5 Month Old Sleep Schedule

By five months most babies are through the worst of the four-month reshuffle. Naps are still not always long, but they are more predictable, and many babies have settled on three a day. Wake windows have stretched enough that you can leave the house between naps without a countdown in your head.

The challenges at this age are different: a third nap that nobody wants, bedtimes that drift, and mornings that start before the sun. A good 5-month schedule handles all three.

5 Month Sleep at a Glance

Wake Windows at 5 Months

At five months a typical wake window runs 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes. This is the range the Hushly app starts from for a 5-month-old (corrected age) until it has enough of your own logs to adjust.

The pattern through the day matters more than the single number:

• Morning: 1h30 to 1h45. Still the shortest window.
• Midday: around 2h.
• Before the catnap: 2h to 2h15.
• Before bed: 2h15 to 2h30, the longest of the day.

A useful rule at this age: if bedtime is a battle but the baby is not overtired (no frantic crying, no rubbing eyes well before bed), the last window is probably too short, not too long. Adding 15 minutes for a few nights is a cheap experiment.

Sample 5-Month Schedule

Based on a 07:00 wake-up. Times are when your baby is asleep.

That is about 3.5 hours of daytime sleep across three naps, then a night of roughly 12 hours with a feed or two. If your baby naps shorter, the whole day slides earlier, and that is fine. The guard rails are the wake windows, not the clock.

The Third Nap Catnap

The third nap at five months is often short, fragile and hard to get. It exists for one reason: to bridge the gap between the second nap and a reasonable bedtime. Without it, a baby who woke from nap 2 at 13:30 would need to sleep for the night by about 16:00.

So treat the catnap as a tool, not a nap to perfect:

• Thirty minutes is enough. A 30 to 45 minute catnap does its job. Many parents cap it at 45 minutes so it does not push bedtime late.
• It does not have to be in the crib. A stroller walk or a carrier nap counts. This is the nap where flexibility costs the least.
• If it fails, move bedtime earlier. No catnap means bedtime 30 to 45 minutes early. That is a feature, not a failure.

Most babies keep three naps until somewhere between six and eight months. The first sign the catnap is on its way out is usually that it keeps getting refused even when the timing is right. Our nap transitions guide covers the 3-to-2 switch.

Early Morning Waking

Waking at 05:00 and acting like the day has begun is one of the most common complaints at this age. It is also one of the hardest to fix, because early morning sleep is the lightest of the night. The usual suspects, in order of how often they are the answer:

• Light. Summer dawns and gaps around the curtains wake light sleepers. The room should be dark enough that you struggle to see your hand at 05:00.
• Too much awake time before bed. An overtired baby sleeps more lightly in the early hours. If the last wake window is 2h45 or more, try bringing bedtime forward.
• Too little awake time before bed. The less obvious one: a baby who goes down at 18:00 after a long catnap may simply have had enough sleep by 05:00.
• A first nap that comes too soon. If the first nap happens at 06:30 after a 05:00 start, it can act like the end of the night. Stretching the first window slowly, by 10 to 15 minutes every few days, helps the body clock reset.

Treat anything before 06:00 as night: lights off, quiet voice, feed if needed, back down. Start the day at a consistent time, even if that means some quiet crib time.

Nights at 5 Months

Many 5-month-olds still take one or two night feeds, and plenty sleep a long first stretch of three to five hours before the first wake. Whether to drop night feeds is a conversation for your pediatrician, based on weight gain, not on age alone.

Rolling usually gets confident around now. If your baby rolls onto their tummy and can roll back, the American Academy of Pediatrics says you can leave them in the position they choose, as long as they were put down on their back on a firm, flat, empty surface. A swaddle should already be gone by this point.

If you are thinking about solids: the AAP and NHS recommend starting around six months, and starting earlier does not improve sleep. Our night wakings guide helps you tell hunger from habit in the meantime.

How Hushly Uses These Numbers

For a 5-month-old the Hushly app starts from the wake windows on this page and lengthens them slightly with each nap of the day, the same pattern as the sample schedule. After about six logged naps it starts adjusting to your baby, and it keeps no nap later than 17:00 from six months on, so the catnap does not quietly eat into bedtime.

Sources

• Paruthi S, et al. Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations: A Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2016;12(6):785-786.
• Moon RY, et al. Sleep-Related Infant Deaths: Updated 2022 Recommendations for Reducing Infant Deaths in the Sleep Environment. Pediatrics, 2022;150(1):e2022057990.
• AAP (HealthyChildren.org): Starting Solid Foods

Know when the next nap is coming

Hushly starts from the 5-month ranges on this page, learns your baby's real wake windows as you log, and shows when the next nap window opens. Free to download.

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Frequently asked questions

Sleep schedules by age

Want today's plan for your own baby? The free baby sleep calculator turns age and wake-up time into naps and a bedtime.

• 4 Month Old Sleep Schedule: Wake windows, a 4-nap and a 3-nap sample day, and why naps are short this month.
• 5 Month Old Sleep Schedule (this guide)
• 6 Month Old Sleep Schedule: Three naps or two, a schedule for each, and what solids and teething really do to sleep.
• 7 Month Old Sleep Schedule: The month most babies move to two naps: why the third stops fitting, and a schedule for each.
• 8 Month Old Sleep Schedule: A steady 2-nap day, the longest wake windows yet, and nights with standing and crawling in the mix.