The Sleep Chronicles - Duration of Night Time Sleep

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I am experimenting with Willow's sleep time. She used to sleep 10.5 to 11 hours during the night and the past week it has gone down to 9.5 hours. I have read and researched a lot about sleep and infants so I have a couple of approaches I am trying.

I have been charting her sleep since December. I successfully got her from 3 naps during the day, to two. I like the time she goes to bed but not the duration so I have to work on that.

Last night I experimented with the "Early to bed late to rise" mantra. The philosophy behind this is that when a child is overtired, they will not sleep as well as they would if they went to sleep when they were just plain tired. So, I started getting Willow ready for bed at 6:45pm instead of the normal 7:00pm. She was tired. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning so I thought this may just work.

When I laid her down after her bedtime routine (bath, bottle, books) she went right to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn't fool her and she woke up promptly at 4:45am. This tells me that she is just one of those babies that only needs 9.5 hours of sleep. I am not one of the lucky ones with a child who likes 11 or 12 hours. And that is fine. We will work out a happy compromise.

According to Dr. Ferber, when you have a situation where your child is an early riser, you have to adjust the time they go to bed in order to adjust the time they wake up. Most children have an average amount of time they sleep in any given day. If they are napping when and for a duration that you are happy with, changing the bed time is the alternative we are left with.

Willow seems to sleep 9.5 hours at night irrespective of how much daytime sleep she has. But, just in case, I instructed her daycare teacher to only allow her to sleep for 2 hours during the day today. (Ideally these two hours will be in two one-hour increments but Willow will decide that) Two to three hours has been her average amount of daytime sleep for a while. She actually had three hours yesterday.

If her 12 to 12.5 hours of sleep during a 24 hour period holds up (which it has lately) she should sleep about 10-10.5 hours tonight. So, by restricting her daytime sleep and pushing back her nighttime sleep by 15 minutes tonight, I should have her waking at a more reasonable time in the morning.

I'll keep you posted!