The first sign of Spring approaching, time to get excited!

But what does more hours of daylight mean for sleep?

Don’t worry, I will guide you on exactly what changes to make and how to do it in a way that matches your family. baby and life.

On Sunday March 10th at 2am, the clocks will spring forward an hour.

So our entire schedules will shift forward.

For example:

If your child goes to bed at 7pm, they will now go to bed at 8pm. If they wake up at 6am, they will now wake up at 7am.

Now, in my opinion this is the better of the two time changes, because if you have an early waker, this will naturally resolve that problem!

You can also choose to keep a later bedtime for the summer (but that means a later wake up time too!)

In the coming months the number one thing that will become an issue is LIGHT!

Your little one will likely be going to bed with lots of light out still (the sun sets later) and waking up with light (earlier sunrise) so managing light will be your number one priority! (cue the blackouts!)

In the meantime, I have included below 3 strategies on how you can handle daylight savings that will help you and baby adjust nicely to the time change. 👇🏼

Plan ahead (slow adjustment strategy): One week before the time change, start adjusting your baby’s schedule slowly. 15 minutes at a time. Each day move the entire schedule (including naps) just 10-15 minutes earlier. This might mean waking baby up 15 minutes earlier each morning and putting baby down to bed 15 minutes earlier (same with naps). I would even move lunch time or feeds by 10-15 each day (meal time is a sleep cue). Within the week your schedule will be ready for the time change and you’ll breeze through it, unaffected.

EXAMPLE:

Schedule 2 yr old: 7am wake up - nap 12:30-2:30pm- bedtime 7pm

New schedule for the days prior (shift by 15 min every day): 6am wake up - nap 11:30-1:30pm- bedtime 6pm

As of March 10th - it will naturally shift back to: 7am wake up - nap 12:30-2:30- bedtime 7pm

https://www.lilbabysleep.ca/sleep-schedules

I forgot to plan ahead (day after strategy): If you’re like me, I usually don’t realize we have to change our clocks until the night before and then panic sets in. No worries, babies don’t know that their world is now an hour ahead. On the Sunday morning after the time change, sleep in! Get your coffee and change the clocks 30 minute later (this will feel like 30 minutes earlier to them). Then continue your day with meals and bedtime all at the “new time”, after bedtime turn your clock to one hour later, so the REAL new time. Start your day at the new wake up time! By the Monday you should be on the new time.

What? let’s just pretend nothing happened (jump right into the new time): You might also choose to cold turkey move the schedule. Wake baby up an hour before and put baby down an hour early, adjust naps and meals accordingly.

This strategy works well for some babies and they don’t even realize anything happened however, watch baby closely. The risk here is that you’ll have a baby that refuses to go to bed so early (although usually our babies cope very well with early bedtimes!)

If you wake up on Sunday morning and forget the clocks changed ie. you “slept in” one hour. That’s okay, wake baby up and just cut a nap a little short, pull up bedtime by 30 minutes to make up for that and voila!

Voila might be deceiving, it might not be instant magic but we can always troubleshoot our days! That’s the beauty of having a well rested baby, they adjust so much easier.

This adjustment should take a couple of days but your little one will adjust quickly!

If you want to keep your bedtime later for the summer or you’re struggling with early mornings…don’t. change. a. thing.

Along with moving your schedule you want to make sure the conditions are ideal for sleep and that you are cuing sleep, especially with the extra sunlight.

Light is a very powerful sleep tool. Light helps regulate sleep wake cycles for all of us. If you expose baby to light in the morning their body will know that it is time to be awake, the opposite approach before bed (at least an hour). Dimming all lights, turning off the tv and electronics can signal to the body that it is time for sleep and help it prepare, putting your baby down will be easier if they are prepared for it. If you haven’t already done so, this is the best time to invest in black out blinds or dark construction paper pasted to the window will also work. Even a small bit of light coming into baby’s room in the morning when their sleep is the lightest can make a huge difference.

Keep routines consistent. This will also help cue sleep. Bedtime and nap time routines should be done before sleep (adjust the time). If you do it often enough, baby will know its bedtime just by your actions and won’t even notice that it’s being done early.

The only ones that run by a clock is us the parents, baby’s function through routines and their environments.

The key to surviving daylight savings time is flexibility. Adjust schedules and if you need to go straight to an early bedtime, do it. Stay calm and spring will come!

Reach out if:

1) your baby is not sleeping well and you are dreading any change because you know they are not well rested to begin with. That needs to be resolved first. HELP I’m scared!

2) You want to sleep well (the entire family) so you can be on ANY schedule and thrive!

3) you need help with the new schedule and naps for your little one because you’re already struggling with short naps or non-existent naps.

Book a free 20 minute discovery call with me and let’s chat, I will need to assess and I can tell you exactly what’s going on and get a game plan to fix it before the time change!

Lil. xx