Fall Back: Daylight Savings & Baby Bedtimes

I used to love the “Fall Back” daylight savings time–until I had a baby. Suddenly my carefully crafted bedtime routine (and WORSE, my precious morning sleep time!) is out the window, because while I’m on new time, my little one’s internal clock is still an hour ahead.

What to do about this little dilemma? Here are a couple ideas:

Be Consistent at Bedtime

Before you choose a strategy to change baby’s bedtime, resolve to have a consistent routine for him every evening. Whether it’s bathtime, rocking, and bedtime or just a soft song and a kiss before snuggling down in the crib, make sure you give your baby that transition time so he knows its bedtime. Babies really seem to respond to this! I’ll talk more about bedtime routines (and how they worked for us) in an upcoming post.

Adjust Naptime

If you’re brave enough to tinker with naptime, you could risk waking your baby early or letting her take a little catnap later than usual to adjust her to her updated bedtime. According to the book Sleeping Through the Night young babies typically go about two hours between naps, so waking your little one two hours before new bedtime could help you get her down at the right time.

Move Bedtime… Slowly!

If you decide to shift bedtime itself, it might help to do it slowly. If your baby is used to going down at 7 and the time change means his body clock says “bedtime!” at 6, put him down at 6 the first night. Transition slowly (you can determine the gap, whether it be 5 minute of 15 minute blocks) each night until you have your new bedtime ready to go.

Move Wakeup Time

This is likely to be much harder than moving bedtime. At night, babies are already tired from a long day, but early daylight savings time risers will probably be pretty rested and may resist going back to sleep.

Our little bun used to wake up at 7:30 every morning (pretty nice!)–too bad the daylight savings time switch means that is now 6:30. So, how to get that time change adjusted for your little sweetheart?

I’m not a fan of leaving baby to cry–that often just makes them worry and fuss even more. Instead, try training them to sleep longer by making that extra awake time boring and soothing. Go into her room and rock her without making eye contact or interacting (cooing, talking, etc.). Just quietly rock her. Hopefully she will drowse or even fall asleep. You may be able to lay her back down, but more likely she will need to be rocked to stay asleep. You’ll probably have to repeat this for quite a few days to get any potential results.

If a large block doesn’t work, try to get her to sleep for any extra amount of time. If she naturally starts moving her wakeup time back as you do this, try to add five minutes more each day until you reach the wakeup time you want–but keep in mind that once she is well rested, she’s going to wake up… so don’t even bother trying to get her to sleep until noon! That’ll have to wait until the teenage years…

Any of you shy mamas have sleeping tips for us? If so, do tell!

xo,

Annie

photo: Fall Maples by Patrice Dufour

What is WIC?: Government Help With Groceries

If you need help buying groceries for your little ones (of yourself if you’re a pregnant or breastfeeding mommy) then WIC is an awesome resource you should look into: it is government assistance with your food bills! I just looked into it about a week ago, and it was easy to set up an well worth it!

What is WIC?

WIC (which stands for Women, Infants, Children) is a Federal program that provides funds for nutritional foods, information on healthy eating, and in some cases even health care referrals for pregnant, post-partum, and breastfeeding mamas, infants, and children up to age five.

How Do I Qualify?

The basic requirements for WIC are that you live in the state in which you apply, are one of the categories of W.I.C. listed above, and meet the income requirements of being between 100 and 185% of the Federal poverty income guidelines. The table below gives a partial list of the current WIC income requirements.

(Find the full list of WIC’s eligibility requirements here.)

How Does it Work?

Once a WIC officer has determined that your family qualifies for the program, they will give you printed checks for specific food items the State government has deemed nutritional, such as milk, cheese, cereal, and peanut butter. You then take the checks with you to a WIC approved grocery store, and purchase those items using your WIC checks. (The cashier should be able to help you if you’ve never done it before!)

How Do I Apply?

To apply, you’ll need to contact your local WIC office. You can find contact info for your local WIC office at the WIC website http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/.

Does it Work?

Our family just started using WIC a couple weeks ago. I had to take little Bun into the WIC office to be weighed and measured, and had a short interview with a WIC officer. They showed me a video about how the program works and sent us home with two months’ worth of checks for foods like beans, tuna, juice, carrots, peanut butter, milk, cheese, and cereal. I took my first batch of checks into the store last week, and found it super easy to shop for and pay for my WIC items. It takes a little extra time at first, but it probably ended up saving us about $30 in grocery bills!

love,

Annie

photo: cheese by kirsche222