Ready to ‘fall back’? How to help your baby adjust their sleep to the time change
(CNN) — “Fall back” can’t be a bad thing, right? For someone with kids, however, the time change may be an unwelcome challenge.
Although some people may be looking forward to gaining an extra hour of sleep this weekend, many new parents worry about how the change will affect their baby’s sleep schedules.
Clocks will “fall back” an hour to standard time on November 3 at 2 a.m. On March 9, 2025, most clocks in the United States and many other parts of the world will move one hour forward and stay that way for eight months as we enter another period of Daylight Saving Time.
Why we have Daylight Saving Time
The current system that we follow of “springing forward” in March and “falling back” in November was officially implemented in the US in 2007, but we’ve been “saving daylight” since World War I.
The legal enactment of Daylight Saving Time was mostly due to reliance on trains for transport and development. It was adopted in Europe and the US after the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first regulatory agency in the US, brought up coordination concerns related to the amount of power and fuel trains were using during certain parts of the year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
At the time, Daylight Saving Time was believed to help conserve fuel, but nowadays many believe that the shift is necessary to conserve energy.
Why does the time change effect a baby’s sleep
At least two important components govern sleep: a steady sleep rhythm and the production of melatonin.
The homeostatic process is a self-regulating mechanism that our bodies use to maintain stability, such as building up sleep pressure. It can take an entire day for adults to build up enough sleep drive, but babies may only need to be awake for an hour or two before falling asleep.
The circadian rhythm is our body’s internal clock that maintains behavior and physiology according to our environment. This unseen clock explains why we feel more energized during the day and tired at night.
“In the daytime when we wake up, there’s going to be lots of sunlight, which suppresses the release of melatonin,” said Dr. Raj Dasgupta, Associate Program Director of Internal Medicine Residency at Huntington Memorial Hospital. “At nighttime, it’s going to get darker earlier, so it would give us a chance for that melatonin to get released and really have our 24-hour solar day more in sync with our circadian rhythm.”
This process may begin to emerge in infants around 2 to 3 months old, but it can take them over a year to fully develop their circadian rhythm, according to BC Children’s Hospital in Canada.
Since their circadian rhythm is still developing, babies and young children wake up earlier during the first few days after the November time change.
Adjusting your child to the time change
You might be worried about how to switch your baby or child to the time change in a single day, but don’t worry. It’s never too late to start.
One method that parents may follow when adjusting their child to the time change entails gradually pushing the family’s schedule back by 15 to 20 minutes each night leading up to the time change. You can also use this method in the days following the time change if you didn’t get around to it beforehand.
In addition, you can take advantage of the circadian rhythm by keeping the lights on longer during the evening and waiting to turn them on in the mornings.
If those hacks don’t work, don’t worry. Even if you don’t follow a transition process, children should naturally adjust to the change within one to two weeks.
Sleep is individual to the person, Dasgupta said, and every child will respond differently to the change, so it’s important to keep your schedules flexible and give your children options during this time.
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