The Truth About The 12-Hour Night

Have you been operating under the belief that your baby absolutely must sleep 12 hours at night? And if they’re not, then there must be something you’re doing wrong?

Surely, there’s something you can tweak to hit this target, you just haven’t come across the right piece of advice on the Instagram yet.

Well mama, I’m so glad you’re here reading this blog right now so that I can tell you…

Your baby isn’t broken!!

But I understand why you might think you got a lemon.

Most baby sleep “sample” schedules (including ones I’ve created) use a 6-6, 7-7, or 8-8 framework.

The reason for this is that it’s simple.

And plenty of babies do sleep 12 hours at night. I see it frequently in the sleep logs of my clients.

But guess what?

They’re the lucky ones.

There are also plenty of babies who sleep 11 hours at night and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them!

When I write a personalized sleep plans for my clients, I never use the 12-hour framework. I will set a goal for 11-12 hours of consolidated sleep at night (this may include a feed in younger babies).

I tell parents that eleven hours after bedtime is a realistic goal for when they should expect baby to wake for the day. If they sleep later than that? Great! But that’s not the expectation, it’s just a welcome bonus.

As long as your child is getting their sleep needs met a “perfect” 12-hour night is not required, nor is it realistic for every child.

As you can see in the chart below, there is a range for the amount of sleep needed in a 24-hour period of time at any given age.

That’s why you can have two babies the same age (which I actually do have) and one will sleep 12 hours at night while the other is consistently up just after 6:00am (this is my life). But both are getting enough sleep.

Sometimes parents will say something like, “we’d like our son to be on an 8-8 schedule for our lifestyle”. And I have to break it to them that it doesn’t quite work like that. This isn’t a drive-thru.

I’ll tell them we can try to shift things a little later, but if you put baby to bed at 8pm, even if it was the most perfectly timed bedtime ever, you cannot and should not be disappointed by a 7am wake-up!

In fact, that would be a fantastic night!!

There’s only so much manipulation you can do. Our little ones have their own natural circadian rhythms and you can’t fight nature. Instead, you must work with it and optimize it to get the best possible night your unique child can give you.

I get a regular stream of DM’s or emails from frustrated parents who can’t figure out why their baby keeps having an early waking.

When I ask what the schedule is, they might say that baby goes to bed around 7:00pm and no matter what they do, they can’t get them to sleep in later than 6:00am.

That’s not an early waking.

Now what is an early waking?

Generally, anything in the 5:00 o’clock hour. But again, it depends. If you put your baby to bed at 6:30pm, now we’re back to 5:30am being a totally appropriate time for them to wake up the next day!

We all want a 12-hour baby, but we don’t all get one.

And there are even about 5% of babies who truly have lighter sleep needs and will never give you a minute more than 10 hours at night, yet their mood is impeccable, they nap well, they’re hitting all their milestones and absolutely nothing is wrong.

That’s not the norm, but I’ve have had one client (out of 150) that I could not get her baby past that 10-hour work - and I was the 2nd sleep consultant who tried!

She settled on acceptance, and it actually gave her a lot of peace to finally stop trying to “fix it” because it was her only complaint about his sleep.

Now I’m not trying to gaslight you and tell you that your baby isn’t having early wakings if they are! If your baby is waking up at 5am and you know they need more sleep, they are not one of those rare 10-hour babies, then let’s get them (and you) more sleep!

There are lots of things we can do to help your baby sleep in later!

And if even 10-11 hours of consolidated night sleep sounds like a pipe dream to you, there is hope! That’s what I’m here for!

I can help you get there by taking a look at your schedule, your routines, and finally, teaching you how to put your baby down awake at bedtime, to drift off to sleep on their own.