Sleeping Through the Night and Getting Baby on a Schedule

January 24, 2021

updated April 6, 2025 –

Getting Baby on a Schedule and Sleeping Through the Night is a step-by-step plan to help your baby or twins naturally transition into sleeping longer stretches overnight. This plan should only be used once your pediatrician agrees it’s appropriate. In this article we define “sleeping through the night” as sleeping 6-8 hours without waking.

This is the same infant sleep framework our newborn care providers, night doulas, and night nurses (RN/LPN) use when parents ask:

• “How can I get my baby on a schedule?”
• “When and how do we start sleep training?”

There are a lot of right answers when it comes to care of an infant, and we don’t endorse a single parenting style. What we do offer are practical, medically-informed sleep training steps, created by our Registered Nurses and Night Nannies with guidance from our Medical Advisory Board.

Preparing to Help Baby Sleep Through the Night: Why the 4 Month Well Check Matters

The pediatrician visit around 4 months is often the right time to discuss sleeping through the night because:

• By this age, most full-term babies take 4–6 ounces per feed, meaning they can go longer between feedings.
• Developmentally, many babies are ready to consolidate sleep and stay asleep longer.

**Remember though, 4 months old is still really little!** While it can certainly happen, it shouldn’t be expected that an infant sleeps through night this early. We’re only citing this milestone as the time to begin the conversation and to possibly begin gently and gradually adding more food intake during the day to encourage sleep overnight.

4 Steps to Sleeping Through the Night

1. Get Pediatrician Approval: Confirm your baby is ready to sleep 6-8 hours without needing overnight feeds.
2. Establish Consistent Daytime Feeds: Aim for 4 scheduled feeds of 6–7 oz during the day, plus a “dreamfeed” of 2–3 oz around 10 p.m. This provides about 28 oz total—enough for many babies to sleep long stretches.
3. Wean Overnight Feeds Gradually: While increasing daytime calories, reduce nighttime bottles by ½ oz every 2–3 nights. Pacifiers can help with comfort during this transition.
4. Introduce Formal Sleep Training: Once hunger is no longer a factor, begin structured sleep training (such as the one we like, Slingshot Method, below).

These 4 steps might take 2 weeks or more to implement and that’s okay! Every baby develops at their own pace. Don’t rush it, the goal is steady progress, not perfection. Infant Safe Sleep should also always be practiced for babies age 0-1 year old.

A Note About Naps: There are different opinions out there but our team of night nannies agrees that there’s no need to change anything regarding naps when you are helping a baby to sleep through the night. Once a child is consistently sleeping through the night, their naps will also become easier. Baby Sleep: Naps Decoded has more info on successful naps.

Consolidating Feeds: The Key to Longer Sleep

A crucial step to getting on schedule and sleeping through the night is ensuring infants are taking larger, consistent feeds during the day. This means giving 4 consistent feeding sessions (milk every 4 hours) with one last “dreamfeed” around 10:00pm.

Babies sleep best when calories are shifted to the day. The goal is four predictable daytime feeds (about every 4 hours), plus the dreamfeed.

• Morning feed: Offer a full bottle as soon as baby wakes.
• Subsequent feeds: Gradually stretch toward every 4 hours. In the beginning, it’s fine if you can only make it 3 hrs 15 min for a few days. The numbers don’t matter so much as some kind of progress.
• Timeline: Expect at least 5–7 days before a true 4-hour schedule emerges, and 1–2 weeks for the full transition.
• Pacifier: After giving less in the overnight bottle, it’s okay to use a pacifier. This way baby gets the soothing without filling their tummy.

During this period, babies will most likely still wake at night; not necessarily from hunger, but from habit. Reducing night feeds while building daytime calories teaches the body the difference between day and night.

With four daytime feeding sessions of 6–7 ounces each, plus a final “dreamfeed” around 10:00 p.m., most babies are taking in about 28 ounces in a 24-hour period. For many infants, this amount of milk is enough to sustain them overnight without additional calories. (again, the reason why we need the docs input).

Put another way, if you and your pediatrician agree that your baby is thriving on about 28 ounces per day, you can feel confident that nighttime waking is no longer about hunger, it’s about simply not having ever done nighttimes any other way. Your baby may still wake during the night, but you can rest assured they are not waking because they’re hungry. That peace of mind makes it easier to move forward with gentle night weaning and sleep training.

While you are transitioning to feed only during the day, remember:

• the full transition time will take a week, maybe 2
• we have not yet addressed formal sleep training where baby learns to sleep for 6+ hours
• you’re still doing the normal overnight feeds but gradually giving less and less overnight. Don’t worry though, these ounces are being taken in during the day. So you’re not feeding less overall, just less overnight.  

It’s important to understand that we are not reducing your baby’s daily nutrition. Instead, we’re shifting those ounces from overnight into the daytime. By filling the belly more consistently during the day, baby’s body naturally adapts to resting at night. This is the normal biological shift from the newborn “round-the-clock” rhythm (eat a little, sleep a little) to the more structured pattern of daytime feeding and nighttime sleeping.

tl:dr Gradually reduce the amount in your baby’s bottle by about ½ ounce every 2–3 nights (or longer, if needed). Once the bottle is down to just 1–2 ounces total, you can offer a pacifier instead. This allows your baby to enjoy the soothing effect of sucking without actually filling their tummy.

Once we know baby does not physically need milk overnight, we can address…

Sleeping Through the Night

One of the key factors in sleeping through the night is teaching a child to fall asleep on their own at bedtime, typically around 7:00–8:00 p.m. Putting baby down awake but drowsy gives them the tools to get back to sleep if they wake during the night.

A key component to helping baby get ready for bed and in the “drowsy but awake” state is to instill an average of a 30 minute wind-down routine. It doesn’t matter what the wind down is; just that it is the same 2-3 quiet things before bed every night so he can switch gears and can physically and mentally wind down for sleep.  Baby cannot fall asleep using anything outside of his control. No pacifiers, no rocking, and no feeding to sleep because these are all controlled by the parent, not the baby. Baby needs to control how *he* gets himself to sleep.

When baby wakes for a bottle during the first night waking window, the Slingshot Method of sleep training can be very effective. This method, where a parent stays in the room while baby learns to fall asleep independently, is often the least jarring. Other methods can absolutely work too, depending on what you and your baby prefer.

How to do the Slingshot Method of Sleep Training

How to use the Slingshot Method:

This gradual approach helps baby feel secure while developing the self-soothing skills they need.

• First few nights: Stay next to the crib, offering comfort with your voice and touch. You can pat or sing, but avoid picking up baby when they fuss. Baby needs to learn to fall asleep independently while feeling supported.
• Next few nights: Sit a little farther from the crib and soothe with your voice. If baby continues fussing, briefly reassure with touch, spacing out interventions gradually.
• Following nights: Move even further away, near the doorway, eventually sitting just outside the room. The goal is a slow, gradual shift so baby adapts comfortably.

Use the Slingshot Method for night wakings too. Night wakings are any wake times between 10:00 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. Once baby can fall asleep independently at bedtime, they will generally be able to self-soothe during night wakings. If baby wakes at 6:00 a.m. happy and rested, that’s likely their natural wake time.

Consistency is Key

The most important thing to remember in helping a baby sleep through the night is consistency. If you are sure, and the pediatrician agrees, that baby is able to sleep through the night without waking to feed, the only way sleep training works is to see it through. For example, if baby cries for 10 minutes and you give a bottle, they learned that crying for 10 minutes = bottle.

Getting Baby on a Schedule and Sleeping Through the Night: Twins and Schedules for Older Babies

Twins sharing the same room should be kept together for sleep training since they will need to learn to sleep through each other’s wake ups. In the beginning however, if one twin wakes and needs soothing you might try to comfort both so their sleep cycles stay aligned. Consistency helps both adapt faster.

To help with this transition from dependent to independent sleep, you can make the atmosphere as comfortable as possible by incorporating dark blinds and shades and a small nightlight in the room. Calm activities during the afternoon will also help pave the way for a calm bedtime. Below is a sample schedule for a 4-6 month old, based on an average 7:00 awake-for-the-day time. If baby wakes at 6, simply adjust back 1 hour.

These are all the infant sleep schedules by age.

Advice for 1 year olds and toddlers, click here

Tips from the Baby Nurses:

• There will be 3 “blocks” of 4 hours.  The last block includes only a short nap since it is close to bedtime.
• Nap #3 in the late afternoon will disappear in month 7. You will see the nap become shorter and less reliable for about 3-4 weeks until the last nap eventually drops altogether.
• Each block begins with milk and the last block ends with milk. So feeding times are at: 7am, 11:00am, 3pm and 6:30pm.   There will obviously be some adjustment time where the schedule is not perfect. This transition time it will likely last 5-7 days.

Sample Schedule for a 4-6 Month Old

• 7:00                    wake up, change

• 7:15 or 7:30      5/6 oz. milk
• 8:30                   solids: grain or grain + fruit
• 9:30                    wind down
• 10:00                  nap
  • 4 hour cycle repeats upon waking up
• 11:30                   5/6 oz. milk
• 12:30                   solids: grain or grain + veg (when lunch is introduced)
• 12:00 – 1:00     activity
• 1:00 – 1:30         wind down for nap
• 1:30 – 3:30        nap
  • 4 hour cycle repeats again upon waking from nap, but with a third short nap*-
• 3:30                      5/6 oz. milk
• 3:30 – 4:30        quiet play, try to stay around home and stick to calm activities
• 4:30 – 5ish         nap
• 5:30                      dinner of solids (This is appropriate whenever you begin an evening meal. We’re including it so you can see what it looks like to have a 3 meal per day schedule)
• 6:15 – 7:00           5/6 oz. milk, bed

Last thing… the Dreamfeed

The 10:00pm Dreamfeed as the last feed of the night and baby does not have to be fully awake for this. It is just a small 2-3 ounce feed to “top baby off” for the night. You don’t have to wake baby, simply hold the bottle to their lips and they’ll instinctually take in what is needed. When finished, there’s no need to burp but you may opt to do a quick diaper change at this time. Learn more about why this works in What is a Dreamfeed? Remember this schedule is only a sample, it might not work for you and that is perfectly fine!

Want a deeper explanation of all this? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Sleep Training.