Most babies can sleep in longer stretches by around 6 months of age, but “sleeping through the night” doesn’t mean what most parents think it means. A baby who sleeps well still wakes up multiple times. The difference is whether they can settle themselves back to sleep without your help. That skill, called self-soothing, is the real goal, and there are concrete steps you can take to build it.
What “Sleeping Through the Night” Actually Means
The phrase creates an expectation that your baby will close their eyes at 7 p.m. and not stir until morning. That’s not how infant sleep works. Every baby cycles through light and deep sleep stages throughout the night, briefly waking between each cycle. A baby who “sleeps through the night” is one who wakes but puts themselves back to sleep without crying for you. Sleeping undisturbed for prolonged periods in infancy is not actually healthy, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
So the real question isn’t how to stop your baby from waking. It’s how to help them learn to fall back asleep on their own.
When Babies Are Biologically Ready
Newborns can’t do this. Their brains haven’t yet developed a circadian rhythm, the internal clock that distinguishes day from night. Around 8 to 9 weeks, babies begin producing melatonin and cortisol on a predictable daily cycle. This is when sleep starts to become more organized, though it’s still far from consistent.
By 3 to 4 months, many babies are physically capable of sleeping 5 to 6 hour stretches. By 6 months, most healthy babies have the neurological and caloric capacity to manage longer stretches, especially if they’re getting enough to eat during the day. Expecting a 6-week-old to sleep through the night isn’t realistic. Expecting a 6-month-old to start building that skill is.
Night Feedings and When to Drop Them
Hunger is the most common reason young babies wake at night, and it’s a legitimate need. How quickly you can phase out night feeds depends partly on how your baby is fed. Formula-fed babies older than 6 months are unlikely to be waking from genuine hunger, because formula digests more slowly and they can take in sufficient calories during daytime feeds. For breastfed babies, the timeline is longer. Most breastfed children are getting enough daytime nutrition for growth and development by 12 months, making that a reasonable time to consider fully night weaning.
This doesn’t mean you have to keep night feeding until those ages. It means those are the points where hunger is very unlikely to be the driver. If your baby is gaining weight well and your pediatrician confirms they’re ready, you can start gradually reducing night feeds earlier by offering slightly less milk at each nighttime feeding over a week or two.
Build the Right Sleep Environment
Your baby’s room conditions matter more than you might expect. Keep the nursery between 68°F and 70°F (20°C to 21°C), with humidity between 30% and 50%. A room that’s too warm is one of the most common and easily fixable causes of restless sleep.
A white noise machine can help by masking household sounds that trigger those between-cycle wakings. The CDC recommends keeping the volume under 60 decibels (roughly the level of a normal conversation), and the AAP advises placing the machine at least 7 feet from your baby’s head. Low, continuous noise works better than sounds that cycle on and off.
For safe sleep, place your baby on their back in their own sleep space: a crib, bassinet, or portable play yard with a firm, flat mattress and a fitted sheet. No loose blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, or bumpers. Avoid letting your baby sleep on couches, armchairs, or in swings and car seats (except during car travel).
Get the Daytime Schedule Right
Nighttime sleep starts with what happens during the day. The single most important daytime factor is wake windows, the stretch of time your baby stays awake between naps. Put a baby down too early and they won’t be tired enough to fall asleep easily. Keep them up too long and they become overtired, which paradoxically makes it harder to fall and stay asleep.
Here are the generally accepted wake windows by age:
- 1 to 3 months: 1 to 2 hours
- 3 to 4 months: 1.25 to 2.5 hours
- 5 to 7 months: 2 to 4 hours
- 7 to 10 months: 2.5 to 4.5 hours
- 10 to 12 months: 3 to 6 hours
The last wake window of the day, the gap between the final nap and bedtime, is the most critical one. If your baby’s last nap ends too late, bedtime becomes a battle. If it ends too early, they’re overtired by the time you put them down. Start by tracking your baby’s natural patterns for a few days, then adjust nap timing to hit these windows.
Sleep Training Methods That Work
Sleep training is the process of teaching your baby to fall asleep independently at the start of the night. This is the key skill. A baby who falls asleep on their own at bedtime is far more likely to resettle on their own when they wake at 2 a.m.
The Ferber method (graduated extinction) is the most widely studied approach. You put your baby down awake, leave the room, and return to briefly check on them at gradually increasing intervals: first after 3 minutes, then 5, then 10, and so on. You don’t pick them up during checks. You offer brief reassurance and leave again. This typically takes 7 to 10 days to work, with the most crying concentrated in the first 2 to 3 nights.
If that feels too abrupt, the chair method (gradual withdrawal) is a slower alternative. You sit in a chair next to the crib while your baby falls asleep, then move the chair a little farther away each night until you’re out of the room. This is gentler but takes longer, often up to four weeks. The tradeoff is less intense crying spread over a longer period.
Both methods have the same prerequisite: your baby needs to go into the crib drowsy but awake. If they fall asleep nursing, rocking, or being held, that becomes the condition they need to fall back asleep at every nighttime waking. Breaking that association is what sleep training is really about.
Create a Consistent Bedtime Routine
A short, predictable sequence of events before bed signals to your baby’s brain that sleep is coming. This doesn’t need to be elaborate. A bath, a feeding, a book, and a song in the same order every night is plenty. The routine should last 20 to 30 minutes and end in the room where your baby sleeps, with the lights dim. Consistency matters more than the specific activities. After a week or two, the routine itself starts to trigger drowsiness.
Why Progress Sometimes Falls Apart
Sleep regressions are temporary periods where a baby who was sleeping well suddenly starts waking frequently again. The most well-known one hits around 4 months, when your baby’s sleep architecture permanently shifts to include more adult-like sleep cycles. But regressions aren’t strictly tied to age. They’re tied to what your baby is going through.
Common triggers include growth spurts (which create genuine extra hunger), illness, teething pain, changes in routine like travel or starting daycare, and reaching new milestones like rolling over or pulling up to stand. Babies often want to practice new physical skills at night, which keeps them awake. Separation anxiety tends to peak around 9 months and can cause a particularly stubborn regression.
The most important thing during a regression is to avoid creating new sleep associations you’ll have to undo later. If your baby was falling asleep independently before the regression, try to maintain that even if it means a few rough nights. Regressions typically last 1 to 3 weeks. If you start rocking or feeding your baby to sleep during that window, you may find yourself back at square one once the regression passes.
Putting It All Together
The babies who sleep the longest stretches are the ones with three things working in their favor: a sleep environment that doesn’t wake them unnecessarily, a daytime schedule that builds the right amount of sleep pressure by bedtime, and the ability to fall asleep without a parent’s help. You can address these in any order, but the environment and schedule are the easiest starting points. Many parents find that fixing those two things reduces night wakings on their own, before any formal sleep training is even needed.
If night wakings persist after the environment and schedule are dialed in, that’s when sleep training becomes the next logical step. Most families who commit to a method see meaningful improvement within 1 to 2 weeks.