How Much Sleep Does A 2-Month-Old Baby Need In A Day?

Hi, I'm Dana Obleman, creator of the The Sleep Sense Program.
This week's question comes from Lisa and she writes:

"What is a normal amount of time to have a baby awake during the day so that they sleep better at night? My baby is two months old."

Thanks Lisa! It's a common misconception really, that if you keep the baby awake longer throughout the day, they'll sleep better at night; the exact opposite is true.
The longer you keep the baby awake, (especially a newborn) the more overtired they become. When overtiredness sets in, most babies tend to become wound up instead of relaxed and so you'll find that as the day wears on and the baby has had very little sleep throughout the day, it can become harder get them to settle down and go to sleep.

As far as a two month old goes, my suggestion would be that you fall into a pattern during the day of the baby waking up, being fed and playing for a short amount of time. After about 45 minutes to maybe an hour and 15 is really the maximum amount of stamina that a newborn has before they should be going back to bed. So eat, play and sleep is a really good routine to set up throughout the day so that you're not falling into a pattern of always nursing or bottle feeding to sleep.

That way, when evening rolls around, a good way to encourage a newborn to start separating day from night (and encourage the majority of their sleep in the night) is to set up a bedtime routine and that can start right from Day 1 if you're feeling up to it. It doesn't have to be very elaborate.

I like to start off the routine with a bath, because I just think a bath is such a significantly different activity than others in a newborn's life that it's a good transition and acts as a really good cue that bedtime is coming. So maybe a quick bath topped off with nursing and then into the crib, will really help set the stage for nighttime sleep.

Just remember that actually the more well-rested a baby is during the day, the better off their nighttime sleep is going to be. They won't be overtired and that's really what you want to be watching out for, especially with a newborn.

I hope that helps, Lisa. Thank you for your question and sleep well!

Could This Indicate Separation Anxiety?

Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of the Sleep Sense Program.
This weeks question comes from Jody who writes:

“My twelve month old has been sleeping through the night for over eight months. Lately he’s been waking and needs to be held and reassured by his mom and dad until he goes back to sleep. Could this be separation anxiety? And what should we do?”

It could be separation anxiety Jody, but you’ll also want to be really cautious about your expectations for him as far as sleep goes. Little set backs can happen from time to time and because he’s twelve months old he might be learning to walk or to perfect that skill so that will often cause a bit of a sleep regression.

The best way to handle it might be to first give him a few minutes and see if he is going to settle on his own. It’s really common for babies to have something called a partial arousal where they will wake in the night and even cry for a few minutes and then go right back to sleep again. When parents go in they’ll find that their eyes are still closed and that they really do look like they are still sleeping. So, you don’t need to rush in right away; give it a couple minutes and see if he’s going to do this more on his own.

Then go in and if you want to, you can sit by the crib and tell him it’s still night, lay him down a few times and just encourage him to go back to sleep. I definitely wouldn’t take him out of the crib and I certainly wouldn’t start rocking him, because my guess would be that the more that that happens the more likely he is to start waking up looking for it over and over again.

Also Jody, have a look at how he falls asleep at bed time. If you’re rocking him to sleep at bed time, my guess is you’re going to have to make a big change to that too because he’s got a rocking-sleep association started there and he’ll just keep waking up through the night looking for that same thing again. So keep an eye on bedtime, make sure he’s falling asleep on his own there and then for the night wakings it’s fine to go in and it’s absolutely fair if he’s having a bit of separation anxiety that you make your presence known. Tell him everything’s fine and that it’s still nighttime. If you want to come in and out and check on him every five minutes that’s perfectly fine as well. Just be very careful that you don’t start messing with his own strategies and rocking him to sleep etc.; keep him in that crib and it should blow over.

He knows how to sleep well already because he’s been doing it all this time, so he probably just needs a nudge in the right direction to get back on track! As long as you’re fairly consistent and firm with what you’re expectations are, (mainly that he go to sleep for the night) he should get back on track with that really quickly.

So thanks for your question Jody. Good luck; sleep well!