Help Your Baby Sleep Like a Dream!
The secret to a happy baby is establishing a consistent sleep schedule. Getting your little one on a consistent sleep schedule can make all the difference in both their well-being and yours. It can be challenging to navigate the many tips and tricks out there, so I'm here to offer some guidance on how to get your baby sleeping through the night and taking restful naps. With a bit of patience, persistence, and a few helpful strategies, you can help your baby develop good sleep habits that will benefit them for years to come.
8 MONTHS IS A BIG TRANSITIONAL TIME
By now, your baby should have successfully dropped their third nap. If your child has not successfully dropped their third nap, and you are looking for tips on this transition, here is a link to another article, from Kelly Murray, with great tips on the science of readiness. It gives you an action plan to drop the third nap successfully while minimizing over-tiredness.
Let's jump in! Here you are, 8 months old, on a two-nap schedule. Your baby can now handle longer wake windows and you have a bit more time in your day to do fun things with your little one.
Now that you’re on a two-nap schedule, it's time to let go of calculating the wake windows and get on a consistent clock schedule.
I know, it's wild right?! You’ve spent all this time carefully planning out and calculating exactly when these naps should be and now I'm going to ask you to completely let go of that. What’s most important at this age now is creating a consistent clock schedule for your baby's biological clock.
Consistency needs to start in the morning and then all the other sleep times will fall into place.
Say your baby is typically waking up around 7:00 am, and for whatever reason, your child wakes up at 6:30 am…we can always adjust by 30 minutes in either direction of the target sleep times. If your baby woke up about 30 minutes earlier that day, then you adjust all your target sleep times to be 30 minutes earlier. But say your child wakes up earlier than 30 minutes of their target sleep time or their typical wake time, that's okay. You’re still going to only adjust 30 minutes earlier than your target sleep times. That way you're always within a 30-minute range of that ideal or target sleep time.
Example 1 :
If your child wakes up at 7:00 am, their naps will land at about 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. That will line up with bedtime to land around 7:00-7:30 pm.
WAKE: 7:00 AM
NAP : 10:00 AM & 3:00 PM
Bedtime : 7:00-7:30 PM
Example 2:
If your child wakes up at 6:00 am, their naps will land at about 9:00 am and 2:00 pm. That will line up with bedtime to land around 6:00-6:30 pm.
WAKE: 6:00 AM
NAP : 9:00 AM & 2:00 PM
Bedtime : 6:00-6:30 PM
Keep in mind the distribution of sleep totals in a 24-hour period. At 8 months old your baby should be having about 3 to 3.5 hours of daytime sleep and about 11 to 12 hours of nighttime sleep. For a total of about 11 to 14 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.
Give yourself a little grace as you're moving through this transition. It can take some time to adjust to a clock schedule and it's not always going to work out absolutely perfectly from the day you start. You’re going to have those target sleep times that you're going to be working towards that goal. You will get there.
Give it a good 2-4 weeks of working on this solid sleep schedule and working on that consistency.
I promise you things will line up.
We’re here to help!
If you are struggling with creating this clock schedule and getting your baby on a consistent rhythm, contact us! We would love to do a strategy call and get you set up on a good foot by helping you better nights without early morning wake-ups.
