Which wake window is supposed to be longer?

If they are only on one nap then the second wake window should typically be shorter. I have found that most of the time overtiredness is the reason for bedtime battles. Once they go past a certain point then it’s harder to put them down and I think this leads a lot of people to thinking they need a 5/6 hour wake window! Obviously every baby is different but if they are on one nap and say that’s roughly 1-3pm then optimal bedtime would be between 6-7pm. If they only recently dropped to one nap then the earlier side of that is better generally. My girl has one nap at the childminder and 2 with us but the first is a little power nap. I find 3-4 hours after her nap is best.

@Lauren where did you learn this? Just wondering because the majority of the poll says longer ww after the one nap

Sleep consultants & books - there’s a few I follow that are great and also consulted with one. By then we were in a pretty good place but she was struggling to settle to sleep and all came down to overtiredness and trying to follow wake windows that were too long. There are a few sleep consultants out there that say longer wake windows or suggest transitioning to 1 nap much earlier but I think while this works for some babies you are basically relying on baby getting so exhausted that they will sleep as opposed to actually finding their optimal sleep spot.

I agree with @Lauren! Shortening the second wake window did wonders for our baby's sleep. He was fighting it so much from being overtired x

@Hannah what did you both shorten it to?

We're doing 5 hrs atm, we were doing 6-7hrs but it was far too long and his naps were terrible too. Now he naps 1hr x

@Hannah does that mean your LO sleeps for 13 hours at night??

My girl is 3-3.5 hours between nap and bedtime. Sometimes 4 but already getting overtired which isn’t obvious at all until you try to put her down the she fights whereas if we are earlier I can just put her down and she goes to sleep and I never thought I’d be one of those people and it’s not every time. We also haven’t done sleep training to achieve this. We’ve done supportive methods but if they are overtired it won’t work. If we’ve had to do 6pm bedtimes she can do 13ish hours overnight. She also has a 2 hour nap. Sometimes 2.5 if on 2 naps as she’ll do 30mins then 2 hours then bedtime. Because morning is a power nap, we keep timings the same for the other sleeps. On days where naps don’t/can’t happen we just do early bedtime (6ish).

@Lauren 13 hours over night! Wow. I’m lucky if I get 11!

10-11 hours is the average length for overnight sleep. But a lot of sleep trainers push for the magic 12 hours even though it’s not realistic for many x

There is such a wide range… 11 hours is good. She is normally between 11-12 hours but wasn’t always like this and we used to have the worst sleep. But if she doesn’t get the right amount of day sleep, we bring bedtime earlier and rather than that meaning she wakes up earlier, she will make up the lost day sleep and do 13ish hours. That’s only on the days where day sleep might be less than an hour or not at all which was the case when she started at the childminder (now she can sleep there). Whereas if we’ve pushed bedtime later she still gets up same time (usually) but less hours overall. If they are overtired and had poor naps, you may find the earlier bedtime works and they sleep longer than usual and up same time. But it’s all trial & error and some babies have higher/lower sleep needs but you won’t know until you’ve tried.