Daylight Savings Damage Control: Getting Your Little One on a Sleep Schedule Again
If this is your first Daylight Saving experience with a little one – or maybe you got lucky last year and your little was relatively unaffected by the time change – then you maybe didn’t plan ahead to adjust their sleep schedule before we turned our clocks back. I know my first year as a mom, I had no idea that I should be doing that!
While many adults around the country look forward to that extra hour of sleep we get in the fall, our littles miss the memo. When we set our clocks back, our little ones get up an hour earlier!
And it’s not just one hour one day that you’ll be missing out on…the time change can wreak havoc on your baby’s sleep for a few days to a week or more if you don’t do something about it.
Not to worry though! You have a couple options to make sure your little is sleeping (and waking up) at normal hours again.
Plan 1: The Gradual Approach
This option works best if your little is still napping consistently. (It also requires a little pre-planning, so if you’re reading this Saturday night before the big turn-back or after the fact, move on to Plan 2.
With the Gradual Approach, you want to start one week ahead of the actual time change. You’ll be adjusting your child’s sleep schedule in small, 15-minute increments every two days for the next week. That means making nap times, mealtimes, and bedtimes 15 minutes later. If you manage this correctly, you’ll have “naturally” adjusted their ‘body clock’, so they’ll be on track come the end of Daylight Savings on Sunday. And as a bonus, you’re setting up a little grace period for yourself each morning.
For more info on how to do this, click here; and if you want to see a sample schedule, click here.
Plan 2: Cold Turkey
If you’re like I was the first go-around with Daylight Savings, and you’re looking for a way to correct your little’s sleep schedule – either right before or after the fact – then this option is your saving grace! It works really well for non-nappers too. It’s what I like to call, the ‘Cold Turkey Plan.’
You’re going to do everything as you normally would the day before – same nap times, mealtimes, and bedtimes – including getting your little ones up for the day whenever they decide to get up on Sunday morning. (This wake-up time will likely be much earlier than you’d want, probably between 5-6am – yikes, I know!) Then on Sunday and from here on out, put your little down for their first nap at their usual time but on the new clock. You want to move FORWARD.
So, if pre-Daylight Savings, your little was napping at 8:30am, then put her down at 8:30am – even if she woke up earlier and is getting tired a bit earlier. (But if she can’t quite make it to 8:30am, 8am is okay.) Then try and stretch the next morning again. If your little isn’t napping anymore, try to keep them up until their normal bedtime hour too. The more you are able to move forward, the quicker your little’s sleep will come back into play. But plan for a good week of “work” before they’re back on track.
You can make this Cold Turkey method a bit more successful by strategically using light and darkness to help your baby switch to a normal sleep schedule quicker. So, when your little wakes up, make sure they’re in a brightly lit room, and keep it well lit until it’s time for their nap. At nap time – and bedtime – make sure their room is DARK. Our bodies are naturally inclined to sleep and wake with the sun, so really stressing that quality as you make the Daylight Savings transition will make things a bit easier.
Daylight Savings can be tricky, and that early wake up on Sunday is never any fun, but thankfully, getting them back on schedule isn’t very difficult. And it’s even easier if you’re little is already sleep trained!
If you’d like some additional support for this, you can schedule a free, 15-minute call to help you plan and understand what might work best for you and your little one. Click here to schedule your call now!