BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Sleeping For Toddlers => Topic started by: Gigismom on October 01, 2006, 02:52:03 am
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so we're a few weeks away from rolling the clocks back one hour. gianna currently wakes between 5:30-6 am. this will be 4:30-5 am when the time changes. :o
we've tried pushing her nap later and thus bedtime later, but with not much avail. she is dead tired by the time nap and bedtime rolls around. i really can't keep her awake much longer. :-\
does anyone have any great ideas or strategies to help us get past the time change? is anyone freaking out about it as much as i am?!
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Do you feed her and expose her to light immediately upon waking? If so, it may be setting her body rhythyms to wake up at that time--even if she hasn't had quite as much sleep as usualy, making the later bed time ineffective.
I'm working on this right now with my LO, this is my current strategy so I can't attest to its effectiveness yet, but I got the idea from Ferber's book and his discussion of Circadian rhythms and how our bodies are programed by light, food, etc. to wake and sleep at certain times.
When my little wakes early I'm trying to minimize his exposure to light until we reach the time that I WANT him to wake up--then I flood him with day light and artificial light too. I'm also trying not to feed him immediately. I send DH to get him up and have him try to distract baby as long as possible so that he's not used to eating before the time that I want him to wake.
Good luck!
Bethany
PS I've been worrying about the time change for several weeks now. ;)
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well i am glad someone else is as worried as me. ;)
when she wakes, we try to keep her in her (dark) room as long as possible. when she is crying and really wants out, we put her in our bed and try to keep stimulation and light to a minimum until about 7 am. we feed her at 7:30 or 8, but maybe i will try to push this later like you were saying. she's not really that hungry at 8 anyway.
oh, i am so worried. i really love sleeping...and i fear it is coming to an end for me!!! :P
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If she's not eating until after her target waking time that probably isn't a factor. I don't know . . . could putting her in your bed with you kind of be rewarding / motivating her to keep getting up?
Have you considered that she may need less sleep overall. Look back at your sleep records and see if there's a consistant total that she's getting over 24 hours. Maybe a little less napping could make her need more night sleep? This is my new theory that is working with my LO, but is contrary to a lot of what I've read in sleep books--but again Ferber supports it.
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Me, me! I am worried too! DS wakes at around 6am right now, but this is sooo much better than things used to be. I am dreading a 5am wakeup in a few weeks. :( I am going to try to keep him up about 15 minutes later every few nights, and hopefully (cross my fingers) we will go back to a 6 oclock wake again.
Sorry I don't have better advice. Just know I am in the same boat as you! ;)
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I can't wait!!!
Because we're in the southern hemisphere, her 5am wakings will become 6am wakings.
In fact, when I think about it, the last six months of nightmare sleeping started when the clocks changed in March. Perhaps she just loves daylight saving? I certainly hope so...
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Me too Sophie we are counting down the weeks until it starts as DD has started waking up early again so we want to get her back to sleeping into 7.30am and going to bed 7.30pm ;D
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Gigismom,
I'm right there worrying with you! We've been in the midst of transition to one nap so we're all over the place with morning wakings. This is my big plan (ha ha): I'm hoping that in the next couple of weeks, I'll get a couple of later morning wakeups (for us that means 6:45 or so), which will allow us to do later nap, and later bedtime. From there, I'll try to push back slowly. In the meantime, we're trying to use light to adjust rhythms and delay morning cup of milk, but it's tough!
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LOL--I have always worried about this one that changes the morning wake-up to earlier (I love the change in Spring!), but for once, I figure it doesn't matter. We'll be having a new baby right around then, everything is going to be such a disaster, what's one more change? :-\ ;D And having just gone through a move and the big girl bed transition, I guess I figure if we can work through that (which I think we mostly finally have), then we'll get through this.
I would try to get your lo's rooms as dark as possible in the morning if you don't already--might help them not wake earlier as you push back their bedtime--or if they do wake, maybe they'll think its still the middle of the night and go back? :D
~Kim
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LOL--I have always worried about this one that changes the morning wake-up to earlier (I love the change in Spring!)
me too!!! i love the spring one when they magically wake up later! :) i'm envious of sophie and natasha!!
we have blackout shades in her room, so it's as dark as can be. i think we are going to try for the 15 minute increments of later nap and bedtimes like a few of you suggested. i hope that works. i don't remember how we did it last year! :-\
i'm scared.
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I am just going to put him to bed a bit later and hope for the beat. It should sort itself out in a few days, right? Riley has just become a good sleeper, after a full year of waking every few hours, although he would settle back within minutes, I figure what's a few more nights? ::) I used to stress about sleep too, but I think it only makes things worse in the long run. I know Riley picks up on all my emotions, so I am learning to relax more about things, which is hard for me, but seems to be working! Next time I am having an angel baby! ;)
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i'm with soph and natasha, i remember when the times change last time around dd adjusted herself
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Yep--already stressing about the time change here, b/c if Margot goes down even half an hour late for bed she is up for hours at night (last night whe went down at 8:30 instead of 8 and she was up from 12:30 to 4:30!). I know the general sleep board has a posting about this time change where it is basically recommended that you just put them to bed one hour later or you can start 2 weeks beforehand and start pushing bed and naptimes back in 15 minute increments. I'm afraid either will result in Margot waking so I'm not sure to try to gradual method or just make the jump. Her sleep has gotten so much better lately (well, last night excepted); I'm so worried that the time change will mess that up.
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I am so worried that I've already tested a gradual later bedtime but to no avail! My almost 2 year old gets up around 5:30 although the past two weeks it has been 4:30-5:00 (ear infection & molars!)
His normal bedtime is 7:30. We've been trying 7:40 and 7:50, but he just wakes up earlier!
What to do...??
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Alison - Not related to the time change, but to get a later wake time in the am, an earlier bedtime is usually best, rather than a later bedtime. I know that doesn't help with the pending time change, but it might help with early wakings in the meantime. HTH!
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Sarah, thanks for the info. We've struggled with early wakings and short naps his whole life!! I've tried earlier bedtimes in the past, but no luck. He has reflux so that has been a constant battle too.
It certainly doesn't hurt to try again I guess! I am just happy he sleeps thorugh the night especially with baby boy #2 due in January!
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gianna has a hard time with going to bed later too, that's why i'm going to try the gradual approach.
i hope it works.
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Over the years I've gone back and forth with this. I've discovered a few things:
Yes, in the summer I get more time in the AM, but then I also get NO time with DH in the evenings with kids falling asleep around 8-9PM, depending on the evening and how they may or may not have napped during the day. As much as I like sleeping in the mornings, right now I REALLY want my evenings back!
There are a lot of AM noises here that act as cues for the girls to wake up. We live close to a commuter and freight train line and when the commuter train sounds (and even regular road traffic sounds from a half-mile away) cut through right after their last REM cycle in the mornings, that's about it, And if that doesn't do it, the sounds of the traffic plane buzzing the trees of our neighborhood >:( right before 7:30AM does it most of the time. When the clocks change, so do when those sounds happen relative to their sleep cycle, which is a BIIIIIG help (assuming no sirens - we also live close to one of the roads the fire trucks regularly take :().
When Josie was little, I was able to tweak her bedtime a bit at time changes by messing with the amount of activity and light she got at the end of the day. If necessary, I could also get her to catnap with a little car trip somewhere. ;) That way I could move her bedtime later - at least till the least little sleep during the day meant she'd be up till past 10PM. :(
At this point, I'm not gonna stress it. The girls keep stretching out their days these days, so by the time change I should be able to get them to bed at 7:30, spend a nice couple hours w/DH, and get myself to bed around 10PM. Anything important after that, well, that's why we have a video recorder, right? :)
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I'm worried too! At the moment we're trying to sort out early waking, so i just hope we can achieve that before we have to tackle daylight saving.... If we do, then i'll probably try 10-15 minute increments for her feeding, nap and bed times over a few days. And if that doesn't work, i'll get radical..... This is something we did when we went to the UK in the summer where they are 1 hour behind - she hadn't slept too well on the plane on the way over in the afternoon, so we put her down for a nap about an hour before normal bedtime after her dinner, let her sleep an hour, then got her up for a bit, bathed, gave her her milk then put her to bed about an hour and a half later than normal. It pretty much worked and she slept about an hour later in the morning, i.e. so she was on UK time. I can't vouch for whether this was a good strategy with lasting results, as being on holiday every day's routine was slightly different. But at least here at home if the incremental approach doesn't work, i can try this radical approach for one day and know that i can stick to the new times every day to see if the effects last. Anyway, there's my tuppence worth! :)
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Interesting idea!
This morning, I was thinking that it might take an extra nap that weekend to get to regular bedtime and then hopefully we can be back on track. Until then, I think, like Deb, all we can do it not stress it...it will work out!