Eva: (00:04)
Hey there, you’re listening to the, My Sleeping Baby podcast, which is all about baby and child sleep. I’m so excited to teach you how you can get your little ones sleeping so that you can sleep too and enjoy parenthood to its fullest. I’m Eva Klein, your resident’s sleep expert, mom of three, founder of the Sleep Bible online coaching program, and lover of all things sleep and motherhood. If you’re looking for tangible solutions for your little one sleep woes or you simply want to learn more, this podcast is for you. For more information, check out mysleepingbaby.com and you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook @mysleepingbaby.

Eva: (00:40)
All right. The fall back time change is coming here very, very soon, which is probably are most certainly the most annoying day for all parents of babies and young children. Why? Because the fall back time change basically means that your little ones, six 30 wake up becomes five 30, or maybe it means that you’re a little ones, five 30 wake up, which is already flipping early to begin with now becomes four 30.

Eva: (01:14)
And this can cause a lot of people to really start to panic. And honestly, I don’t blame you if you’re totally freaking out about this because as it is, I am not a morning person to begin with. And if my morning has to become a full hour earlier, all of this all because of this completely barbaric out of date practice, that’s incredibly frustrating. So let’s talk through an action plan so that you know what to do when daylight savings comes so that you can get your little one back on track and back onto their normal regular schedule as quickly as possible. Okay. So step number one is if you haven’t already done, so make sure that you’ve got heavy duty blackout lines in your little one’s room, because we don’t want any peep, any little tiny teensy weensy, bit of natural light coming through your little one’s windows, potentially waking them up prematurely.

Eva: (02:19)
We want to make sure that your little one sleep environment is as conducive to good quality sleep as possible. And ensuring that that room is like a nine out of 10, in terms of darkness 10 at a 10 being pitch pitch, black is going to be incredibly important here. So step number two, and this is obviously the meat of it, right, is that when the fall back time change, it hits and your little one wakes up at five 30 or 6:00 AM new time and you’re going, oh, this is so early. What you need to do is you need to make a concerted effort over the next few days to inch, your little one’s schedule later back to their pre time change schedule. And so this is how you do it, right? So let’s say you have a six month old who usually wakes up for the day at six 30 and then naps around eight 30 for their first nap.

Eva: (03:23)
So what you’re going to do is your going to shift that entire schedule later, starting with the timing of the morning nap. So your little one who usually wakes up at six 30, the time change hits, and now six 30 has become five 30. Right? And so if they’re usually up for two hours before that first nap, instead, what I’m going to tell you to do is as follows. So number one, make sure to not get your little one and start their day until at least 6:00 AM. And the reason for that is because we don’t want to be reinforcing an early rising problem by simply getting them up at five 30, we’d need to rejig their biological clock so that they can learn to sleep in later again. Right? So don’t get them before six. And then from there, don’t put her down for her first nap at seven 30, even though she was up at five 30, you might be thinking, well, she could only be up for a couple hours before she’s going to get tired.

Eva: (04:26)
And she was up at five 30. And so I got to get her down for that nap at seven 30. Don’t do that because what that’s going to do is it’s going to reinforce the early, reinforce the early wake up and get her onto a schedule, a Berry early to rise early to bed early to rise again, cycle that you don’t want. And so what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to force that morning nap till about 8:00 AM on the first day. Yes, she is going to be tired. And yes, we’re breaking that wake window rule that everyone knows that I hold so, so strongly by, but this is one of the, this is literally one of the only exceptions to the wake window rule, which is when we’re dealing with an early rising problem, you’re going to want to force that nap to 8:00 AM.

Eva: (05:19)
So that this way, the rest of the naps can start a little bit later and end a little bit later. And then you’re not going to be stuck doing a 5:00 PM bedtime. And so each day you’re going to want to try and force that morning nap later and later until you get back to that normal eight 30 or nine o’clock time. Now you’re not stretching out your little one’s naps throughout the rest of the day. You’re only going to do this with the morning nap. And the reason for this is because the morning nap is the easiest one out of all of them. And there is the most amount of external sleep pressure before the morning nap. And so it’s the nap that you can usually get away with stretching your little one out even a little bit and not having it backfire in the form of a short, crappy cat nap.

Eva: (06:16)
So this is only what you’re going to do with the morning nap. Use your little one’s proper wake windows to calculate the timing of their next nap. You’re not going to stretch them out before bedtime. You’re not going to stretch a little one out before the second nap, because that will likely backfire. Okay. So that’s what you do when you have a baby. That’s not being at least twice, right? You’re going to shift the whole schedule later, starting with the timing of that morning nap. But what about if you have a baby who’s only napping once let’s say you have an 18 month old or a 20 month old, and they’re usually out for the day around, say six 30 and he then goes down for his nap around, let’s say, I don’t know, 1230 or one. Right. So very similar situation, right? He’s going to wake up at five 30 new time, right?

Eva: (07:04)
Because remember six 30 now became five 30. And so by 1130, he’s likely going to be tired for his nap because 1130 was 1230 yesterday, which was his regular nap time. Right? And so it’s going to be tempting for you to try getting him down for a nap at 1130. Don’t do it because as I said, it’s the same thing. It’s going to reinforce the early rising problem. And it’s going to get you on a vicious early to rise early to bed, early to rise cycle. And so in that scenario, I would tell you, try pushing him until noon new time, which was, say one o’clock previous time. So you’re only stretching him out a little bit. And then fingers crossed. He’ll give you a really solid nap from say, you know, 12 until two 30, and then you’ll have to do bedtime a little bit earlier to avoid him being over tired before bedtime.

Eva: (08:02)
And then what you’re going to want to do is insert the timing of that nap later again. So maybe the next day, maybe by Monday, you’ll try napping him at 1215, and then you’ll try napping. You know, again, the following day around 12, 15, 12 30, 12 45, the following day. So that this way you can get him back on his pre fall back time change schedule simply by shifting the timing of that nap later. So the biggest mistake that I find that people make after the time change hits is that they are continuing to put their little one down for these very early naps, which is just going to reinforce the cycle. So that’s how you get out of it. You just continuously bump those nap times later so that you can bump bedtime later without him getting tired in the process. So a later nap is going to get you a later bedtime, which will eventually give you a later wake up.

Eva: (09:01)
Now, a lot of people usually ask me my thoughts on whether or not it’s worthwhile to try spending say a week up to the fall back time change, to ensure little one schedule later. And so usually what they’re referring to is the process of getting your little one on a later than normal schedule the week prior to the fall back time change. So that when the fall back time change hits and your little one is waking up at seven 30 or eight o’clock for the day, then it just simply becomes six 30 or seven, which isn’t as bad. And so my response is as follows in theory, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to try giving that a try and spend the week prior to the fall back time change, trying to get your little one on a later schedule, you can totally do that. The reason why I’m not the biggest advocate of that strategy is because I find for the most part, it doesn’t practically work.

Eva: (09:57)
It’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot, it’s very stressful. Your little one might get over tired and the process, your little one might be going to daycare. They might be in daycare or a nursery school where they have a set schedule and that strategy isn’t possible to begin with. I’ve tried doing it with my kids in the past, and it just never worked. It never flew with them. I wasn’t able to pull it off. And so I find that the easiest way, not the easiest, the least the, the most, the least stressful way to attack daylight savings is just to go with the flow the week up to it, stick with your normal regular schedule, and then go into that plan that I outlined once daylight savings comes. Um, and I’m, I’m glad that people have asked me this question, because I know that moms can sometimes get really stressed, that their little one is in daycare and they don’t have the ability to spend the week shifting their whole, their little one’s schedule later.

Eva: (10:57)
And they feel like they’re completely screwed, come daylight savings. I want you to know that for the most part, I would say a lot of the time it’s not necessary. It doesn’t always work. It sometimes just adds more stress to your life than necessary. And that the easier way out is to just deal with it when the time comes. So anyways, if you stick with the strategy that I laid out in terms of shifting your little one schedule later, I find that this usually takes a few days, maybe, maybe, maybe up to a week for your little one to get. I mean, I remember just last year when JJ was a little bit over two, that the daylight savings hit Sunday morning, Sunday morning, he was up at the crack of Dawn by Wednesday morning. He was completely back on track. So I want you to know that even though it’s really, really sucky, and even though we should probably all be writing her particular governments, begging them to end such a ridiculous practice, by the way, I’ve heard that in some places in the world, they don’t have daylight savings anymore, which sounds absolutely glorious.

Eva: (12:08)
So I think that if you want to put your efforts towards something, trying to petition your government to end this ridiculous nonsense, but in the meantime, until they get rid of it, this is the best plan that I would suggest that you implement. And so if you are struggling with your little one’s sleep, if they are waking you up all night long, if early rising is the least of your problems, if you are spending forever getting your little ones to fall asleep, and they’re waking you up at night and they’re giving you short naps, I want you to know that I have a free masterclass that you can watch that will take you through how to get your little line consistently sleeping 11 to 12 hours at night. So you can feel like a functioning human again. And so I will post that link for you so that you can go and watch it right now. That’s about it.

Eva: (13:01)
Thanks guys for listening. Have a great day. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with a friend who can benefit from it. I also love hearing from my listeners. So feel free to DM me on Instagram @mysleepingbaby, or send me an email at eva@mysleepingbaby.com until next time have a wonderful restful nights.