How to Put a 2 Month Old to Sleep at Night

At two months old, a baby’s internal clock is just beginning to develop, which means there is no reliable trick that will produce eight unbroken hours of nighttime sleep. Pronounced circadian rhythms in sleep and hormone secretion generally start emerging after about two months of age, so you are working with biology that is literally still under construction.¹ The good news is that there are concrete, evidence-backed things you can do right now to help your baby settle at night, build the foundations for better sleep in the coming weeks, and keep yourself sane in the process.

What Sleep Actually Looks Like at Two Months

Before diving into strategies, it helps to know what is normal. A two-month-old typically sleeps somewhere around 14 to 17 hours total across a 24-hour day, but that sleep comes in short bursts spread across day and night. Night waking is frequent: observational studies of infants in the first two months report anywhere from zero to roughly three or more wakings per night, with wide variation from baby to baby.² Your baby is not broken if they wake every two hours. Their stomach is small and their need to eat overnight is real.

Another difference at this age is how sleep itself is structured. Infants under about two to three months tend to fall asleep by entering REM sleep first, the light, dream-like stage where you might see twitching, fluttering eyelids, and irregular breathing.³ This is the opposite of how older children and adults fall asleep, and it is one reason a baby who looks completely asleep in your arms might startle awake the moment you set them down. They have not yet dropped into deeper, quieter sleep. Knowing this can save you a lot of frustration: waiting five to ten minutes after a baby appears asleep before transferring them gives that deeper sleep a chance to kick in.

Setting Up a Safe Sleep Space

Safety is the non-negotiable starting point. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends placing your baby on their back on a firm, flat surface, in the same room as you but not in your bed, with no loose blankets, pillows, bumpers, or stuffed animals.⁴ A bare crib or bassinet with a fitted sheet is the goal. Room-sharing without bed-sharing lowers risk and also makes those inevitable overnight feeds much easier.

Pacifiers are worth considering at bedtime. A meta-analysis of case-control studies found that offering a pacifier at sleep time was associated with a meaningfully reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome.⁵ A common worry is ear infections, but a year-long follow-up study found no significant difference in ear infection rates between pacifier users and babies who never used one.⁶ If you are breastfeeding, it is generally fine to introduce a pacifier once feeding is going well. If the pacifier falls out after the baby is asleep, you do not need to put it back in.

Using Light to Nudge the Clock Along

Because your baby’s circadian system is still coming online, one of the most powerful things you can do is give it the right signals. Light is the main cue the brain uses to distinguish day from night. A scoping review of studies on infant light exposure found that more daytime light was linked to better daytime wakefulness and longer, less interrupted nighttime sleep.⁷ One study of babies between six and twelve weeks old found that those who slept better at night had been exposed to significantly more light during the early afternoon.⁸

In practical terms, this means getting your baby into well-lit areas during the day. Open the curtains, take a walk outside if possible, or simply sit near a window. In the evening, start dimming lights about 30 to 60 minutes before you want the baby to sleep. Keep overnight feeds and diaper changes as dim and quiet as you can manage. You are not trying to keep the baby awake during the day or bore them to sleep at night. You are just letting light levels tell their developing brain which part of the 24-hour cycle they are in.

Starting a Bedtime Routine Earlier Than You Think

Two months might feel too young for a “routine,” but the research suggests otherwise. A study of infants and toddlers found that introducing a consistent nightly bedtime routine led to significant improvements in how quickly babies fell asleep and how often and how long they woke during the night. Maternal mood improved too.⁹ Perhaps more encouraging, follow-up research showed that the fastest improvements happened in the first three nights of starting a routine, particularly for how long it took babies to fall asleep.¹⁰

At this age, a routine does not need to be elaborate. A feed, a warm bath or gentle wipe-down, a fresh diaper, maybe a quiet song, and then into the crib drowsy. What matters is consistency: doing roughly the same things in the same order most nights. Research on infants found that a bedtime routine practiced at least five nights a week, with the baby placed down no later than 9 PM, was associated with longer and less variable nighttime sleep.¹¹ The routine acts as a series of cues that prime the baby’s body for sleep, even before their circadian system fully matures.

Soothing Techniques That Work and Their Limits

When your two-month-old is fussy and fighting sleep, a few strategies are backed by more than just tradition.

Swaddling is one of the most studied. A systematic review found that swaddling increased the duration of quiet sleep in infants and reduced the number of state changes, meaning fewer abrupt transitions between sleep stages. These effects were consistent for both daytime naps and nighttime sleep.¹² Separate research confirmed that swaddled babies spent more time in deeper non-REM sleep and woke up less on their own.¹³ Swaddling must stop the moment a baby shows signs of rolling, because a face-down swaddled baby cannot push up, but at two months most babies are not yet rolling, making it a useful window.

Picking up and walking is another powerful tool, and the science behind it is interesting. Researchers tracked infant heart rate and movement when mothers stood and walked while holding their babies and found that the infants immediately stopped voluntary movements and crying, and their heart rate slowed.¹⁴ This calming response to being carried appears to be deeply wired. A related study found that soothing touch like rocking, patting, bouncing, or stroking led to immediate increases in parasympathetic nervous system activity in infants, and the effect was strongest in younger babies.¹⁵ So if you find yourself doing laps around your living room at midnight, you are not doing something desperate; you are activating a documented biological calm-down mechanism.

Mechanical soothing devices that combine gentle motion and sound can also reduce fussiness. One trial found that both parental holding and a crib-based soothing device (providing swaddling, sound, and movement together) significantly lowered infant fussiness and heart rate compared to leaving a baby lying flat on their back.¹⁶ That said, a mechanical device should never replace safe sleep practices. Once the baby is calm or asleep, they need to be on their firm, flat sleep surface.

A Note on White Noise Machines

Many parents rely on white noise to mask household sounds and help babies settle, and at low volume it can be soothing. But the volume matters more than most people realize. Testing of popular infant sleep machines found that all of them could exceed 50 decibels at a distance of about 30 centimeters, which is the recommended noise ceiling for hospital nurseries. Some machines, cranked up, topped 85 decibels, a level that can cause hearing damage over an eight-hour stretch even in adults.¹⁷ A scoping review of continuous white noise exposure reinforced the concern, noting that while low-intensity noise may help sleep, moderate to high intensity noise could be harmful to early development.¹⁸ If you use one, keep it across the room rather than next to the crib, set it to the lowest effective volume, and consider turning it off or to a timer once the baby is asleep.

Room Temperature and Dressing for Sleep

An overly warm or overly cool room does not just make a baby uncomfortable; it can measurably alter how they sleep. Research tracking lightly clothed babies from birth to three months found that cooling the environment shortened quiet sleep periods in newborns and increased their metabolic rate, especially during REM sleep.¹⁹ Overheating is also flagged as a risk factor for sleep-related infant death.⁴

A reasonable target is a room temperature somewhere around 68 to 72°F (20 to 22°C), though individual homes vary. The simplest gauge is to feel the back of your baby’s neck or chest: if the skin is hot or sweaty, peel off a layer; if it is cool, add one. A one-piece sleeper or a wearable sleep sack over a onesie is usually enough. Hats indoors should generally be avoided because they trap heat that the baby would normally release through the top of their head.

When Colic Gets in the Way

Some two-month-olds cry intensely for long stretches, usually peaking in the late afternoon or evening, and nothing seems to help. This pattern, commonly labeled colic, tends to be at its worst during the first six weeks and then gradually eases by the third or fourth month. A population-based study found that infants with a history of colic were described as fussier at six months, presented more sleep problems, and over the longer follow-up period had lower odds of sleeping the recommended number of hours compared to babies without colic. They also had higher odds of more frequent night wakings.²⁰

If your baby is in the thick of colic at two months, the most honest thing to say is that none of the strategies above are magic. They can help, and they are still worth doing, but some nights will be brutal regardless. The standard pediatric advice is to make sure the baby is fed, dry, and not in pain, cycle through your calming tools (rocking, swaddling, walking, gentle shushing), and if you feel overwhelmed, it is safe to put the baby in the crib on their back and step away for a few minutes to compose yourself. Colic resolves on its own, but if the crying changes in character, is accompanied by fever, or seems to cause the baby pain during or after feeds, mention it to your pediatrician.

Why Formal Sleep Training Does Not Apply Yet

If well-meaning friends or family suggest “just letting the baby cry it out,” there is a good reason most sleep researchers and pediatric experts do not recommend structured sleep training at two months. A scoping review of sleep interventions for infants under two years found that the most commonly recommended approach was to support caregivers with education about developmentally appropriate sleep, cues for tiredness, and settling techniques, and to reserve behavioral interventions like graduated extinction for after the infant reaches six months of age.²¹

At two months, the baby’s neurological and digestive systems are still too immature to go long stretches without eating or to self-soothe in any reliable way. The goal right now is not to “train” sleep. It is to create the conditions that make sleep easier and to build habits that will pay off once the circadian clock and the brain’s self-regulation capacities catch up. That distinction matters, because feeling like you are failing because your baby is not sleeping through the night is a mismatch between expectations and developmental reality, not a sign you are doing something wrong.

Protecting Your Own Sleep and Mental Health

One piece of this puzzle that rarely gets the attention it deserves is how the parent is doing. Chronic sleep disruption does not just make you tired. Research tracking both mothers and fathers through the first year postpartum found that poor sleep at six months was associated with more depressive symptoms at six and twelve months, and that sleep appeared to mediate a cycle in which early depressive symptoms fed poor sleep, which fed more depression. Maternal sleep problems at six months were even associated with paternal depression at both time points.²² Separately, mothers who were woken three or more times per night and who got fewer than six total hours of sleep in 24 hours were significantly more likely to exhibit symptoms of major depression by the early weeks postpartum.²³

This is not a guilt trip; it is a reason to take your own rest seriously. If you have a partner, splitting the night so each person gets one longer unbroken stretch can make a real difference. If you are doing this alone, sleeping when the baby sleeps during the day is cliché advice but remains one of the few effective strategies. And if you notice persistent feelings of hopelessness, irritability out of proportion to the situation, or difficulty bonding with your baby, talk to your OB or midwife. Postpartum depression is common, treatable, and worsened by exactly the kind of fragmented sleep a two-month-old imposes.

Cultural Norms and What “Normal” Bedtime Even Means

If you spend any time in parenting forums, you will notice wildly different expectations about when a baby should go to bed and how much they should sleep. Some of this is individual variation, but a large cross-cultural study spanning over 28,000 children found dramatic differences by region. Average bedtimes ranged from about 7:30 PM in New Zealand to after 10 PM in Hong Kong, and total sleep times ranged from about 11.6 hours per day in Japan to 13.3 hours in New Zealand. Bed-sharing rates varied from under 6% in New Zealand to over 83% in Vietnam.²⁴ What is considered normal or problematic looks very different depending on where you live and the cultural context around you.

This does not mean all approaches are equally safe; the AAP’s guidelines on back-sleeping and avoiding soft bedding are grounded in mortality data, not cultural preference. But it does mean that the specific clock time you put your baby down, or whether your baby naps in a carrier on your chest versus a crib, is less about right and wrong and more about what works for your family within those safety boundaries. A two-month-old who settles at 10 PM and sleeps in short cycles is not a sleep failure. They are a baby whose parents might live in a family or a culture where later bedtimes are the norm, or simply a baby whose biology has not yet reorganized around the day-night cycle.