Daylight Savings Follow-Up

So, how did your time change go? Have your babies adjusted yet? I, the sleep obsessed, messed up my own children’s schedule on the day after the time change. D’oh! Here’s what happened…

As expected, my kids woke up “one hour early” with the time change. Not a surprise because their internal clock doesn’t know what our digital clock says, right? So, we went about our day and my goal was to put the boys to bed 1/2 hour later than their internal clock and 1/2 hour early on the digital clock. So, I decide to go out to an early 5pm dinner with a friend, her husband and their baby boy to make it easier for the kids to stay awake being out and about. The kids did GREAT at dinner…all 3 of them. It was great! But, the one problem was we waited 10 minutes for a table and the server was sloooow, so we ended up not getting home until after 7pm! D’oh! So, in actuality my sons both went to bed WAAAAY later than I intended by almost an hour. *sigh*

Both boys seem to talk to each other and were up at 5:50 yesterday morning, which was 20 minutes later than the day before, and at 6:10 this morning, so they are going in the right direction. It does take a few days for most kids. My younger son made up for the late bedtime on Sunday with a 50 minute morning nap and 3 hour afternoon nap yesterday and was asleep in bed by 6:45 last night. My eldest was asleep by 7:30 (doesn’t nap anymore but almost fell asleep during his 1 hour rest-time, which for us is a no-no because it makes him stay up past 9 or 10 p.m. at night). I’m expecting a post 6:15 a.m. waking tomorrow, so we should be back on track.

All this to show you that even someone who is obsessed with sleep can make mistakes sometimes and things do just happen. I know a lot of parents out there really kick themselves and I feel for them when they contact me and say things like “I know I messed up” and I tell them it’s really okay. Everything WILL be okay. If something goes wrong, just make changes for the next time. Now, in the past, my mistake (you know because going out to dinner is so risky when you have a challenging sleeper LOL) would have been HUGE because one slip up with my eldest when he was a baby would set us back about a week or more, but now that he’s older, things are sooo much easier and my youngest is definitely more adaptable. Phew! My eldest son is having some behavior issues, so it still does affect him somewhat, still.

The highlight of my day, yesterday, was I received an update from one of my clients whom I’ve been helping for over 2 weeks because her daughter had been getting up at 6 a.m. and she did not want the time change to bump them back to 5 a.m. I was happy to hear that her daughter happily slept until 6:30 a.m., the new time, Sunday. I was ecstatic as shifting schedules is not always easy and she worked really hard for the past 2 weeks to make it happen. I’m so happy for her!

If your child is still having trouble adjusting to the new schedule, make sure you encourage them to stay in bed and in the dark, as the light stimulating our eyes cues us when it’s time to get up and it’s easy to get into a rut of waking at 5 a.m. every day. Hang in there!

How is the time change going for you?

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