Baby Awake Times Chart: The Secret for a Great Baby Sleep

Striking the right balance between awake and sleep is beneficial to the baby. Maintaining a well-organized ‘baby awake times chart’ is the sure-shot way to bring that balance. Here’s how!

It’s a widespread myth that all babies will go to sleep when their energy bar runs out. In fact, every child is different and requires a different approach to get into a healthy sleep routine. Your job is to understand your baby’s needs.

You can easily teach your baby how to fall asleep more easily and sleep better at night with the help of proper sleep training.

And one crucial component of successful sleep training is to keep track of your infant’s sleep cycle. How do you do so? By following a baby wake times chart!

In this article, you will discover the basics of baby awake time charts, a baby’s sleep hours, and awake time. After reading this, you won’t trouble Google with questions like “ how long shall my baby be awake” or “how much time shall I give my baby to sleep well.”

The basics of baby awake times chart

There is heterogeneity in the parent’s opinion when asked, “What do you think are the signs that a baby is tired”?

For some, the yawning and eye rubbing is a clear sign of tiredness. However, other parents only get fooled by this and spend time and energy, not to mention forcing the baby to sleep.

At some point, this can also become a bit frustrating. Whoever said, parenting is easy, must not have seen a baby wail for hours because it is uncomfortable and unable to drift away to his dreamland.

Moving on, you need to understand that the awake time strategy won’t work in solitude. You need to amalgamate it with sleep time and eat time. Following this Wake, Eat, Sleep cycle is the key to ensuring your baby’s fine health and cognitive development.

Babies and adults alike experience what we can call ‘Sleep Pressure’, a term coined by Dr. Dement (Founder of the National Sleep Foundation). He explains sleep pressure with an analogy.

Consider every awake hour as one brick, and as the hour passes, you put that brick in your backpack. Once, the backpack has enough bricks that you cannot carry around, it’s time you to unload the brick by drifting off to sleep.

With infants, the capacity to carry the load is less; hence, they have shorter awake cycles. Therefore, you need the baby awake times chart to monitor the awake and sleep time.

The most common guidelines for a complete wake and sleep cycle

The guidelines given below may differ for your baby. However, these are the most common observable awake and nap time considerations. If your toddler does not sleep or keeps awake as per these norms, don’t worry.

Every baby has a different sleep pattern. Your job is to understand your baby’s sleep cycle and bring it in conformity with the suggested guidelines. These sleep and wake cycles can also assist in providing sleep training to your child.

Why should you follow an awake time chart?

We have already established that a properly followed baby sleep and wake cycle is good for health and mind development. Apart from this, there are a few other convincing reasons to make your baby’s Awake Time chart and try to follow it.

While keeping track of the awake time, monitor your baby’s activities as the sleep time approaches. This will help you identify the signs of sleepiness or when the baby’s backpack is full of bricks.

This won’t come in a day or two. You have to keep track of the baby’s movements for days altogether. Filter out the most common behavior patterns with every passing day.

Gradually, your baby’s awake time may increase, but the behavior sticks. This will give you another indicator that the awake time is gradually incrementing, and the sleep time is decreasing.

Sometimes, it may seem that the baby is fully active and is ready to climb up the hill. But, it can also be a facade. You simply cannot get into their mischievous little heads and know what they want.

So, relying on the signs and everyday behavior is your best bet. Not following the baby awake times chart can make your baby fussy and difficult to soothe because of bypassing the ideal nap time.

But, when you have clarity about the awake and nap time, it is easier to start preparing for the baby’s sleep and (have some “Me” time). Don’t worry; baby or no baby, we all want some.

To do that, you need to be prepare and learn to recognize the appropriate wake times for babies and their sleep patterns. And a practical baby awake times chart will undoubtedly help you do so.

Off to a great baby sleep

Before I sign off, here’s an interesting thought. If you allow your baby to sleep in your arms (which most mothers do), make sure to place them on the bed while still awake. This will build a habit in your child of going to sleep on his own.

All in all, motherhood is a blessing in disguise. Being a mother, you will feel and experience every possible human emotion there is to feel. This is a journey that will bring a lot of joy, excitement, anger, frustration, and whatnot.

But at the end of it all, there is satisfaction. Babies have a contagious smile, and it has a magical power to heal everything, from sleep deprivation to anger. So, take care of your baby, because nobody else can do it like you.

Originally published at https://thesleepycub.us on June 1, 2020.