By age · Newborn (0–3 mo)
How much sleep do newborns (0–3 months) need?
Newborns sleep in chunks. There’s no consolidated night sleep yet — the circadian rhythm isn’t developed until around 3–4 months.
Recommended
14–17 hrs
Cycles per night
9–11
Source
National Sleep Foundation 2015
What this means in practice
The 14–17 hour range is the consensus from large meta-analyses, not a strict cutoff. Individuals at the edges of the band are usually fine. Chronic sleep below the lower bound is where measurable harm appears in cognitive, metabolic, and immune endpoints.
Use our sleep calculator to translate the recommended hours into a bedtime that ends a full 90-minute cycle.