Sleep Schedules for Babies 7-12 Months: Part Two

To create a schedule that works for you and your little one, it helps to divide the day in half. For this sample schedule, we will say that the day is 7 AM-7 PM and the night is 7 PM-7 AM. You can move this schedule around by an hour if you need to, but as a general rule we want our mornings to start between 6 and 8 AM and bedtime to be between 6 and 8 PM.

Sample Schedule for 7-12 Month Old

7:00 AM        Wake up and have milk feeding

8:00               Solid breakfast

9:00-10:00   Nap

10:00             Wake up and have milk feeding

12:00             Solid lunch

1:00-3:00     Nap

3:00              Wake up and have milk feeding

5:00              Solid dinner

6:00              Bathtime

6:30              Milk feed and storytime

7:00 PM        Bedtime

At 7 months and up, sleep issues tend to revolve around being not tired enough instead of being overtired. Baby is old enough to stay awake for longer periods of time and we want naps and nighttime sleep to be spaced out appropriately. As mentioned in Sleep Schedules for Babies 7-12 Months: Part 1, we want a 2/3/4 spacing. The first nap should be 2 hours after baby wakes up in the morning, the second nap should be 3 hours after the first ends, and bedtime should be 4 hours after the second nap ends.

As baby grows, solids will eclipse milk feedings. Usually the middle of the day milk feedings are the first to be dropped, followed by the morning milk feeding, and lastly the bedtime milk feeding. Between 12-24 months, baby should drop his morning nap and have one marathon nap in the afternoon, ranging between 2-3 hours.

By Hannah Mira, Founder of Bonsoir Bebe Sleep Consulting