"How much should a baby sleep?" is one of the first things every tired parent googles, and the honest answer is: a range, not a number. Two healthy babies the same age can need noticeably different amounts of sleep, so the totals below are a guide to sanity-check against, not a target to hit. What matters more than the total is whether the sleep is landing at the right times, because timing is what actually fixes the nights.
Here are the typical figures, and how to use them without turning your baby into a spreadsheet.
Typical total sleep by age (over 24 hours)
These are broad, widely-cited ranges, day naps and night sleep combined. Your baby sitting a little outside them is not automatically a problem. The NHS notes that babies have their own individual sleep patterns.
- Newborn (0–3 months): roughly 14–17 hours, spread in short chunks around the clock, with no real day/night pattern yet.
- 3–6 months: roughly 12–16 hours, night sleep starting to consolidate, usually 3–4 naps.
- 6–12 months: roughly 12–15 hours, often 2 naps, with longer night stretches.
- 1–2 years: roughly 11–14 hours, usually dropping to 1 nap.
- 3–5 years: roughly 10–13 hours, the daytime nap gradually disappearing.
Ranges are wide on purpose. A baby at the lower end who wakes happy and content may simply need less sleep than the chart suggests, and that is fine.
Why the total is not the whole story
Chasing a total misses the thing that actually drives good sleep: when the sleep happens. A baby can log "enough" hours on paper and still have rough nights if the naps are mistimed or bedtime has drifted late. The most common hidden cause of broken nights is not too little total sleep, it is overtiredness from wake windows that ran long, which then fragments the night. So rather than counting hours, it is usually more useful to look at the timing: are the naps landing in the right windows, and is bedtime early enough?
Our wake windows by age chart and flexible sleep schedule guide show how the day tends to shape up at each stage.
When a number is worth a closer look
Totals are reassurance, not a test, but a few patterns are worth raising with a professional rather than solving with timing alone: a baby who seems persistently far below the range and is unsettled or not feeding or growing well, sudden marked changes in sleep, or any worry about breathing, feeding or development. Trust your instinct and speak to your health visitor or GP if something feels off.
How OBubba helps you use the numbers
OBubba is built around the two things that actually fix sleep: the right naps and a steady bedtime routine. As you log, it adds up your baby's real day and night sleep so you can see the total against the typical range, and, more usefully, it learns your baby's own rhythm, flags the wake window, predicts the next nap and shows the bedtime that leads to calmer nights. Luna, the in-app coach, explains in plain language whether a rough night looks like a timing issue rather than a total-sleep one. If you just want to know what last night added up to, our companion piece on how much your baby actually slept shows how OBubba totals it for you.
The bottom line
How much should a baby sleep? Somewhere in a wide, age-based range, and your own baby's happy, settled version of "enough" matters more than the midpoint. Use the totals as reassurance, then put your energy into the timing of naps and bedtime, because that is the lever that actually fixes sleep. OBubba is built to help you see both, and core tracking is free, so you can watch your baby's real pattern first.
Try OBubba free → — or explore the baby sleep tracker and wake window tracker features.
OBubba is not medical advice and does not diagnose, prevent or treat health, feeding or sleep conditions. Always speak to your midwife, health visitor, GP, doctor or qualified professional for medical concerns.
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