Clock Changes and Baby Sleep

The Sleep Nanny Podcast

https://youtu.be/9ZpWUDoA2ro

In this week’s blog post I am going to be talking all about clock changes and baby sleep, I’ll share with you different strategies and different tips for how you can manage the clock changes, particularly this time, the spring forward clock change, where the clocks go forward by one hour, focusing on how you can do that in gradual little steps to make that change really, really easy.

Read on if you want to know exactly how to do it so that you are all prepared and equipped and ready for that spring clock change.

When you are helping your baby or young child to move with the clock change going forwards one hour, this is an approach you can take to make things gradual and subtle so that they don’t really notice it too much. This is what I like to call the gradual approach.

What we do is we start on the Wednesday before the clock change. Now the clocks change technically on the Sunday, but let’s just say it’s in the night, on a Saturday night. During the night sleep, the clocks are going to go forward an hour between Saturday and Sunday. So we’re going to start on the Wednesday. On Wednesday, we are going to move the bedtime earlier by 15 minutes. We’re going to do the same on Thursday and on Friday, so that by Saturday we have got to a whole hour earlier. Let’s break that down for you.

If bedtime as in sleep time is usually, 7:00 PM, we are going to move the bedtime on Wednesday night earlier by 15 minutes. So we’re going to move that to 6:45. Now we’re going to move it 15 minutes to 6:45 on Wednesday. We’re going to move it another 15 minutes to 6:30 on Thursday. We’re going to move it another 15 minutes, so we are at 6:15 sleep time by Friday. And then by Saturday night at bedtime, we are asleep for 6:00 PM instead of 7:00 PM. We’ve moved it by 15 minutes earlier each night. When we put a little one to sleep at 6:00 PM on Saturday night, during the night, the clocks are going to jump forward an hour, meaning that your little one will take the same amount of sleep to wake up at the usual regular wake-up time.

For example, if they normally sleep 12 hours, they’re going still sleep 12 hours and wake at 7:00 AM, even though the clocks went forward by an hour.

This is the approach that I would recommend you take if you have a younger baby, a baby that’s still taking several naps a day, or a little one to whom small changes make a big difference. If they’re very sensitive to subtleties and changes, then this is going to be a good approach for them because it is so subtle and gradual that it isn’t something they’re going to massively notice or massively impact them because just little increments. So that’s who this is for. It would particularly be the younger ones. Older children, probably we would look at one of my other approaches, which are coming up in the next blog posts this month.

If they are on the younger side or the particularly sensitive side, or really super alert, they’re going to need a very subtle gradual approach like this. So I hope that you find this useful and if this is the approach for you, you’ve got plenty of time now to get ready for that, when that clock change comes later in the month.

Take care and sleep soundly.

If you want help with your little one’s sleep to make sure they and you are getting the sleep that you need why not book in for a free discovery call with one of our Coaches to find out more and get a plan tailored to you.