Daylight Savings Nightmares

A few days ago in the wee hours of the early morning around 5:30am, I was breastfeeding my early riser, anxious for him to finish his first morning feed and hoping that he would go back for a nap. In my sleepy mind the thought occured to me that it would soon be daylight savings time. In the fall the time goes back, giving us an extra hour of sleep. I was excited for this prospect, knowing that I was missing out on some sleep every night and an extra hour would be a welcome event. Then I remembered. Uh oh..I have a baby.

My son is likely too small to notice such a subtle difference in the clock that we follow. He follows his own clock, regardless of the numbers that may sit in front of him.  Granted, he has gotten himself on a schedule lately. I know around what time he wakes, naps and needs to eat. This has taken several months for him to establish and now that it is settling in I am starting to relax and am able to plan a little more around his habits.  Moving things around an hour will unfortunately shake all of this up - more for me than him.

What do I mean? Well right now he generally wakes up sometime between 5 and 5:30 am. If I am careful, he just needs a feeding and with the right movements, I can get him to go back to sleep for another hour or two. Sometimes however,  I am not so lucky and I cannot get him back to sleep - he is ready to play and get up for the day. The 5 am time is just too early for this momma to get up! It's particularily hard when he has already been up once before for some soothing just a few short hours ago.  My point - once daylight savings hits these 5 am times will now be 4 am. Yikes. Now that's way too early for momma.

I know that everything else will be off schedule to, but I think I can handle having him change his naps and I can try to get him back on our meal times by feeding him a little earlier than before. I guess that means he will also go to bed earlier in the evening? I am mostly worried about the super early morning potential and how I will be able to handle it. Funny - I never even considered this before.

I will have to see what happens this coming weekend as the clocks fall back. I will update with how things go for my little guy, and for his potentially tired momma!

Momma'a Musts :

• Sleep while you can!
• Never take any schedule with a baby for granted - something is bound to shake it all up soon enough!
• Prepare for the worst case scenario - and hope for the best!