4 Reasons Not To Rely On Wake Windows

Parenting feels out of control a lot of the time, starting from when your baby is due to arrive, you never really know until it happens! 

Then you’ve got his little person in your life who turns it upside down, the relentless cycle of feeds, nappy changes, naps, and everything else.

Feeling out of control makes us nervous, we feel secure and safe when things are predictable. As a bit of a control freak myself I TOTALLY relate to this need for predictability in your day-to-day life with a baby. 

I mean, after all, you want to know whether they’re going to stay awake through the baby class you’ve booked, or sleep so you can eat our lunch/dinner, or what time they’ll go down for the night so you can head out to your yoga class…

So the idea of routines and schedules and knowing when and how long your baby will nap is very appealing. We also believe that a baby who naps ‘well’ might have a better chance of sleeping through the night. This is where our obsession with wake windows comes in.

A ‘wake window’, or ‘wakefulness window’ is the period of time between your little one waking and falling asleep again.  Many sleep plans and apps work on the theory that children have specific wake windows at certain ages. 

Wouldn’t this be the dream?! We would feel amazing, knowing what time our little one would nap each day and all we would need to do is count down the minutes to our next break (aka nap time).

The other wonderful thing would be all babies would be on similar routines, and I’d probably be out of work…!

But in reality, rigid routines don’t work for most babies, and trying to implement one can negatively impact parental self-efficacy, mental health, and breastfeeding (Brown and Harries 2017). 

Here are 3 reasons to ditch the app/rigid routine and shift your focus from clock-watching to your baby. 

1) Wake windows can vary wildly 

You may have bought a sleep plan or app which promises to give you alerts or schedules to tell you when your baby will be tired and ready to nap. But then found that it didn’t really work, and you feel frustrated that your baby didn’t also get the notification that they’re supposed to be napping!

The problem with this is that in reality, wake windows are so variable between children so what works for one child, won’t work for another. The other problem with working with set awake windows is that your child’s tolerance for being awake changes depending on other variables, not just the length of time they have been awake. 

The length of a wake window might depend on what activities you’ve been doing. This is linked to a clever hormone called adenosine which tells our body to rest when the fuel has run out. So if you’ve been to a sensory-rich baby class, dazzling your baby with lights and sounds, they may be more tired and have a shorter wake window than if you’ve had a more relaxed morning at home. They may also have a longer window here if they are overstimulated and need to regulate and calm again before they can rest.

Wake windows can also depend on how long their previous nap was, so if they only had a brief nap, they may tire more quickly, or vice versa!

They can also be impacted by development, if your baby is learning a new skill, let’s say rolling as an example, they might get tired more quickly as they are physically more tired, but then they may seem more distracted or harder to settle for naps during this time too!

There haven’t been any large-scale studies carried out into wake windows in children, this is why you’ll see many different charts showing different windows… so this is an area that takes some trial and error (and a pinch of salt!). 

2) Watching the clock rather than your baby might mean you miss their cues

If you have a set wake window in your mind for when your baby ‘should’ be tired, it can mean you miss their sleep cures entirely, or you might not trust those cues and miss the opportunity to get them down when they are ready. If you miss your baby’s sleep cues and that ideal time to encourage a nap you may end up with a baby who’s dysregulated and harder to settle. 

Honestly, no recommended schedule or app can replace learning to recognise,  understand and most of all trust your baby’s cues.

3) They can create stress!

How many times have you said, “come on, go to sleep, you must be tired!” You’re trying everything to get them to sleep and they’re either getting frustrated with you and getting upset or staring at you with open wide eyes! Either way, sleep is a long way away! 

Think about it, you’ve been given this schedule by an app or one size fits all sleep plan that doesn’t know anything about your baby other than how old they are, and you’re trying to get your baby to sleep at the time it says to. The thing is, it doesn’t take into account any of the things in point 1 of this blog, so you find that your baby isn’t ready to sleep, and it becomes a bit of a battle. Nobody wants that every day!

Sleep will come when sleep pressure is at the right level, your baby is calm, and the environment suits them. This is often impossible to get right just based on the clock. 

To Summarise

Planning your routine around set wake windows can be difficult, and I urge you to only use them very loosely. You can’t replace watching and trusting your child’s cues with having a set wake window in mind.

If those charts/apps/recommended routines you’ve found seem to work, then great! If not, your baby is not broken and you’re not doing anything wrong, just ditch them and relax a bit and follow your baby’s lead. 

If you feel like you need a bit of help with this then get in touch with me, you can take a look at my affordable online courses here, or my 1:1 sleep support here.