Sleep by age
How much sleep does a baby need?
Babies from four to twelve months need 12 to 16 hours of sleep per 24 hours, including naps. That is a wide range on purpose, and the width of it is the most useful thing on this page.
In short
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that infants aged 4 to 12 months sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Sleep at this age is spread across the day rather than consolidated into one block, and the total is what the recommendation is about.
- Hours per 24, naps included
- 12 to 16Hours per 24, naps includedAASM, ages 4 to 12 months
- Where the guidance starts
- 4 moWhere the guidance startsNo recommendation below this
- Hour spread in the range
- 4Hour spread in the rangeHealthy babies sit across all of it
Babies, 4 to 12 months
12 to 16hours per 24 hours, naps included
As published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in its consensus statement on recommended sleep duration. Quoted as a range because that is how it was issued: healthy sleepers in this band sit across the whole span, and a single number would be us inventing a precision the evidence does not have.
A four hour range is the finding, not a hedge
It is tempting to read 12 to 16 as the researchers declining to commit. It is the opposite. The panel reviewed the published evidence and found that healthy babies genuinely sit across that whole span, which means a twelve hour baby and a sixteen hour baby are both normal and neither needs fixing.
That matters because most of the distress around infant sleep comes from comparison. A parent whose baby sleeps thirteen hours reads that the average is fourteen and a half and concludes something is wrong. Nothing is wrong. The range is the answer.
The consensus statement is the AASM paediatric recommendation published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2016.
Why the number counts naps and the adult one does not
The recommendations for everyone under five are given per 24 hours and include daytime sleep, and from six upwards they are given per night. That is not a formatting choice. Sleep consolidates into a single nocturnal block over the first few years, and until it has, a figure that only counted the night would be describing a fraction of the sleep.
The practical consequence is that you cannot compare a baby total to an adult total. Sixteen hours for an infant and eight for an adult are not two points on the same scale, because one of them is a whole day of sleep taken in pieces and the other is one block.
What the adult in the room can actually do
The honest position of a sleep app during this period is that it has nothing useful to say about the baby and quite a lot to say about the person tracking them. Adult sleep in the first year is short, fragmented and taken at the wrong times, and those are three separate problems with three different responses.
Fragmentation is the one worth measuring rather than guessing at, because nobody remembers their own wake-ups accurately and the gap between how a night felt and what it was tends to be large in both directions. /for/new-parents goes through what that period actually does to an adult schedule and which parts of it respond to anything.
A night broken into pieces is still one night, and Tock treats it as one rather than as two failures.
What is actually different at this age
The total is the headline. These are the things that change underneath it, and they are usually what somebody is really asking about.
What changes
- Sleep is polyphasic. A baby is not sleeping badly because the night is broken; the night being broken is what sleep looks like at this age.
- The circadian system is still developing, which is why a newborn has no day and night pattern and a six month old increasingly does.
- The total across 24 hours is what the recommendation covers, so a short night with long naps and a long night with short naps can both land inside it.
Where an app stops being the right tool
Stated plainly rather than buried, because a sleep app writing about sleep has an obvious incentive not to.
Limits worth knowing
- Tock is an alarm and a sleep tracker for the adult holding the phone. It does not track a baby, and nothing about it is designed to be near one.
- A phone on a nightstand cannot tell whose movement or breathing it is picking up, and any app claiming to monitor an infant from across a room is making a much bigger claim than the sensors support.
- Sleep that worries you at this age is a conversation for a health visitor or a doctor, not for an app. That includes breathing that sounds wrong, which is never something to diagnose from a recording.
Tock estimates sleep and is not a medical device. Nothing here is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a substitute for one. If sleep is genuinely not working, that is a conversation for a doctor rather than for an app or an article.
Questions people ask
How many hours should a baby sleep?
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours for babies aged 4 to 12 months, including naps. Healthy babies sit across the whole of that range, so a twelve hour baby and a sixteen hour baby are both normal.
Is there a recommendation for newborns under four months?
No, and that is deliberate. The AASM panel did not issue a recommendation below four months because the available evidence did not support one. Any specific figure you see for newborns is somebody else filling in the gap.
Does the 12 to 16 hours include naps?
Yes. Every recommendation for children under five is given per 24 hours and includes daytime sleep, because sleep at that age has not yet consolidated into a single night. From six years upwards the figures are given per night instead.
Can a sleep app track my baby?
Tock cannot, and will not claim to. It is an alarm and a sleep tracker for the adult whose phone it is on. A phone across a room cannot tell whose movement or breathing it is detecting, and anything that worries you about a baby sleeping belongs in front of a doctor rather than an app.
Other age bands
The same consensus statement, read for a different age.
- How much sleep toddlers needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 1 to 2 years sleep 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Most of that has consolidated into the night by the second birthday, with one daytime nap doing the rest.
- How much sleep adults needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. It is expressed as a minimum rather than a range because the evidence supports a lower bound far more firmly than it supports an ideal figure.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- Sleep soundsBinaural beatsA binaural beat is something your brain constructs when each ear receives a slightly different tone, so it exists only over headphones and vanishes the moment you use a speaker. The sleep evidence is limited, mixed and mostly short-term, and Tock does not include a binaural beats track, partly because sleeping in headphones brings problems of its own.
- Tock for youTravellers with jet lagYou landed, you are on local time on paper, and your body is running four or eight hours behind. Wide awake at 3am, unusable at 3pm, and it lasts roughly a day per time zone.
- AlternativesTock vs PillowStay with Pillow if you track on your wrist, because it runs on the Watch and Tock does not. Choose Tock if your phone is the only thing on the nightstand and you want the alarm to be the centre of the product rather than a feature of the tracker.
- RoundupsThe best alarm apps for shift workersFor shift workers the most reliable alarm is still the iPhone Clock app, because it makes no assumptions about your schedule and lets you keep a saved alarm for every shift pattern. Tock is the better pick if you also sleep in the daytime and need something that will not let you turn it off half asleep at 4pm.
- Wake timesWaking up at 6:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 6:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 12:00amWhere to put the alarm after a 12:00am lights-out.
Knowing the number is the easy half
Hitting it is the other one. Tock measures what you actually got rather than what the schedule allowed for, and wakes you at a lighter moment inside the last half hour.