A 2 month old sleep schedule will not be predictable from day to day. Aspects of the schedule will be starting to be consistent but nap length can vary day to day as can wake up time.
What’s important during this time is making sure that your 2 month old is gaining weight well and getting enough rest overall.
I teach my students a “flexible schedule” or a “daily flow" instead of having them stick to a strict 2 month old sleep schedule. This helps you gather some predictability to your day as you can project ahead to what your baby will need in a few hours. The idea is that every time your baby wakes up, you are projecting out to when the next nap should fall. Every time your baby eats during the day you are projecting out to the next 3 hours to when the next feed needs to be.
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A set 2 month old sleep schedule where 9 am is nap time doesn’t usually occur until 9 months or when your baby is on 2 naps a day. That’s because there is so much growth and change happening over these next few months. Her sleep needs will change dramatically.
I also hate waking up sleeping babies. If you’re sticking to a set schedule, you might have to wake your baby up to “preserve” that schedule. I’d rather teach you the parenting skills to know how to meet your baby’s needs with a “daily flow” so that you and your baby are adaptable and good at troubleshooting when the day isn’t going your way. Which happens.
There is a Huge Opportunity at the 2nd Month For Sleep Teaching.
The drive to sleep is biological, but the way we sleep is a learned habit. Think about yourself, if I told you I was taking away your blankets and pillow tonight and that you couldn’t sleep in your favorite position, you would struggle to fall asleep. Eventually you would figure out a new way because the drive to sleep is high at night, and you can learn a new way of falling asleep.
In this 4 to 8 week period, you have the opportunity to teach your little one healthy sleep habits and “what sleep looks like.” This is not “sleep training”, but rather gentle newborn sleep shaping. There are no tears and you are engaged helping to make sleep happen.
If you’re thinking about your long sleep game, you’re going to want your baby to be sleeping in a crib. If that’s you, then you want to start now having her falling asleep in the crib, rather than on you and then being put down.
Around 10 weeks of age, your baby is slowly waking up to the world around her and is starting to have preference about where she sleeps. If she’s only known sleeping on you, starting to get her into the crib can become challenging.
I'm serious people - you can absolutely be working on gentle newborn sleep shaping early on! This is a no tears gentle approach that helps you become a sleep detective. I did this with my daughter starting in the first month and I've helped countless parents do this too and AVOID all the common parenting pitfalls that people think are unavoidable! They are. I outline how I do this in my Amazon Best selling book, The Helping Babies Sleep Method; The Art and Science of Teaching Your Baby to Sleep. This takes you from now until 24 months of age. It's on audible too.
Not a book person? I do high touch coaching for working professional parents and guide you through the process.
You might try swaddling your baby and putting her down in the crib awake and helping her doze off with your hand on her chest once she’s in the crib. This can take practice. Give this 5-10 minutes to work. If it hasn’t worked, pick her up, see if she needs to burp, soothe her and then try again.
Sample 2 Month Old Sleep Schedule
7:30 am - wake up and feed #1
8:30 am - Nap 1 - back asleep
10:00 am - Wake up and Feed #2 - 2.5 hours since last feed
- This first nap of the day tends to be the longer nap for many kids until roughly 4 months
11:00 am - Nap 2 - 1 hour
- During nap, woke at 30 minutes, Mom picked up burped and soothed her back to sleep and extended nap to 1 hour
12:00 pm - Awake
1:00 pm - Feed #3 - 3 hours since last feed
1:30 pm - Nap 3 - 40 min
2:10 pm - Awake
3:40 pm - Nap #4 -Asleep
4:30 pm - Awake
4:30 pm - Feed #4 - 3:30 hours since last feed
6:00 pm - Nap 5
6:30 pm - Awake
Witching period - lots of cluster feeding and possibly some mini naps at the breast/bottle in this time
7:00 pm - Feed #5 - 2.5 since last feed
8:00 pm - Trying to get down for the night, this might take up to 1 hour of cluster feeding, burping, settling, wanting to feed again.
Goal of 9 pm asleep if possible.
9:00 pm - Asleep
10:00 pm - Dreamfeed before Mom goes to sleep
2:20 am - Awake and Feed (4.5 hours)
5:20 am - Awake and Feed (3 hours)
7:30 am - Awake for the day
- You might have more night feeding and that would be okay too
What’s important in this schedule
- Intentionally feeding both sides every 3 hours during the day
- Trying to feed on wake up rather than putting down to sleep
- Trying to get your baby back to sleep within 1.5 hour of being awake during the day
- Trying to get naps to be 45 minutes or more
- The witching period of fussy baby from 6-10 pm is real
- Baby is tired and your milk supply is lower so you have competing needs of tired and hungry = fussy
- Trying to get 15 - 18 hours of total sleep in 24 hours
The other thing I've done as early as this age is to darken out the room! Yes, we have evidence to show that as early as 1 month of age darkening the room can help entrain the circadian rhythm. I recommend these Sleepout Curtains to my clients. You can use my code helpingbabiessleep for 10% off.
What’s NOT important about this schedule
- The times listed - your baby may wake up at 7 am for the day and change the times of naps - it’s the time intervals between feeds and sleeps that is important
- The exact nap lengths. Newborn nap lengths may vary day to day. Maybe she only takes a 45 minute nap at the beginning of the day and wakes happy and content. That’s okay, start your 1 awake time from that time.
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