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With the holidays upon us, many parents wonder and worry about their baby or toddler’s sleep, particularly during visits from family or holiday traveling. Here are several things to keep in mind for this holiday season.

Visitors | Travel

Baby Sleep and Traveling

First and foremost, the holidays and traveling, in general, is a time to have fun and enjoy yourselves! So, try not to worry too much about baby sleep and schedules when you are supposed to be relaxing and having fun. I do have some tips to make things easier, though, especially if you have a baby or toddler who gets very cranky without adequate sleep.

• Before you travel, make sure you have a well-established nap and bedtime routine. This will make it easier, when you are traveling, to have your baby or toddler know what to expect, even though they are not at home.

• You might consider adding a specific baby sleep CD to your routines now, before you travel, so that you can play it at your location, and your baby will associate it with sleep, even when you aren’t at home.

• Consider introducing a baby lovey before your trip for added comfort in a “foreign” place. A simple baby blanket or baby pillow are nice choices. You may be interested in learning when your baby can use a pillow. If you have a newborn, you can try to swaddle your baby for added comfort and check out my other newborn sleep tips.

• Depending on the age of your baby, you may want to sleep on a receiving blanket so it smells like you and give it to your baby when she sleeps. Your scent will help her feel you near, even if you are in another room.

• If you are traveling time zones, try to get onto the normal clock schedule as soon as you can, within reason. If you are traveling too late at night, allow one day of sleeping in and off-schedule naps, but then try to get back on schedule the following day. If you travel early enough, stick to the regular schedule right away for an easier transition across time zones and battling jet lag.

• Stick to schedule as much as you can without sacrificing fun on your trip, but once you get back home, try to get back to your normal rules as quickly as you can for a smoother and faster transition back home. Otherwise, parents often complain that several weeks later they are still feeling the effects of their traveling. If your baby has trouble getting back on schedule after a week or two, you might consider shifting schedules.

• Make sure you have a good place for your baby or toddler to sleep. Here are several good options for travel cribs and co-sleepers: Graco Travel Lite Crib with Bassinet or Infantino Travel Bed. If you have a toddler, you may want to get a portable child bed or if you have a bed at your travel location, you may want to purchase a portable bed rail.

• If you are sleep training, you will likely need to abandon your efforts until you get back home. Consistency is key and with schedules being out of whack and being in a different place, you won’t likely have a lot of success. If you’ve already sleep trained (or will by the time you travel), things might not be perfect during your travels, but once you get back it usually only takes a few days to get back to normal (provided you go back to your “sleep rules”).

Baby Sleep and Holiday Visitors

The most difficult part of holiday visitors is that everyone wants the babies or young children to stay up when they should be sleeping, so they can visit with them. This is especially true of those traveling far distances. I do not have profound advice for tackling this, except that it is YOU that will need to deal with the aftermath.

For those who have children who do not get cranky, this will probably be a non-issue and you can be as flexible as you want to be. But, for those of us who have kids that get very cranky, we might not be able to be that flexible. For me, when my eldest son (the one this website was inspired by) got off schedule even once or just a little bit, it took us a week or more to get back on track. I am not exaggerating! So, we had to really decide which events were worthy of getting him off track. Here are a few simple tips:

• Explain to your visitors that you understand how limited their time is with your child, but that his sleep needs have to be a priority because of his behavior, happiness, and well-being.

• Try to involve visitors like grandma and grandpa in the nap or bedtime routines. If your kids are like my son, this might not be as easy as it sounds. My older son just loooves mommy to read his books or tell him stories and often does not appreciate the concept that I’m always here, but grandma isn’t. My other son, who is just 9 months old, has stranger anxiety. But, I do the best I can, even if I have to be in the room while grandma reads to one of them.

• Try to plan ahead by having visitors come over after at least the first nap because typically that’s the most important. That way, if the rest of the day doesn’t go exactly as planned, she might not be as overtired, at least.

Whether you are traveling for the holidays or staying home and expecting visitors, I hope this article can help you get through them with as little tears as possible (yours and your kids).

Do you have any tips to share? Any questions I can answer?

Welcome to Part 3 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to start with Part 1, where I define baby temperament. In part 2, I discussed baby temperament trait, intensity, and today I will move on to the next trait, persistence. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

 
 
 

Baby Temperament - Persistence

Your baby’s persistence is how easily or difficult she can stop a task if you tell her to and how strong-willed they are when they get their mind set on something. Persistence might reveal itself when you take your 8 month old’s toy away from him to start a new game or your 2 year old who needs to get out of the bath and isn’t ready. Or, you might even see it as early as 4 months old when she wants to nurse and he won’t take no for an answer without erupting in tears and will not settle down with any other soothing method. A very persistent baby or toddler doesn’t take “no” for an answer very easily.

I have personally seen my eldest son’s persistence from very early on and it hasn’t let up in his 3 years. When your child is persistent, they really “lock in” to an idea or desire and will not let up easily. I can share a few examples. When my son was a baby, he would “lock in” and get upset when we took a toy away. When he was a little older, taking away the bottle (around 15 months) proved difficult and rather than drink from a sippy, he’d wait it out without milk until his next feeding (we worked on one feeding at a time). We saw his first tantrum not getting what he wanted very early, around 15-16 months, too, and there have been numerous times we’ve been driving somewhere, we didn’t go the way he wanted, and we heard about it ALLLLLL the rest of the way home. As soon as you think he’s forgotten about what he wanted, he will keep harping on it. Sometimes distraction works, but often it doesn’t. Happiest Toddler on the Block has good information about dealing with toddlers in this way (or watch the DVD).

I have purposely kept from using the word “stubborn” to describe this temperament trait. Stubborn has a negative connotation and will only frustrate you if you have a persistent child. Remember that your child is not purposely doing this to drive you crazy (even though there have been numerous times I thought I was headed that way). This is their in-born personality. A persistent child will require you to have more patience and set firm limits. You also have to pick your battles, in my opinion, but giving in to every demand of a persistent child simply to avoid their will, is not a good idea. I suspect many “spoiled” kids are very persistent and I can certainly understand how it “feels” easier to just give them what they want. Combine intensity with persistence (think 30 minutes with a screaming toddler when he wants something) like my eldest son and it can be VERY tiring, but we press on to make sure he has reasonable limits and can grow into a child who won’t expect to always get what he wants. It is my goal to help direct him to be persistent at appropriate times.

As I said last time, there are good and bad things about each temperament trait. The photo I chose for this article is not an accident. Without persistence, it can be difficult to reach the highest mountains and achieve successes in life. There are a number of jobs / careers that need a persistent nature, some more than others. In a job where you might be told no a lot, such as an actor or actress, a less persistent person is not as likely to achieve their dream. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, Fortune 500 CEO, etc. take a lot of persistence, too.

Baby Sleep and Persistence

How might your baby’s persistence affect her sleep? If your child is a less persistent baby, this means that it will not likely be that difficult to get better sleep out of her. Typically, less persistent babies and toddlers accept no for an answer and do not stay upset very long when you make changes. You may simply just need to commit to making changes. If you decide to sleep train with a no-cry sleep training method, your baby will not likely complain very long and quickly take no for an answer when you refuse to continue to replace the pacifier or nurse to sleep or discontinue any other sleep association. Once she is 4 months old if you decide to sleep train using a crying sleep training method, your baby will likely not cry very long, if at all.

On the other hand, if your baby is a very persistent baby, you can bet that it will be harder to get more cooperation out of him when he has his mind set on something. If you use a no-cry sleep training method, it will likely take you longer than those with less persistent babies. It might take you a month or two of consistency to really make a lot of progress and it will take a lot of patience and wherewithal on your part. If you decide to use a crying sleep training method, you can expect long crying bouts, unfortunately. Depending on his intensity level, this may or may not be difficult to get through. If he is low-intensity and fusses for an hour, that might be “easier” than if he is screaming at the top of his lungs for an hour. Regardless of the method, your key to success will be to be more persistent than he is. Luckily for me, I am a very persistent, too (gee where did my son get it? Ha!). You might also notice that you need to keep setting firm limits during bedtime routines as he gets older and wants “one more book”, “one more drink” or “one more” anything.

As you can imagine, since it did prompt me to make a whole website about this, my son’s persistence was prominent throughout our whole endeavor to get better sleep out of him. Not only that, but we fell backwards many times after illnesses, vacations, and teething.

As always, there is a wide spectrum in persistence levels. Once you know your baby’s temperament, intensity level, and persistence level, you can take it into consideration when you choose how to help her get more sleep. You may or may not want to use cry it out to help your baby sleep, but once you know your baby’s personality, that can help you come up with a plan.

For more ideas on how to guide your child’s persistence (i.e. help her learn appropriate times to be persistent), I recommend Raising Your Spirited Child.

Share how your child is or isn’t persistent

This article outlines the average 7 month old baby schedule, including feedings, solids, naps and night sleep.

Skip to the schedule

7 month old baby’s sleep

At this age, some 7 month olds can sleep through the night, without a feeding, and take three naps. If your baby is having trouble napping, you may be interested in how you can get your baby to nap. Some babies don’t ever have 3 naps, but many will have 3 naps until around 9 months.

All babies vary, but here are some rough schedules you can use to make your own for your unique baby. I should warn you that I am in the camp that breast milk or formula should be the primary nutrition for the first year and solids come secondary. Below are the amounts recommended from Super Baby Food, the book I use for reference (as a guide, not as the end-all-be-all because I don’t give my kids nuts before a year or follow other things in the book, but it’s a good reference guide). Another useful reference is Wholesome Baby Food. Although I work full time, I did make most of my baby food (I’d make 1 big batch of something each weekend in 1-2 hours), but even if you don’t, the website is useful as a guide when to introduce what food and other meal ideas.

The amount of food at 7 months is very similar to the 6 month baby schedule, but you can introduce egg yolk (not whites) if you want and some dairy.

Amounts per day:

• At least 5 nursing sessions per day or 30-32 ounces formula or combination
• Although some say 4-6 oz of water is okay, I usually discourage it at this age
• 1-2 servings baby cereal (1 serving = 1-2 Tablespoons dry)
• 1-2 servings fruit (1 serving = 1-2 Tablespoons)
• 1-2 servings vegetable (1 serving = 1-2 Tablespoons)
• 1 serving Dairy (1 serving = 1/3-1/2 cup yogurt or 1/4 cup cottage cheese)
• You can also offer cooked egg yolk (but no egg whites until 1 year old due to allergans)

The first schedule is what I call a “staggered” approach. My first son did better nursing fully and then having solids a bit in between nursing sessions. He was a little hungry but not famished. He just didn’t do well with stopping nursing mid-way to eat solids.

Sample 7 month old schedule

Here is a what I call a “staggered” approach. My first son did better with a full feeding and then having solids a bit in between. He was a little hungry but not famished. He just didn’t do well with stopping nursing or his bottle mid-way to eat solids.

Schedule 1

7:00 - Wake and Breast milk or Formula
8:15 - Breakfast
9:00 - Morning Nap (at least 1 hour)
10:00 - Breast milk or Formula
12:30 - Breast milk or Formula
1:00 - Early Afternoon Nap (at least 1 hour)
2:00 - Breast milk or Formula
4:00 - Optional Catnap (30-45 minutes)
4:30 or 5:00 - Dinner
6:15 - Begin bedtime routine
7:00 - Breast milk or Formula and Bedtime (goal to be asleep at this time)

+Plus possibly 1-2 nighttime feedings

If your baby doesn’t mind a more “consolidated” approach to eating, like my second son, here is another type of schedule:

Schedule 2

7:00 - Wake
7:15 - Breakfast plus Breast milk or Formula feeding
9:00 - Morning Nap (at least 1 hour)
10:00 - Breast milk or Formula
12:30 - Breast milk or Formula
1:00 - Afternoon Nap (at least 1 hour)
3:00 - Breast milk or Formula
5:30 - Dinner plus Breast milk / Formula feeding
6:15 - Begin bedtime routine
7:00 - Breast milk or Formula

+Plus possibly 1-2 nighttime feedings

Note: Many people prefer to follow an eat-play-sleep routine, which is a good routine to follow, however, sometimes hard to implement at this age when the amount of time between naps is not long enough and your baby wakes too early from his nap because of a feeding. I take all of that into consideration when making my schedules. The most important part is to be careful not to create sleep associations with feedings too close to sleep times, which we saw become important at 4 months old.

You may also be interested in tracking your baby’s sleep, feedings, medication doses, immunizations, etc. using online baby software at Babble Soft. You can even install on your mobile device for when you’re on the go!

If you need help with your baby’s schedule or night-weaning, you may be interested in Help Your Baby Sleep, a Step-by-Step Guide, which discusses naps, schedules, and shifting schedules for babies waking too early or going to bed too late (among many other things) or get one-on-one baby sleep advice.

What is your 7 month old’s schedule?

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?

This post is not about baby sleep per se, but I do think it’s relevant. I am writing this post from my friend’s house while I “babysit” her 2 boys. One thing we both have struggled with are challenging sleepers and thus, it makes it hard for us to feel comfortable going on a date with our husbands because we worry about the babysitter (whether it’s grandma or a babysitter we pay) putting the kids down for bed. After all, we don’t want anything to get in the way of our kids’ precious sleep! Add to that, we don’t want to put grandma out (esp. when they live 20-30 minutes away) every time we just want to go out to eat dinner. And, well, paying a sitter costs almost as much as the date!

So, one day I had an idea. What about a babysitting swap? Now, maybe this is well known to many out there, I don’t know, but I sure hadn’t heard of anything like it, so I figured I’d share it with you, too! My friend and I decide on one date night a month for each of us. One night a week, we go over the other person’s house and make sure the kids stay safe while the other enjoys a night out with her husband while the other husband stays home with our kids (I’d say even the husband at home with time to relax wins, too!).

The great part is that it is very little “work” to do because we make sure to go over after the kids are in bed…which is why I can type this brilliant article up right now. The best part is, it doesn’t cost us anything but time which makes dating much more affordable! And, we don’t have to worry if the kids went to bed okay or not, which lets us enjoy our date that much more.

If we have to call each other home because something goes awry (hasn’t happened yet knock on wood), we would know the other person would understand. Of course, the only way this works is that we trust each other and have become great friends, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find a friend with a young child that you can do this with, too! Since there is no true work involved, it doesn’t really matter if you have 1 kid and the other has 4 or vice versa. We happen to live 3 doors down, making it even more convenient, but as soon as my other good friend (who lives 15 minutes away) gets her son sleeping better, I plan to add a 2nd date a month babysit swapping with her, too!

Any questions? Now, get your baby sleeping through the night and go out on a night on the town with your spouse/partner/friend!

Any dating tips you want to share? (Rated G please!)

Welcome to Part 2 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. If you are just joining us, you may want to read Part 1, What is baby temperament? Today we start talking about the nine different temperamental traits. At the end of the series, I will give you a quiz to determine your child’s temperament.

Baby Temperament - Intensity

Your baby or toddler’s intensity is how strongly he emotionally reacts to something. This could be in a good way or a bad way. Because high-intensity babies react strongly, that means they can be squealing loudly with joy or crying loudly because they are wet. There are babies who barely squeak when they are “crying” and then there are those who scream like you are chopping their arm off. I have a LOT of experience with the screaming kind, unfortunately. Both my boys were (and still are) screamers and what I would call high-intensity (my first more than my second…so far).

Many people will tell new parents to “put your baby down before he is asleep from birth” and you won’t have any sleep problems. Now, if you have the squeaker, this might be really good advice and I certainly encourage new parents to at least try it. But, if you have a screamer, that just isn’t realistic and frustrates those of us that simply can’t take this advice. I am sure there are many parents who simply feel like I made a mistake not doing this from birth, but we all must realize our babies all do not react the same and most new parents aren’t going to let their newborn scream for even 2 minutes from birth! I know I wasn’t willing to.

From birth, both my boys reacted very strongly to things they were upset about whether it was being hungry or too hot (my first son screamed in the car because the carseat would heat him up too much and we’d have a jacket on him because it was winter, until we learned better), tired (especially tired!), over-stimulated, etc. When my son was about 2 1/2 I finally learned where “don’t cry over spilled milk” came from because when he’d spill his milk when he was learning to drink from a cup, he’d start screaming! I finally had to use that saying and really mean it! Ha!

It is not all bad to have a highly intense child. It’s loads of fun when we’re having fun, for one thing. But, another positive spin to your high-intensity child is that you know how he feels. There is no guessing. In that light, I find that I am very in tune to his mood and I feel good when he is happy. He is enthusiastic and full of energy. Not saying that low intensity children are not happy (I’m sure many of them are!), but I can see that more laid back children may not be happy about something, but never speak up, too. Even my second, being the less intense one, tends to need to wait on things because my more intense child is a “squeakier wheel”. I feel bad about that and try to be as fair as I can.

With any of these temperamental traits I will review, there are good things and bad things about all of them. As parents of a high-intensity child, we can learn how to help our child react strongly at appropriate times and learn how to help him diffuse his strong reaction other times.

Baby Sleep and Intensity

How might your baby’s intensity affect her sleep? If your child is a low intensity baby, this means that it may really be much easier for you to put baby down DROWSY, BUT AWAKE from the very beginning and help her learn to fall asleep on her own from day one. Your baby may fuss a little or not at all before drifting off into dreamland. When your baby is no longer a newborn and decides to protest things she doesn’t like, her protests will likely be fairly low-key. If you decide to sleep train with a no-cry sleep training method, you will probably find it easier to not give in to a little fussing. If you decide to sleep train using a crying sleep training method, you may not have a hard time listening to a little fussing while you do the dishes or keep yourself occupied.

On the other hand, if your baby is a high intensity baby, you can bet that it will be hard to leave him upset for anything longer than a couple of minutes when he’s young. If he is like my babies, you won’t need to turn on your monitor at night to hear him down the hall when he wakes up for his midnight feeding when he’s 4 months old. Your high-intense baby might get more upset / angry when he wakes up between sleep cycles and can’t go back to sleep, like mine. You may also need to take longer during your bedtime routine to help soothe him before sleep. If you use a no-cry sleep training method, you will likely have a very hard time listening to a screaming baby while you try to break habits and it will be a lot harder to stick to it if/when he gets upset. If you decide to use a crying sleep training method, you can expect loud outbursts and screaming, which will be difficult. You may be a parent who needs to go take a shower to “get away” for a few minutes.

As always, there is a wide spectrum in between low-intensity and high-intensity and we would all probably have a different opinion about what is low and what is high. Once you know your baby’s temperament and intensity level, you can take it into consideration when you choose how to help her get more sleep. You may or may not want to use cry it out to help your baby sleep, but once you know your baby’s personality, that can help us come up with a plan.

Something else to keep in mind is that YOUR intensity can affect your baby’s, too. If you get really upset about something, your baby might follow suit, depending on how sensitive she is. Both my husband and I are pretty intense, but mostly just happy (and neither of us have a hot temper), so we are working hard in directing my son’s intensity in the positive direction, too, and showing him many things aren’t worth getting upset about and it’s working. The other day I spilled my drink at dinner and I got a little upset and he said to me “It’s okay. It’s okay.” and I said back “Thank you for reminding me it’s ok. We’ll just clean it up. No reason to be upset.” It didn’t stop him from getting upset 10 minutes later when he, too, spilled his milk (we were both tired and clumsy that day!) and I politely reminded him back. Together, we can help diffuse each other’s upsets in life. Thankfully, he is a happy child…when he’s getting enough sleep.

Is your child low or high-intensity? Share your story.

This article outlines the average 11 month old baby schedule, including feedings, solids, naps and night sleep.

Skip to the schedule

11 month old’s sleep

At this age, most 11 month olds can sleep through the night, without a feeding, and take two naps. If your baby is having trouble napping, you may be interested in how you can get your baby to nap. A very small percentage transition to one nap as early as 10 months, but not many, so assume 2 naps unless you are certain. My eldest son did transition to one nap one week before his first birthday, so it was in the 11th month that I started seeing his morning nap get later and later. Most babies get very very overtired and sleep can spiral out of control, so I always recommend keeping two naps as long as possible. The average age to transition to one nap is 15-18 months.

Although many babies can go all night without a single feeding, in my experience, some do better with one feeding after 4 or 5 a.m. and sleep longer than not feed and get an early wake-time. I would need to know your specific situation to make a recommendation, but just recognize that all babies are different. By this age I would not expect more than one feeding, typically, if any at all. I would recommend at least an attempt at night-weaning because it is a chicken and egg problem. It’s hard to encourage more eating during the day when he is eating at night and it’s hard to discourage eating at night when he isn’t eating more during the day.

All babies vary, but here are some rough schedules you can use to make your own for your unique baby. I should warn you that I am in the camp that breast milk or formula should be the primary nutrition for the first year and solids come secondary. Below are the amounts recommended from Super Baby Food, the book I use for reference (as a guide, not as the end-all-be-all because I don’t give my kids nuts before a year or follow other things in the book, but it’s a good reference guide). Another useful reference is Wholesome Baby Food. Although I work full time, I did make most of my baby food (I’d make 1 big batch of something each weekend in 1-2 hours), but even if you don’t, the website is useful as a guide when to introduce what food and other meal ideas.

The amount of food at 11 months is very similar to 10 months, but she may be eating a little more.

Amounts per day:

• At least 3-4 nursing sessions per day or 24-32 ounces formula or combination of both
• No more than 6-8 oz of water or juice (to ensure they drink enough breast milk or formula)
• 2 servings (1 serving = 1-2 Tablespoons dry) baby cereal
• 2 servings grain (1 serving = 1/2 slice bread, 2 crackers, 1/2 cup Cheerios, or 1/2 cup whole grain pasta)
• 2 servings fruit (1 serving = 3-4 Tablespoons)
• 2-3 servings vegetable (1 serving = 3-4 Tablespoons)
• 2-3 servings protein (1 serving = 1-2 Tablespoons)
• 1 serving Dairy (1 serving = 1/2 cup yogurt, 1/3 cup cottage cheese or 1 oz grated cheese)
• You can also offer cooked egg yolk (but no egg whites until 1 year old due to allergans)

The first schedule is what I call a “staggered” approach. My first son did better nursing fully and then having solids a bit in between nursing sessions. He was a little hungry but not famished. He just didn’t do well with stopping nursing mid-way to eat solids.

Sample 11 month old schedule

7:00 - Wake and Breast milk or Formula
9:00 - Breakfast
10:00 or 10:30 - Morning Nap (at least 1 hour)
11:00 - Breast milk or Formula plus snack
1:00 - Lunch
2:00 or 2:30 - Early Afternoon Nap (at least 1 hour)
3:00 - Breast milk or Formula plus snack
5:00 - Dinner
6:15 - Begin bedtime routine
7:00 - Breast milk or Formula and Bedtime (goal to be asleep at this time)

If your baby doesn’t mind a more “consolidated” approach to eating, like my second son, here is another type of schedule:

Schedule 2

7:00 - Wake
7:15 - Breakfast plus Breast milk / Formula feeding
9:15 - Snack
10:00 or 10:30 - Morning Nap (at least 1 hour)
12:00 - Lunch plus Breast milk / Formula feeding
2:00 or 2:30 - Afternoon Nap (at least 1 hour)
3:30 - Snack
5:00 - Dinner plus Breast milk / Formula feeding
6:15 - Begin bedtime routine
7:00 - Small BM/Formula feeding (possibly) and Bedtime (goal to be asleep at this time)

Note: When giving any feedings during your bedtime routine, be careful not to create sleep associations, which we saw become important at 4 months old.

You may also be interested in tracking your baby’s sleep, feedings, medication doses, immunizations, etc. using online software. You can even install on your mobile device for when you’re on the go!

If you need help with your baby’s schedule or night-weaning, you may be interested in Help Your Baby Sleep, a Step-by-Step Guide, which discusses naps, schedules, and shifting schedules for babies waking too early or going to bed too late (among many other things) or get one-on-one baby sleep advice.

What is your 11-month old’s schedule?

Here in the U.S. (in most states), we are going to be “falling back” (changing our clocks one hour back) this year on Sunday, November 2, 2008. In Europe, they will be changing their clocks the last Sunday in October, or October 27th. The reason we have Daylight Savings is that it allows us to use less energy in lighting our homes by having longer and later daylight hours. Whether you are changing the clocks or traveling with baby through time zones, most parents want to know what to do with their baby’s sleep when the clock says one time and baby says another.

For some, they are anxious for the time change to happen because their baby is going to bed too late, but other parents are freaking out because their baby or toddler is already waking too early and now the clock will say it’s even earlier!

What strategies can you use to handle the time change?

The first option is to do nothing. Your baby is waking at 7 a.m. and going to bed at 7 p.m. The day the clock changes, it will say 6 a.m., but it really is no different than the day before. You will stick to the same schedule and put him to bed when the clock says 7 p.m. that night, which, to him, will really be 8 p.m. For babies or toddlers who are not sensitive to being overtired or go with the flow, this is a fine strategy and within a day or two, he will be all set and re-settle into the same schedule. If your baby is an early bird (lark) who wakes up at 5 a.m., for example, he will fall back to the normal routine of waking at 5 a.m. after a few days to a week and if you are happy with that, I would simply suggest going with this option and planning to wake up at 4 a.m. for a few days.

The second option is to slowly change your baby or toddler’s schedule over the course of a few days before the time changes. On Wednesday, before your time changes, put your baby or toddler to bed 15 minutes later than normal in hopes that he wakes up 15 minutes later in the morning (I can’t promise that will happen because of our internal clocks, but it does work for many). Also, offer him naps 15 minutes later. Keep putting him to bed 15 minutes later each night until the night of the time change. By the time the clock changes, you would have shifted his schedule by 1 hour, the clock will change, and you will be back to your normal schedule. Unfortunately, this option can have a rippling bad effect on babies or toddlers who are sensitive to becoming overtired, possibly leading to crankiness, early morning wake-up, night-wakings and short naps.

The third option is to stick to the regular schedule leading up to the time change and once the time changes, be flexible and alter the schedule only as much as she can handle. The first night, you may only get to a 6:30 p.m. bedtime, for example, and she will go to bed earlier than normal (clock-wise). It’s the light that stimulates our eyes and sets our internal clock as to when we should sleep or not, so after a few days, she should re-settle into her normal schedule. Unfortunately, this option is really hard on those with babies or toddlers who are already waking up at 5 a.m. You may want to consider shifting your baby or toddler’s schedule in the 3 weeks leading up to the time change and, again, a week after the time change (if you do not like the 5 a.m. wake-up).

There are a variety of things you can do that fall somewhere in between any of these options, but these are the main options you have. If you’d like help with a custom solution for your unique baby, please contact me by purchasing my baby sleep consulting services. I’d love to help you!

How have you handled time changes in the past that has worked?

This is Part 1 of my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series. This series is about your baby’s temperament and how it might affect his sleep and/or how you solve sleep problems.

Across this website, I mention temperament a lot and how it DOES affect what sleep training method you might choose to help him sleep better. His temperament and personality will drive whether a no-cry method will take 1 hour or 3 months or, if you choose a cry-method, whether he will cry for 5 minutes or 2 hours, if you let him. It may also affect how difficult it is to wean him from breastfeeding, wean him from the bottle to a cup, how many errands you can run on a Saturday, how many tantrums he has as a toddler, and many many other things parents face on a daily basis. Just a reminder, I am not a doctor, so this is based on my reading / research about Temperament and how I believe it affects your baby’s sleep and what methods may or may not work well when it comes to sleep training. Remember sleep training is not cry-it-out! Let’s get started!

What is temperament?

I happened to get my definition of temperament from the book, Raising Your Spirited Child. The author uses the terms coined by Drs. Stella Chase and Alexander Thomas, “because of their positive, parent-friendly approach”. Even if your child is not spirited, the temperament traits will apply to all babies. At the end of this series, I will give you a quiz to find out whether your child is spirited or not and what his or her temperament is.

Temperament is how your child naturally reacts to situations and stimuli, her mood, her ability to calm herself and how active she is. It is said that researchers have found that temperament is biological, meaning your child comes out of the womb this way. This means that from day 1, the way a YOUR baby reacts to being wet, hungry, tired, etc. may not be like your friend’s baby. Yours might be low-key and not get very upset or your baby may scream loudly. You are not making it up that your baby might not be “laid back”. You might wonder what you did or didn’t do to cause this. I remember one parent saying her husband thought her post partum depression after the birth of their son caused their baby to not sleep well. What a burden to bear! Let me assure you, I did not have post partum depression, was not depressed during pregnancy, or anything close to that and my son had a lot of sleep problems! You have no control over your baby’s temperament. You can only “blame” your genetics and they are still figuring out how it is all intertwined.

One thing that is important for you to know, though, is that you can get to know your child’s temperament and be able to predict how he will react to certain things and you can set him up for success. If you know your child has trouble with transitions, for example, you will be able to help him with those (I will get more into that throughout the series). The best part of this is that you can reduce some of the stress once you KNOW your child’s temperament because you won’t constantly be trying to figure out why he is reacting a certain way. Most of all, you should know that just because he is born this way does not mean that what you do does not matter. You will be able to emphasize his strengths, help him understand his own temperament, and help him learn how to handle his own reactions as he grows up. As Raising Your Spirited Child states, “By adapting your parenting techniques to fit his temperament and his style, and teaching him the skills he needs, you help him to live cooperatively with others and to be all that he can be.” To attempt to make him ignore his temperamental traits is not only very difficult, it teaches him to not be himself.

In the next 10 parts of the series, I will review each of the 9 traits of temperament, Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction, and Mood (these will become links as I publish them), discussing baby sleep along the way and in the final part, I will give you an assessment quiz to help figure out your baby or toddler’s temperament.

A friend of mine just had a baby and she gave me the idea for this article because her family was urging her to “get the baby used to sleeping with noise”. If I had a dime every time someone told me part of my son’s sleep problems were because he needed to get used to sleeping with noise…well I’d probably only have $5, but still, it was really frustrating to hear. Let me be honest. I have NO SCIENTIFIC proof of what I’m about to say. YOU CAN’T GET A BABY TO GET USED TO NOISE AND SLEEP THROUGH IT. Okay, you might be able to help them not wake up with every little noise, but overall, your baby has a certain threshold where certain things will wake him up. Period.

When your baby is a newborn, he will spend most of his time in a deep sleep and likely sleep through almost ANYTHING! In deep sleep, it takes a lot to wake us up (adults included). Around 6 weeks old, he will become more social and start returning your smiles. This might be around the time the dog barking or that noise outside starts becoming interesting and he may not be able to sleep through as much, but usually he will still be in a deep sleep a lot of the time. By 4 months old, the way he sleeps changes a lot in when he goes into deep sleep and may be even more affected by noise.

Babies will vary as to how much noises interest them or wake them up and how quickly they can fall back to sleep if they do hear a noise. I can tell you that both my boys could not sleep through just anything and were not portable babies (I could not bank on them falling asleep on the go). But, my second son could fall back to sleep MUCH easier than my first. You might think I didn’t make enough noise with them, but let me assure you, my first son was in a very noisy daycare for 8+ months (before we got a nanny and kept him home, partially due to his sleep issues) and he NEVER “got used” to noise! I don’t care how many people tell me that I didn’t do something, he simply has always been worried he will miss something fun if he has to sleep and he all but went on a nap strike at daycare. Even as a 3 year old, at bedtime, he would claim he was not tired, say he didn’t want to go to sleep and then fall asleep 4 minutes later (I am not exaggerating!). He was no different as a baby and would fight sleep tooth and nail. So, with both boys we made sure we put the barking dogs away and gave them a quiet place to sleep, in the nursery and in their crib. We later bought White Noise Machines, to block out some of the household noises and encourage longer naps and better night sleep. My other friend’s baby was able to sleep through a lot more noise and on-the-go compared to my boys. It’s just luck of the draw.

So, next time someone tells you to get baby used to sleeping with noise, no, don’t walk on your tip toes, but please give your baby a quiet place to sleep if he needs it. I can tell you one thing, I certainly can’t sleep with my dogs barking outside my door or the radio blaring. I don’t expect my babies to, either.

Do you think a baby can learn to sleep through noise?