While an early/late bedtime can be a bit subjective depending on your baby’s current schedule, a typical ‘average’ bedtime for a baby 16 weeks and up is usually anywhere between 6:00-8:00pm. To be super technical, what I would define as ‘early’ would be:

For a baby 16 weeks and up that is waking up 2+ times/night for a feed, early = before 6:00pm

For a baby 16 weeks and up that is waking up 1 time/night for a feed, early = before 6:30pm

For a baby 16 weeks and up that is not waking at night for a feed, early = before 7:00pm

While naps are extremely important for a baby’s mental/physical development, nighttime sleep is far superior. While there are times when it makes sense to sneak in a late nap, for the most part we don’t want naps interfering with a good night of sleep. This means that it’s important that naps aren’t running too late in the day, thus pushing bedtime too late and robbing baby of a potential full night of sleep. So in terms of how late of a nap I would allow for, this is the rule I’d follow:

For a baby between 3-4 months, a late nap should end by 6:00pm

For a baby between 4-8 months, a late nap should end by 5:30pm

For a baby 9 months and up, a late nap should end by 4:30pm

Now the tricky part – when does it make sense to aim for an early bedtime and when does it make sense to try for a late nap? There are many considerations to take, but these are the big ones:

1) What did daytime sleep look like? Was the daytime nap goal achieved?

2) What time did baby’s last nap end? Is it a stretch even to an early bedtime?

3) How successful are these late naps and is there a high chance baby will refuse the nap?

4) How is baby’s mood? Is baby at a sleep deficit?

5) When was bedtime last night and the night before?

1) What did daytime sleep look like? Was the daytime nap goal achieved? How many hours of sleep does baby need tonight?

Simply put, if your baby had a crummy day of naps, an early bedtime may be your best bet. Essentially, in a 24 hour period, every baby has a certain number of hours in their ‘sleep bank’. If your child did not use many hours in this ‘bank’ during the day, the goal would be for them to be given the opportunity to achieve the rest of the hours at night. For example, let’s consider a 5 month old baby with average sleep needs [15 hours/day]. If baby had a lousy day of naps [let’s say three 30 minute naps, totaling 1.5 hours of daytime sleep] they would have 13.5 hours left in their ‘bank’ [15 – 1.5 = 13.5] for the night. Let’s also consider that this baby is currently waking for 2 feeds/night, and at around 30 minutes of awake time/feed, that’s 1 hour of awake time in the middle of the night. So in order for baby to clock 13.5 hours of sleep, they’d essentially need to be in bed for 14.5 hours. If this baby were to go to bed at 7:00pm, they’d need to sleep until 9:30am to clock enough sleep [not likely and not recommended!] but if parents were to utilize an early bedtime on this day [let’s say 5:45pm] it’s very possible/likely that this child will be able to sleep from 5:45pm until at least 6:00-7:00am, if not later, and clock a great night of sleep, waking up rested and ready to take some better naps!