It’s about that time…
I love sleep. It’s amazing. As a parent you know how precious sleep is - for you and for your kids. You grow a love for it you never knew existed. 🤣 Which is why I spent so much time reading any and everything that could help me get more of it as a new mom.
That said... did you know you could prepare babies/toddlers for time changes?! Well, we are springing forward in about three weeks (at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 14th to be precise) and I’m trying to make sure it’s uneventful. At least as far as sleep is concerned. Lol.
There are a few different approaches to making that happen, but when our kids are babies/toddlers we have typically always adjusted our schedule incrementally until the time change approached.
This approach is best for young kiddies who are used to routine and are - for the most part - on a pretty good schedule and might therefore pull out all the drama come time for daylight savings. *insert eye roll*
If you’d like to give it a shot, you can start a few weeks in advance and move everything up incrementally by 15 minutes at a time. For example, our twins typically go to bed at 6:30 p.m., so starting this Sunday (February 21st) we will be adjusting bedtime as follows:
Week One - 6:15 p.m.
Week Two - 6:00 p.m.
Week Three - 5:45 p.m.
Week Four - 5:30 p.m. (which will be 6:30 p.m. adjusted for the time change).
As a note… if your little one is going to bed earlier, they will likely wake up earlier, so everything else will subsequently move up a bit (e.g. meals, naps, etc.).
Of course you could maintain your current schedule until the time changes, but something about going from a 6:30 p.m. bedtime to what feels like a 5:30 p.m. bedtime overnight seems like it would jack things up in our house lol. Whether or not it would actually affect my twins is TBD, because we haven’t attempted to “find out the hard way”… lol. Like I said, I love sleep and love when everyone is getting it consistently. I look forward to kid-free evenings and try my best to make it happen regularly.
That said, we all know little ones have their phases and sometimes they are anything but predictable when it comes to schedules and routines, but a 15 minute shift is worth the effort for me if it means we will all be getting our fair share of zzzz’s despite the time change. :)