“I really love being a mom, I just wish my baby woke me up earlier every day,” said NO MOM EVER.

Many moms try everything for a later wake up in the morning, with no success. Well, this is your chance. Daylight savings is this Sunday. It’s “spring forward”, which pre-parenthood meant one hour less of sleep.

But now it means that by doing nothing, you can take a baby who’s been waking up at 5:30AM and, voila, now they wake up at 6:30AM.

Of course, that goes both ways. If your baby currently goes to bed at 8:30PM, you may not like the idea of moving to a 9:30PM bedtime. So, you may have a small transition ahead. Whatever, your situation, here are some tips to have a smooth Daylight Savings.

If you like the idea of a 1-hour later schedule:

• Enjoy having a baby that sleeps until a more tolerable hour! Whoohoo!
• Try to use black-out curtains (or other window treatments) to block light, enabling your baby to stay on the later schedule as the sun rises earlier each day.

If you’ll need to move to an earlier schedule:

• Consider how quickly you’ll need your baby on the new schedule. For example, if you’re working and you need them to adjust by Monday, consider starting to make adjustments a few days in advance.
• Adjust bedtime to an earlier time by 10-15 minutes each day, depending on how sensitive your baby is to changes in bedtime. Again, black-out curtains may help, so your baby can’t see how light it is outside.
• Tire them out on Saturday, so that hopefully they’ll welcome a slightly earlier schedule.
• Try to be consistent with your nap schedule. If you base your nap schedule on your baby’s wake-up time, you can just continue to do that. If you use a set time of day for nap-time, just adjust that in the same 10-15 minute intervals that you’re doing with bedtime.
• Expose your baby to sunlight, when they wake up. This tells their body and brain that it’s time to be awake, and it will help them to adjust their internal clock.

Once you’ve taken steps to make a transition, your baby’s schedule still may be a little out-of-whack for a few days. Consistency will help get him back to a more normal sleep pattern.

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