It’s been a while! Sorry about that. I have been very busy (during my one to two hours of kid-free time each day) developing my first online course! Click here for more info!
Anyway, I wanted to give a quick update about how sleep is going. I won’t bother discussing the 3-year-old. Things are going great! Except, he sleeps in a rocking chair…
Don’t worry, its a soft, reclining glider-rocker.
We will soon tackle moving him to his bed, but for now, we are relishing getting relatively full nights of sleep. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do!
The 14 month old…she’s another story. Sleep was going pretty well, until she got sick. Perhaps I have mentioned this before – illness reliably throws a wrench into the behavioral works, frequently resulting in the need to backtrack post-illness. It’s very frustrating.
While our daughter was sick, she was sleeping so well! Too well. It lulled us into a false sense of security. Once she was feeling better, she immediately began waking up 1 to 1.5 hours earlier than usual, ready to have fun! We were not ready to have fun on 6-ish hours of sleep. (Eight hours is required for fun-having, particularly for my husband.)
How does one force a baby to sleep longer, particularly a baby who sleeps in the same room as her parents? I put her to bed late on a few occasions which yielded even earlier waking; however, she also woke earlier when I put her to bed earlier. General advice from mom blogs leaned toward putting her down earlier, but I wanted science to guide me.
Once again, Baby Sleep Science saved the day! I consulted this baby-sleep-expert site when I was struggling with nap time, and I was thrilled to find information about early waking as well!
Generally, putting the baby down late will reset baby’s circadian wake time, if you stick with it for several days. After a few successful mornings, bedtime can gradually be shifted back to the normal time. This is a very simplistic description of the factors involved, so if you also have an early waking problem, I recommend consulting Baby Sleep Science before proceeding.
Armed with this new information, I started putting our daughter down 45 to 60 minutes later than usual, paired with a walk at dusk for maximum daylight exposure. As Baby Sleep Science predicted, within a few days she was waking at the time we prefer, and we were getting full nights of sleep again! Whew!
I hope to move our happy little girl back to an earlier bedtime; however daylight saving time ends in about two weeks, so I may find myself starting this whole process over…flexibility and patience are key when it comes to kids and sleep!
Follow our daughter’s progression toward independent sleep in these posts. Wondering why I care so much about sleep? Check out “Always Start With Sleep” to learn about the importance of sleep.