Daylight Saving and Baby Sleep

Start about a week ahead and move naps and bedtime a few minutes each day in the direction the clocks are going. That is the American Academy of Pediatrics' advice for younger children, and it is duller and smaller than most of what you will read about this. Ten or fifteen minutes a day, applied to the whole day rather than to bedtime alone, and children usually adjust within about a week either way. The autumn change is the one that hits young children hardest.

If you have not prepared, nothing is lost. An hour is an hour, and daylight moves a body clock faster than any schedule you can write. The rest of this page is what to do in each direction, what to do if you forgot, and when there is nothing to shift at all.

The method, and why it is so small

Move everything, not just the last thing. Wake-up, naps, meals and bedtime all shift together by ten or fifteen minutes a day, in the direction the clocks are about to move, starting roughly a week out. By the Saturday, she is already living an hour away from where she started and the change on Sunday morning lands on nothing.

Shifting bedtime alone is the version that fails. A bedtime pushed later without the naps moving with it simply produces an overtired baby at a strange hour, and the last nap of the day is usually the thing holding the whole evening in place. The sleep schedule generator is a quick way to see the shape of a day drawn at the new times before you try to live in it, and the wake window calculator gives you the awake band to aim each stretch at while the times are moving.

If you have three days rather than seven, do it in three larger steps of twenty minutes. If you have one, do not bother preparing — take the hour on the day and spend your effort on light instead.

Clocks going back: the harder one

This is the change that costs young children the most. The AAP notes it can make them crash before bedtime and wake earlier than usual, which is exactly what parents describe: a week of a baby falling apart at five in the afternoon and then getting up at half past four.

The reason is that an hour arrives in the wrong place. Her body still thinks bedtime is at the old hour, which the clock now calls an hour later — so an unchanged bedtime is an hour of extra awake time she did not ask for, and the morning comes an hour early by the same arithmetic.

In the week before, push naps and bedtime about ten minutes later each day, so by Sunday she is going down an hour later by the old clock, which is the same time by the new one. In the week after, treat the early morning as night: dim room, no talking, nothing interesting, no getting up before the hour you intend to keep. Then open the curtains hard the moment the day does start. Both halves matter — a dark early morning and a bright proper one are the same instruction given twice.

Clocks going forward: the easier one

Going forward, an hour is taken out of the night. For an adult that is a lost hour of sleep and a grim Monday; for a baby it usually costs a groggy morning or two and a couple of short naps, and it tends to be easier on a small child than on a teenager.

Prepare it the same way in reverse — naps and bedtime ten minutes earlier each day for the week before — and then use the morning light, which is now arriving later. Keep the room dark until the hour you want her up, get her outside or into a bright window as soon as she is up, and let the evening be dimmer and calmer than it feels like it should be, because the sun will be up long past bedtime for weeks.

The evening light is the part people underestimate in spring. A baby who has been playing in a bright living room until seven is being told it is not bedtime, whatever the routine says. Curtains, lamps rather than overhead lights, and the same short order of events every night will do more than moving the clock times about.

If you forgot entirely

Take the hour on the day and fix it from the light end. Put her down at the new bedtime that evening rather than trying to split the difference, get a proper dose of daylight into the morning, and hold the new times for four or five days without adjusting them again. A week of short naps and an odd mood is the normal cost.

What is worth avoiding is the impatient middle: moving bedtime again on Tuesday because Monday was bad, then again on Wednesday. She is trying to settle into a pattern, and a pattern that changes daily is not one. Hold what you have chosen and let it get boring.

Why daylight does most of the work

Light is the strongest lever you have, and it is free. Exposure to natural light during the day helps reset a child's internal clock, because sunlight has a strong effect on the body's circadian rhythm — that is the AAP's own account of why the change is survivable, and it is the reason a walk after breakfast beats any amount of clock arithmetic.

The NHS advice on the day-night difference is the same idea in domestic form and is worth applying with more conviction for a fortnight either side of a clock change. In the day: open the curtains, play games, do not worry about the ordinary noises of the house while she sleeps. At night: keep the lights low, avoid talking and eye contact, and put her down as soon as she has been fed and changed. A simple, unchanging bedtime routine — a bath, night clothes, dimmed lights, a song — is the other half of the same signal, and the bedtime routine guide covers what belongs in one.

If the clocks have gone back and you are stuck at half past four every morning, the light and the shape of the day matter more than the hour itself. The early morning waking guide goes through the other causes, most of which have nothing to do with the time change and simply became visible during it.

Under about four months, there is nothing to shift

A young baby's day does not have a clock in it. She has her own pattern of waking and sleeping, it is unlikely to look like anybody else's, and no consensus figure for total sleep is even published below four months because the normal variation is too wide to be useful. There is nothing to move by fifteen minutes a day.

So if she is under about four months, do nothing. Feed and settle when she asks, use the light as above, and let the new times arrive on their own over a fortnight. The newborn wake windows page explains what a day at that age is built out of instead, and why an order of events beats a timetable.

The week after, and what not to blame on the clocks

Give it a full week before deciding anything, and two if the change landed in a fortnight that already had teeth, a cold or travel in it. Hold wake-up, naps and bedtime where you want them to end up rather than chasing her around the day, and accept some short naps in the middle.

If it is still ragged after a fortnight, it is probably not the clocks any more. Look at the length of the awake stretches first — they grow quietly, and a day built for a baby six weeks younger falls apart in exactly this way. A few days of notes on a printed day sheet will show you a pattern faster than another week of guessing, and the wake windows by age guide explains what the bands are and where they came from. Whatever the clock says, the sleep itself does not change: babies sleep on their back, on a firm flat mattress, in a cot clear of blankets, pillows, bumpers and soft toys, in your room for at least the first six months.

When it is not the clocks

A time change makes an ordinary week worse; it does not make a well baby unwell. If she cannot be settled at all, is unusually sleepy or hard to rouse, is feeding poorly or not gaining weight, or her cry does not sound like her usual one, that is a call to your pediatrician or health visitor rather than a scheduling question — and so is a worry that will not go away. This page is general information, not medical advice, and it cannot see your baby.