Anticipating the time change with baby
Fanny Lacoste, a nurse and sleep coach for newborns and children , offers guidance on how to better navigate this winter's time change . She provides simple tips for gradually adjusting routines and minimizing the effects of the time change on little ones' sleep patterns. Find her on Instagram @bebe_a_sommeil .
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The time change can disrupt baby's sleep, especially after 6 months, when their biological rhythm is better structured. It can then lead to earlier waking, signs of fatigue occurring sooner, or difficulty falling asleep. These effects are generally temporary and subside within a few days thanks to stable, adapted routines.
- What are the consequences of the time change for baby?
- What are the impacts for a baby under 6 months versus one over 6 months?
- How can you help baby adapt before and after the switch to winter time?
- Is there a difference between adapting to winter time and summer time?
- What signs indicate that baby is struggling to adapt to the time change?
What are the consequences of the time change for baby?
As a sleep professional for a number of years, but also as a mother of 4 children, I observe that it depends on the child, their age, and the habit that has been put in place by the parents since birth. There is generally a difference between babies from 0 to 6 months and babies who are over 6 months old.
This is because the circadian rhythm (i.e., the 24-hour biological day/night cycle) takes a few months to stabilize after birth. Thus, babies from 0 to 2–3 months are on an ultradian rhythm (less than 20 hours).
They will alternate between:
- waking phases,
- feeding phases,
- rest phases, with relatively short wake times.
They do not yet know how to distinguish between day and night.
The circadian cycle is considered acquired from 6 months on. The internal clock then regulates the phases of wakefulness and rest.
Thus, the time change can have more of an impact from that age on. The child becomes increasingly aware of their environment and the different rituals that make up their day.
Babies often have quite sensitive and regular biological clocks. The time change, particularly the switch to winter time, can disrupt their rest cycle. It is common to encounter sleep difficulties after this age, because the baby may wake up earlier than usual. Consequently, we may observe signs of fatigue earlier in the day. For example, for a child who goes to bed around 7:00/7:30 PM, signs of fatigue could appear around 6:00/6:30 PM.
This varies depending on the child. Some are not at all affected by this time shift and show no change in their behavior, while others are more sensitive and may be affected up to a certain age. Every child reacts differently to the shift.
It is good to know that these effects related to the time change, whether for summer or winter, are generally temporary and do not last more than a week, sometimes 15 days at most. If it persists, you need to ask questions about the rhythm: are the naps taken at the right time? Are the wake times too long, leading to increased fatigue at the end of the period and thus an excess of cortisone, making falling asleep more difficult?
What are the impacts for a baby under 6 months and for one over 6 months?
It is often said that major changes occur from 6 months on due to a restructuring of sleep.
Before this age, the baby has a simple rest pattern with three phases: falling asleep, active sleep, and quiet sleep. But from 6 months on, a new phase appears: deep slow-wave sleep. Cycles also lengthen, going from 30–45 min to 70 min. This is also impacted by the time change in winter.
The impact I often notice with the parents I support is the naps that are shifted during the day for a baby over 6 months old.
- Starting with the morning, it can be a more early or more late wake-up because it's hard to wake the child, because they had difficulty falling asleep or fell asleep earlier than usual the night before.
- This will impact the rest of the day in a cascade. If they woke up earlier, inevitably, they will show signs of fatigue quite early in the day, so the morning nap that was supposed to happen at 9:00 AM, for example, will happen around 8:00/8:15 AM.
Waking up too early can also affect the child's behavior and mood because an overtired baby will cry more or have trouble falling asleep when they are offered a nap.
If it's time for feeding phases, it can also have an impact, because an overtired child will have more difficulty feeding, whether by bottle or even if they have started diversification.
How to help baby adapt, beforehand and after the switch to winter time?
Beforehand:
What I advise doing is:
- advancing the routine slightly, by 10 minutes each evening, starting one week before the time change, to begin preparing baby.
- By routine, I mean snack time, lunch time, morning wake-up time, and bedtime. It's the whole day that will need to be advanced; we aren't going to focus only on bedtime.
- Likewise, this will concern all the different stages of the day, whether it's activities, meals, rituals, bath time, etc.
Since there is less impact before 6 months, it is less significant, but it is very significant from 6 months on!
I strongly advise parents of a child over 6 months to try to implement this new rhythm and to anticipate it a week before in order to adjust gradually, whether it be the times for bedtime, waking up, meals and rituals, especially from the moment you pick up your child in the evening.
If you start 10 days before, you can start advancing all these activities by 5 minutes. If you start between 3 and 5 days before the change, advance by 15/20 minutes.
After the time change:
Maintain your routines and your rituals as stably as possible. Everything you did before, you must do the same actions, in the same order, with the same people. Avoid making modifications at the time of time changes.
Remember that routine and rituals are really what will allow the child to feel secure, to be reassured, and that is what will allow them to let go and position themselves at a given moment of the day.
And try to expose the child as much as possible to daylight. This can help reset baby's biological clock. Don't hesitate to go for walks in the morning or during wake times so that the child can more easily synchronize their internal clock and also promote the production of serotonin, a precursor to melatonin, the sleep hormone.
Is there a difference between adapting to winter time and summer time?
According to the feedback parents give me, the switch to summer time is more difficult than the one to winter time.
For many children, darkness is essential for falling asleep and recreating the optimal conditions conducive to sleep. However, with the days getting longer, light is still present at 9:00 PM and can pass through shutters, curtains, etc.; thus the environment is not completely dark, which can disrupt some children. Once again, this depends on each child; there are those who fall asleep with light and others who don't.
Furthermore, one must put babies to bed earlier than what their body is accustomed to.
In short, the switch to winter time often leads to earlier waking, while the switch to summer time generally complicates the evening bedtime.
A little advice for families: you really must maintain the routine with an identical repetition of all the actions and gestures that parents were doing before. However, if there has never been a routine put in place, it's a good time to be able to integrate one. And as you will have understood, this is not at all the time to eliminate steps or make big changes.
What signs indicate that baby is struggling to adapt to the time change?
The time change can cause a lot of stress for parents who are not informed that it can have an impact on the sleep of their child and obviously on their own sleep. If baby wakes up earlier, they do too, and the day will be more difficult to face for everyone.
There may be night wakings: the fact of lacking sleep during the day can impact the night closely or from a distance, and lead to night wakings that were not there before.
Let's take the example of a baby, between 6 and 12 months, who was doing 3 naps during the day, with a nap in the morning, one in the early afternoon, and one at the end of the day. By advancing bedtime, the end-of-day nap will end up too close to the early afternoon nap, and when we try to put them to bed in the evening, there is a risk of a "false start" with a waking 1 or 2 hours after bedtime. The child comes to recover the sleep quota they did not have during the day, and there may be wakings subsequently in the first or second part of the night.
The difficulty we can also encounter is brightness, as mentioned previously. We often forget that children are very sensitive to daylight. This plays, for example, on their level of melatonin: the sleep hormone is produced with the appearance of darkness, that is to say exclusively at night, but daylight leads to the production of serotonin, a precursor to melatonin. During the switch to winter time, given that days are getting shorter, the body will be less exposed to daylight, and thus melatonin will be produced with a delay or in too small a quantity, which can have an impact on falling asleep in the evening.
