Baby sleep schedule at 10 months: when two naps become one

What's typical at 10 months

At 10 months, most babies still nap twice a day: a longer nap in the morning and a shorter one in the afternoon. The WHO recommends 12 to 16 hours of sleep per day for babies between 4 and 11 months, counting night sleep and naps together. How that time is split up varies from child to child. Some sleep eleven hours straight through the night and barely nap during the day, while others need more daytime sleep to make up for a shorter or more restless night.

It's right around this age that things start to wobble for many babies. The morning nap gets shorter, shifts later, or sometimes disappears altogether, even though your baby seems tired. That's not something you're doing wrong. It's the beginning of a process that plays out over weeks and months.

Why the morning nap wobbles first

Sleep pressure, the body's physical need for sleep, builds up over the course of the day. The longer a child stays awake, the greater that pressure becomes. At 10 months, the morning wake window tends to get longer for many babies. Your baby is more physically active now: crawling, pulling up, taking in more of the world. That takes energy and a more alert brain, and at the same time it pushes back the point when the first nap is actually due.

When the morning nap starts later, it often ends up shorter too, since it creeps closer to the afternoon nap. Eventually there's barely any gap between the two naps at all. That's the first sign that things are moving, in the long run, toward a single daytime nap. For most children, though, that shift isn't complete until somewhere between 14 and 18 months. At 10 months, you're seeing more of an announcement than the actual change.

How the transition shows up

There are a few patterns that tend to crop up during this phase. Your baby refuses the morning nap even though they were yawning minutes before. The afternoon nap takes noticeably longer to settle into. The second nap creeps later day by day. Overall, daytime sleep decreases, but your baby doesn't seem overtired or particularly fussy.

Here's the thing: these signs rarely all show up on the same day. Usually good days and rough days alternate, sometimes for weeks. A baby who skips the morning nap today might go right back to two solid naps tomorrow. That's normal, and it's not a reason to overhaul the daily routine right away.

What's still normal, even if it feels chaotic

At 10 months, this early nap shift often overlaps with other developmental leaps. Many babies are practicing pulling up on the crib rail around this age, and some stand on their own for the first time. Separation anxiety is also often strong between 8 and 10 months: your baby notices when you leave the room, and that can make falling asleep harder, even when the underlying rhythm is otherwise steady.

Teething can play a role too. All of this together explains why sleep during this stage often feels bumpier than it did at six or seven months. It doesn't mean something is fundamentally wrong.

When nights get rockier too

It's not unusual for shaky daytime naps to coincide with a phase of more frequent night waking. The causes are often the same: new physical skills being practiced unconsciously during sleep, and a heightened need for closeness. A baby who's practicing pulling up at night sometimes wakes because they've suddenly popped up to standing and don't yet know how to get back down.

A consistent bedtime routine helps more during these phases than any particular clock time. And if you're no longer sure how much your child is actually sleeping over the course of a day, jotting the times down can take some of the guesswork out of it. In the Lunabia app, you log your child's sleep times and can then see the pattern over several days, without having to keep it all in your head.

When to call the paediatrician

On its own, a wobbly daytime nap schedule at 10 months isn't a warning sign. It's a different story if your baby suddenly sleeps a lot more or a lot less than usual, along with fever, poor feeding, unusual lethargy, or changes in breathing. If sleep gets dramatically worse over several weeks and your child seems constantly overtired during the day, it's worth calling your paediatrician or the on call service, even at night. When in doubt, one extra call is far better than one too few.

For most children, the shift to a single daytime nap doesn't happen overnight. It creeps in gradually over months. At 10 months, you're often seeing the first early signs: shorter naps, shifted timing, an occasional skipped morning nap. This is a normal part of development, not a sign that you need to overhaul the daily schedule just yet.