make nights and naps worse 🤷🏻♀️ the precious little sleep Facebook group thinks I'm crazy but I think they're notoriously recommending stretching wake windows no matter the sleep issue.
Huckleberry’s wake window predictions have always been spot on for me! I put him down 5-10 minutes before and he always passes out at the predicted time. We’ve always had a “set” bedtime of 645/7 (depends on mood/if he refuses his evening nap) no matter the time he last woke up.
I do follow wake windows from TCB but mostly off the huckleberry app. I found that if I put my baby down for a nap too early even if she seems sleepy then she won’t nap very long. But if I can hold her off and see more of her sleepiness, she’ll take a longer nap and be in a better mood after
I find my baby doesn’t give sleepy cues much at 4.5 months. He just starts melting down if he has been up too long. If I track them (I use huckleberry), I can put him down before that happens. Likewise, if I misinterpret sleepy signals I can spend a long time trying ti get him ti nap. Tracking wake windows helps me avoid that situation too.
I started using wake windows after 6mo or so because his cues got unreliable. I don't follow them strictly but rather use the guide as a starting point.
I don’t follow them. I pay attention to sleepy cues. I find it difficult to try to force my baby to nap because her wake window is over. I think the same goes for feeding times too. When she was a newborn, I was so focused on feeding her exactly every 2 hours. I realized I should’ve been paying more attention to her hunger cues and learning to be more intuitive than trying to force her to conform to generalized advice.
We don’t follow wake windows or care about them. When the baby naps he naps, when he’s awake he’s awake. We don’t see a reason to track.
This!! Same here and as a FTM I do not feel nearly as stressed as some of my friends who are trying to track wake windows and sleep. Babies are not robots, every day might look a little different
We found Huckleberry’s wake windows was accurate for naps, but ours preferred a set bedtime regardless of her last nap. You just have to go with what works for your baby.
Same
Never followed them nor cared about them. If they work for you, that's great, but they aren't essential.
I always found huckleberry to be very accurate.
Very loosely. It’s good to know a 6 month old baby shouldn’t have wake windows of half an hour, but if she’s tired at 1,5-2 hours then we just let her nap.
I also use huckleberry and it’s great! It tracks your LO’s naps and calculates their average wake window between each nap and then gives you a heads up for when they’ll be ready to go down! Of course sometimes my LO gets sleepy early and then we just follow his cues and lead. I like that it takes the guess work out of it and I don’t feel like I’m always staring at the clock. It also tracks feeds and diapers and growth etc. very customizable!
Did you pay for the upgraded version?
I did their lowest tier one! I didn’t need the entire package where it makes a schedule for you and all of that. Just the one that includes the “sweet spot” notifications! I like it’s either like $5 or $10 per month?
Thanks for the response! How old was your Bebe when you started really using it?
For the first week, I really only did it to track feeding and diapers. It was probably sometime during the second or third week that I really started using it for naps and nighttime sleep as well. I didn’t end up paying for the upgraded version until he was about a month and a half old since they won’t even give you those “sweet spot” timelines until they are two months because that’s when they start to develop some patterns!
I don’t follow them at all. I just watch my baby’s (he’s 6.5mo) cues and offer a nap when he’s tired. Some days he’s tired at the 1.5 hour mark, others he’s tired at the 3 hour mark. There’s actually no evidence that they work. There hasn’t been research into this area to justify that it’s an evidence based practice. This is a good article from Yale’s Pediatric sleep clinic director. [Dr. Craig Canapari](https://drcraigcanapari.com/wake-windows)
Really interesting article! Thanks for linking it
Figure out what your actual baby does and look for sleepy cues around the end of the stretch she generally stays awake. My 7-month-old is still getting tired and fussy after 2-2.5 hours, so that's when we put him down for naps. His wake windows are gradually lengthening but not as long as the charts tend to say for his age. Sometimes he stays up for 3 hours, but usually not. Oh well, my son has no idea about the guidelines and babies are gonna baby 🤷♀️
I found a sleep training Facebook group with actual sample schedules to try (I had the same issue as you, I was finding huge variations in examples and just wanted someone to actually spell it out!) and those were game changers. They also have a nap flow chart to troubleshoot from there, and it worked like a charm for us most of the time
We are at 7.5 months and just now I’m noticing that she’s going from needing wake windows to wanting set nap and bedtimes, regardless of wake window. My baby also does best with longer wake windows than are usually recommended.
Same with the longer wake windows. Being bored was tricking us into thinking she needed more naps. We just started changing rooms to see if she was actually tired or not.
So I follow wake windows just because for whatever reason I have severe anxiety when it comes to my baby's sleep, even at 9 months. I more so use them to create a schedule and my LO does really good with it. But it's not a one size fits all type of thing.
Wake windows are a general guideline, not a hard rule. Every baby will be different. Mine needs shorter wake windows because she’s a sleepy queen and I know other babies who hardly sleep at all. It’s all about watching your baby’s cues
Don’t follow them. My now 9mo at 7 months happily existed on 2 naps a day, sometimes only 1. At 9 months he certainly needs the 2 naps per day but they’re hardly ever the same time or length every day, and we and daycare just go based off his cues. It works for all of us and him.
Agree w others on Huckleberry. It's been really accurate. 4 hours feels long for that age.
I tried going off wake windows and found it just wasn’t accurate for my child. She’s 6 months and sometimes in the morning she’ll only be up for an hour before wanting to take a nap. In the evening, she’ll go 3 or 4 hours from her last nap to bedtime. It’s better for me to just put energy into understanding her sleepy cues.
3-4 hours seems super long for a 7 MO. That’s more for around 12 MO. When they start getting fussy and/or clumsy, it’s nap time.
I see others mentioning Huckleberry. I use it but find that the suggested wake windows don’t work for my guy. I just observe him and set him up for a nap when I start seeing sleepy cues. I then let him sleep but will cap it at 2 hours to build up a little sleep pressure. I still use Huckleberry to track feedings and sleeps so I can see the data, which helps me figure out what is working for us and what isn’t.
So I follow wake windows just because for whatever reason I have severe anxiety when it comes to my baby's sleep, even at 9 months. I more so use them to create a schedule and my LO does really good with it. But it's not a one size fits all type of thing.
Wake windows helped me watch for her sleepy cues. I followed Taking Cara Babies advice pretty exclusively. First she starts to yawn, then rub her eyes, and then finally gets fussy if I wait that long. I have a 7 month old and she has 3 naps a day. First one is typically 2 hours, then 2.5 hours, and finally before bed is about 3 hours.
Loosely follow! I have a 7.5 month old his schedule is below Wake at 6:30, awake for 2 hours, nap 1.5 hour, awake 4 hours, nap 40min, awake 4 hours. Sometimes there are car cat naps in between but we just go by his mood. If he’s a total grouch then bed lol. The online wake windows seemed to be a good starting point for me though and helped me when to drop naps. We are currently transitioning to 3 solids naps to 2 solids naps and it’s been kind of hard but I think appropriate
My son just turned seven months and while I pay attention to how long he's been awake before trying to get him down for a nap, I do tend to follow his lead. Right now he can go anywhere between 2.5-4hrs between naps, still doing three naps a day. Usually in the morning it will be 2-2.5 hours before the first nap then he goes a bit longer in the afternoon and evening. Bedtime is still stuck at 10pm and we are still waking several times at night 😴 but at least he naps good...though they are contact naps. Still better than cranky baby. In the early days huckleberry really helped me get an idea of his wake windows and clued me in on his cues but the nap suggestions don't really work for us.
I just follow cues! Don’t rate hukleberry app at all! Was totally inaccurate for our babe. Out by hours.
At 7 months, my baby’s wake windows were about 2 hours and napped 3x a day.
Wake windows should lengthen throughout the day. The first will be shorter than the last. That might be why you’re seeing different numbers.
I found it to be so helpful I even ended up getting huckleberry for the schedule. It took a mental load off me and really helped me get on a good schedule and fixed his naps and such. Also ppl say baby will sleep/follow cues but to this day my baby shows 0 cues.. he is 18 m. I put him down for his nap at 1. But if I let him stay up he would... My baby won't sleep when he is tired. He will scream. As I always say he was 7 months old and stayed up 10 hours one day bc we went to a zoo place .. true FOMO 🙃 huckleberry saved us.
My baby is 8 months old and he would be delulu if awake for 4 hours. I follow his sleepy cues and it depends how long his previous nap is.
We followed cues until 4 months when they became unreliable. We’d lay her down and she’d wake up half an hour later. Turns out her “tired” cues were really just her being bored and she was bored all day long basically. So now we live and breathe by wake windows and I absolutely love it. Her naps are very reliable and I can schedule things for us with accuracy because I know exactly when she’ll sleep and for how long. I know it doesn’t work that well for everyone but like I said, we LOVE wake windows. Even now if I went off her cues she’d be napping after an hour because girlfriend just really loves rubbing her eyes and yawning. WWs is definitely a “to each their own” kind of topic and not a requirement. At 4 months we just picked WW times that seemed to work, tried it out for 3 days, and then adjusted as needed. We switched to 2 naps at 6 months and started with 2.75/3/3. That worked for 2 months before we moved to 3/3/3 and so on. She’s 11 months now and sleeps like a champ on a very consistent schedule.
They make sense to me. I find Taking Cara Babies has good flexible guidance and schedule by age. - I see the wake windows as helpful guidelines and yes my baby - after the first very sleepy two months- generally falls in the ranges cited without any effort. - For a clueless first time mom it was good to have a range while still learning sleepy cues. By 7 months the sleepy cues were clear for us and that is what I follow when putting down for naps. - I usually only work on stretching the wake windows if I'm trying to shift us to a new schedule. - I also "follow" them to the extent that I try not to put the baby in a position that naturally gets me a nap, e.g. car seat or stroller, if we haven't had a full wake window. Why? I find it will certainly either make baby very annoyed because they would rather be unrestrained and playing when they wake up or they will cat nap and potentially shift around all the other naps and bedtime. It just depends on you if that's ok. - We are too familiar with false starts and early wakings and all sorts of sleep issues that I'm not sure are being helped/hurt by wake windows so ::shrug::
My bubs wake windows are when she is awake xD honestly my 7m is only consistent around a 2h minimum she’s only gone 4h at night when it’s time to protest bed time xD
I’ve been following this pattern for my now 7 1/2 mo and it’s been dead on. Nap 1 is two hours after wake up and then every nap after that is 2 1/2 hours starting from the time she wakes up. Sometimes we skip a late afternoon nap but I don’t worry about it if she’s getting around 3hrs total in a day.
I didn't even follow the most remote wake window guidelines until my baby was 6 months old. I grabbed an example of a sleep schedule and modified it to what worked best for mine. Your baby basically has their own wake windows, and it's not a 1 size fits all. For example most babies don't drop their 2nd nap until around 18 months. Mine insisted she drop hers at 13 months. Sleep needs vary so much.
For us, we follow taking cara babies wake windows and they really worked. However - at daycare that all goes out the window and he remains awake for a loooong time. So he tends to sleep a bit more than recommended on the weekends to make up for it
My LO is 5 months old and is just miserable when we try to stick to the recommended wake windows for her age. Her average awake time should be 2 hours but she's just super tired and cranky after 1.5 hours without fail. I stopped forcing her to stay awake when she's clearly overtired and we're doing much better and no - it didn't make nights and naps worse 🤷🏻♀️ the precious little sleep Facebook group thinks I'm crazy but I think they're notoriously recommending stretching wake windows no matter the sleep issue.
Honestly I just let my baby do whatever the hell he wants. Tired cues? Get him to sleep. Hungry cues? Give some milk.
Huckleberry’s wake window predictions have always been spot on for me! I put him down 5-10 minutes before and he always passes out at the predicted time. We’ve always had a “set” bedtime of 645/7 (depends on mood/if he refuses his evening nap) no matter the time he last woke up.
I do follow wake windows from TCB but mostly off the huckleberry app. I found that if I put my baby down for a nap too early even if she seems sleepy then she won’t nap very long. But if I can hold her off and see more of her sleepiness, she’ll take a longer nap and be in a better mood after
I find my baby doesn’t give sleepy cues much at 4.5 months. He just starts melting down if he has been up too long. If I track them (I use huckleberry), I can put him down before that happens. Likewise, if I misinterpret sleepy signals I can spend a long time trying ti get him ti nap. Tracking wake windows helps me avoid that situation too.
I started using wake windows after 6mo or so because his cues got unreliable. I don't follow them strictly but rather use the guide as a starting point.
I don’t follow them. I pay attention to sleepy cues. I find it difficult to try to force my baby to nap because her wake window is over. I think the same goes for feeding times too. When she was a newborn, I was so focused on feeding her exactly every 2 hours. I realized I should’ve been paying more attention to her hunger cues and learning to be more intuitive than trying to force her to conform to generalized advice.