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Newborns cannot sleep for several hours without waking due to their immature brains and they rarely sleep more than 3 hours at a time. Newborns sleep 17 hours a day on average. Sleeping for so much of the day helps newborns double their birthweight in the first 4 months. Parents then begin their long journey to try and schedule and regiment their babys’ sleep patterns, which are ever changing.

Infants in the first few months tend be put to bed at night later than older infants or toddlers, with an average bed time of 9:50 PM. By the time an infant’s sleep is more regular, bed times drop to an average of 8:30 PM for 2-year-olds and then rise to close to 9:00 PM for 3-year-olds.

Parents of infants report that their children fall asleep faster than parents of toddlers and older children, with just under half reporting their infants need more than 15 minutes to fall asleep. Infants are reported to fall asleep in 5 minutes or less at twice the rate of older children. Children who get the most sleep are also those that fall asleep the fastest.

Infants less than three months of age on average sleep less than 8 hours a night, a number that will increase to an average of 10 hours at 12 months and then only declines a bit through the toddler years. During that first year, most infants take at least one nap every day—usually 2 or 3—and average 4 hours of naptime each day, a number that declines to 2 hours by the end of toddlerhood. Nearly 40% of infants under the age of two sleep 14 of the 24 hours in each day, while the average 2-year-old sleeps just over 11 hours each day between naps and nighttime sleep.

Even with all the sleep they get during a typical day, infants don’t sleep in large chunks. Seventy percent of children under the age of one wake at least once during the night—a full half waking up 2 or more times—mostly to feed. By the second year, the frequency of nighttime waking is reduced to just under 50% of children, with only 10% waking multiple times. Most parents of toddlers still go to their child to help them get back to sleep even if they aren’t likely to be hungry.

Parents whose infants sleep the least are twice as likely to think their child has a sleep problem. Parents whose infants wake up multiple times each night are three times as likely to think their child has a sleep problem. Unsurprisingly, when parents are asked what they would change about their infant’s sleep behavior most cite how well their child naps or sleeps at night and the length of time the infant sleeps.

Almost all parents develop a bedtime routine for their infants and toddlers. Bedtime routines include reading to the child and bathing. Feeding is often a part of an infant’s routine, while brushing teeth becomes more common in toddlerhood.

Infants are more likely than toddlers to share a room with their parents—60% to 49%, though 15% of both groups co-sleep—share a bed—with their parents. Two-thirds of parents are with their infants when they fall asleep, a number that falls to less than half by toddlerhood. Half of all infants are put to bed after they have fallen asleep, by the age of two this falls to a quarter of toddlers and by the age of three about 15% of toddlers are asleep before they are put to bed.

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