Baby schedules are not one-size-fits-all, but the rough shape is well-known by age. Tell us when your baby wakes up, how old they are, and how you feed them, and we'll build a single-day schedule of naps, feeds, and bedtime that matches the published wake-window and feeding cadence guidance for that age. Print it, stick it on the fridge, adjust against your real day.
The Sleep Toolkit ships a 12-PDF parent pack — printable wake-window flash cards, age-banded daily schedules, and the newborn night-feeds tracker. One-time $19, lifetime updates.
Get the 12 free printables →The schedule combines two pieces of pediatric guidance. The first is wake windows — the age-appropriate awake interval between sleep periods, ranging from 45 to 60 minutes for newborns up to 4 to 6 hours for two-year-olds. The second is feeding cadence — every 2.5 hours for breastfed babies, every 3.5 hours for formula-fed, and every 3 hours for mixed feeding. Past 12 months, milk feeds give way to a 3-meal pattern with breakfast anchored near wake and lunch and dinner spaced through the day.
The algorithm walks forward from your wake time, alternating naps and wake windows until the day's typical bedtime, with feeds slotted in by cadence. The output caps at 16 events for readability — a newborn day might have more than that in reality, but the visible structure is the schedule shape, not every nappy change.
Sources: Mindell and Owens "A Clinical Guide to Pediatric Sleep" 3rd edition for wake windows and total daily sleep ranges, the AAP 2016 sleep duration consensus statement, and La Leche League standard cadence guidance for breastfeeding intervals. Marie Hansen, PSC review pending.
A note on individual variation. Real babies sit inside the band with about ±15 minutes of personal style. Sleep cues — eye-rubbing, glassy stare, ear-pulling, sudden hyperactivity — almost always beat the clock. If your baby consistently sleeps better at the lower edge of the wake window, that is their wake window. The schedule is a starting guide, not a rule.
The builder lays out naps, feeds and a bedtime from your baby's age, but treat it as a starting template rather than a timetable to obey. Every baby lands slightly differently inside the age norms, so use the schedule as scaffolding and adjust the exact times to the child in front of you.
The parts that are worth holding steady are the anchors: a consistent morning wake time and a consistent bedtime. Getting those two right does more for a settled day than nailing every nap to the minute, because they give the emerging body clock something fixed to lock onto.
Newborn sleep is polyphasic and not yet circadian, which is why a fresh newborn genuinely cannot be put on a schedule. The day-night rhythm, and the melatonin that drives it, emerge over the first two to three months, and that is when a predictable pattern becomes possible. Total sleep needs across infancy and toddlerhood follow the American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus (Paruthi and colleagues).
As the clock matures, naps consolidate and then drop. Frequent newborn naps merge into a morning-and-afternoon pattern, then into a single midday nap in the second year, and finally disappear in the preschool years. The schedule is really a snapshot of wherever your baby currently sits on that developmental arc.
Protect the anchors, follow cues in between, and expect turbulence. Regressions around four months and again around eight to ten months are developmental milestones showing up in sleep, not a sign the schedule has failed, so ride them out rather than overhauling everything.
Two things always outrank the schedule. Safe-sleep basics, a firm flat surface, on the back, nothing loose in the crib, come first, every time. And persistent problems, or any worry about feeding, growth or breathing during sleep, are a conversation with your pediatrician rather than a scheduling tweak.
Three common causes. One, the wake window is too short — babies under 4 months especially need active soothing to fall asleep, not necessarily a longer awake interval. Two, the wake window is too long and overtired hormones (cortisol) are blocking sleep. Three, the sleep environment has shifted — too bright, too warm, no white noise. Try the lower bound of the wake window for a few days first. If that fails, try the upper bound. If both fail, look at environment. The wake-windows-by-age tool has more detail on this.
Under 6 weeks, yes — wake for feeds every 3 to 4 hours during the day, including from naps, until your pediatrician says otherwise. Past 6 weeks, most babies self-regulate well enough that you can let them sleep through a feed if they're gaining weight on track. If you're breastfeeding and worried about supply, the cadence still matters during the day; nighttime is where you can let it stretch.
Most often between 13 and 18 months. Signs your child is ready: the second nap pushes bedtime later than 8 PM, both naps shorten to under 45 minutes, or your child fights the second nap entirely on most days. The transition itself takes 4 to 6 weeks. During the gap, an earlier bedtime (around 6:30 PM) bridges the missed afternoon sleep. The schedule will keep showing 2 naps until you cross 18 months on this tool — manually drop one if you've made that transition earlier.
Breast milk digests faster than formula — the rough rule is breastfed babies feed every 2 to 3 hours and formula-fed every 3 to 4. Mixed-fed babies fall in between. The total daily intake ends up similar; the spacing differs. This affects the schedule shape but not the wake-window timing — sleep cycles run independent of feeding type.
Yes. The page is set up to print cleanly — hit Cmd-P (or Ctrl-P) and you'll get just the schedule timeline without the navigation, form, or recommendations cluttering the page. Stick it on the fridge as a starting reference for the week. If a true PDF download is something you'd use, let us know — we're considering adding it as a future feature.
Wake windows are consolidated across Mindell & Owens 3rd ed., AAP 2016 sleep duration consensus, and the National Sleep Foundation 2015 ranges. The same data underpins the wake-windows-by-age tool. Total daily sleep ranges come from the AAP statement: 14–17h for newborns, 12–15h for infants 4–11 months, 11–14h for toddlers 1–2 years.
Wake windows are the inputs — start here, refine schedule from there.
AAP-compliant infant volume cap. Pairs with naps.
Schedule context for the first 12 weeks.
When schedules become genuinely consistent.
1-nap and 0-nap schedules.
Pairs schedule with sensor data for first-time parents.