How long can a 6 to 8 month old stay awake?

A lot happens at once in these months. Your baby develops fast, wants to be closer to you more and more, and the naps change too. You notice it in how long your baby can stay awake between two sleeps.

A short nap can actually mean a shorter wake window

Pay attention to the direction here, because it goes the other way than you'd think. If your baby slept briefly, the wake window after it may actually be shorter, not longer. So always look at both: how long your baby has been awake now, and how that previous nap went.

Kyra uses 2 to 3 hours for this age, and adds right away that every baby is different. So don't count with one number for the whole day, but look again per nap.

From three naps to two

Changing naps belong to this age. Babies who first did three naps, sometimes even four, move more toward two. Other babies still struggle with shorter, irregular naps. According to Kyra, that's all part of it.

From waking up to the first nap

In Kyra's example rhythm with three naps, your baby wakes up at six or half past six. Add two to two and a half hours and you end up around half past eight or quarter to nine for the first nap, so that falls between eight and nine.

In the rhythm with two naps, which fits eight months better, the first nap starts around nine or half past nine. The advice is to let your baby sleep until eleven at the most, and how long exactly depends on how well that nap goes.

The whole day with clock times, in both rhythms, is in the sleep schedule from 6 to 8 months.

Start with the wake window, and watch the signals

The wake windows are your starting point, Kyra says, and you keep good track of them. From there you also watch for the signals that your baby is really getting tired: lots of yawning, fussing, looking away, frowning or looking cross, and getting quieter. If you respond to those early signals, falling asleep goes more easily; if your baby goes to bed too late, falling asleep gets harder.

The fixed order within an awake block, from waking up to sleeping again, is in wake windows by age. If your baby is still hungry just before a nap, read my baby only falls asleep on me.

Short naps are part of it

If a nap is short, that's completely normal in this phase. There are four possible causes: overtiredness, wrong timing, trouble linking sleep cycles, and depending on help to fall asleep. See extending a short nap and why a nap only lasts 30 minutes.

If nights go wrong, look at the day too. Too little daytime sleep can actually lead to overtiredness, waking early, waking more often at night and even shorter naps. If your baby wakes around five every morning, see waking too early.

Why sleep suddenly gets harder around six months

Rolling, sitting and crawling are new skills that keep your baby awake, and at the same time separation anxiety flares up. See leap 6 and separation anxiety and sleep.

There's something else too: your baby is much more aware of the surroundings. Sounds and stimulation come in harder, and get processed during sleep too. A setback in sleep here is temporary and comes from all that development having so much impact.

If you want to see the ranges for other ages, they're together in the overview of wake windows by age.