Baby sleep schedule at 17 months: nap timing, daycare and night sleep
Lulla TeamPublished Updated
At 17 months your toddler needs 11 to 14 hours of sleep a day, made up of 10 to 12 hours at night and one nap. Wake windows are 4 to 5 hours. The numbers are the same as last month, which means the interesting question is no longer how much sleep but where it happens and when.
By 17 months most toddlers are also spending part of the week somewhere other than home — daycare, a grandparent, a sitter — and the nap gets negotiated with someone else's timetable. Getting those two versions of the day roughly aligned matters more than either one being ideal.
See the full wake-window table, from newborn to 2 years→How many naps by age — the full table→When your newborn won't sleep: what to check, in order→
Does this 17 months schedule match your day?
Lulla times the naps and tells you when the wake window is closing, so you do not have to keep count in your head.
The single nap is settled at 17 months, so the useful work is protecting its quality. Naps taken on the move, in a car seat or a stroller, tend to be shorter and lighter than naps in a dark quiet room, and a 20-minute car nap late in the afternoon can take just enough edge off to ruin bedtime. Plan errands around the nap where you can, rather than the other way around.
Where home and daycare naps differ, aim for consistency in the elements that travel: the same comfort object, the same rough time of day, the same short lead-in. A toddler who naps at 12:30 at daycare and at 2 pm at home on weekends spends Monday recovering. It rarely needs to match exactly — within an hour is usually enough to keep the night stable.
A sample day
The sample day below places a single nap in the early afternoon with wake windows of 4 to 5 hours around it. It's a picture of one workable day, not a rule, and if daycare naps at a different time, match the weekend to daycare rather than the other way around.
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 7:00 | Wake-up and first feed |
| 12:45 | Nap 1 · approx. 110 min |
| 20:00 | Bedtime routine and lights out |
A sample day to give you a rough idea — every baby is different. Adjust the times to your child's sleep cues, and talk to your pediatrician about anything that worries you.
Your baby's sleep schedule, by age
One table with everything that matters: total sleep per 24h, wake windows and number of naps, from newborn to age 3. Total sleep follows the National Sleep Foundation recommendations.
Tips for this age
- Keep weekend nap times within about an hour of weekday ones, so Monday does not start with a sleep deficit.
- Avoid late-afternoon car naps, and if one is unavoidable, hold the usual bedtime rather than pushing it later.
- Send the same comfort object and the same short pre-nap ritual wherever your toddler naps.
- Lulla lets both parents and any caregiver log to the same record, so nobody has to reconstruct the day from memory at 7 pm.
- If your toddler wakes from the nap crying every day and cannot be consoled, mention it to your pediatrician alongside anything else you have noticed.
Track your baby's sleep with Lulla
Sleep timer, wake windows and daily stats — free and ad-free.
Common questions
Track your baby's sleep with Lulla
Sleep timer, wake windows and daily stats — free and ad-free.
Keep reading
- Baby tiredness signs: how to read them before the crying starts
- How to build the perfect sleep routine for your baby
- How much do newborns sleep? What's normal by age and when it's too much
Sources
Total sleep per 24 hours follows the National Sleep Foundation's ranges (2015); at 3 months we smooth the step between two of them to 13 to 16 hours. Night sleep, wake windows and the number of naps are Lulla's own reference points, not recommendations from the organizations below. This information is educational and does not replace advice from your pediatrician.
- Hirshkowitz M, Whiton K, Albert SM, Alessi C, Bruni O, DonCarlos L, et al. National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health. 2015;1(1):40–43.
- American Academy of Pediatrics — Safe Sleep
- NHS — Helping your baby to sleep
- World Health Organization — Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age