What are baby tired signs?

Laura Peacey
May 6
2 min read

Baby tired signs are little clues or signals your baby will show you when they are nearing the end of their comfortable awake time.

It’s important to spot these indicators of tiredness early otherwise things can get a little dicey for some! As I’m sure you’re aware!

Early tired signs include:

red eyebrows / eyes
jerky arms
hair or ear pulling
a bored or far off look
getting extra vocal
hungry but sleeps quickly
spilling

Later tired signs are:

fists
grizzling
and crying!

So what do we do when we see these tired signs?

Ideally we are spotting the EARLY tired signs and settling our baby to sleep.

But what happens when we miss these early tired signs OR our baby's tired signs are not that obvious!?

Our little one becomes OVERTIRED, OVER STIMULATED, and much more DIFFICULT TO SETTLE.

Ever struggled to get a tired baby to sleep?

A babies sleep needs are so much higher than ours. This means babies quickly become wired and their cortisol goes up much faster than ours to help them cope. This leads to fussy, unsettled behaviour and babies who don't nap easily.

An overtired baby will:

1) wake sooner from a nap (i.e. cat naps)

2) wake more frequently overnight!

3) have difficulty getting to sleep.

This is why it's important to move quickly when you see those EARLY TIRED SIGNS.

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to read a baby when you're first getting to know them! So I recommend using age appropriate awake windows (also known as wake windows, or my personal favourite “nap gaps.”)

These start off very short with newborns and lengthen out as your baby grows and can handle more awake time.

I want to give you my recommendation for awake windows.

You can download my free nap gap guide right here for these! They are so helpful as a starting point.

Please let the one thing you remember from scrolling the Internet today be:

watch the clock AND watch your baby for tired signs.

Doing this will help you find your baby’s sweet spot for being awake.

Bless you mama! You got this.