What to do When Your Baby's Schedule is Thrown Off
I want to start off by saying, no matter how hard you try to stick to a schedule, your baby WILL have off days, and that’s okay! This is totally normal. Why? Because baby’s are not robots:)
There will be times when your baby takes a short nap (or two), skips a nap altogether, wakes up early, goes to bed late, and everything in between. Not if, but when these things happen, follow what I like to call the “15 minute rule”. This means that whatever happens, you can adjust your baby’s schedule in 15 minute increments to get back on track by bedtime! Let me give you an example.
Let’s say your normally naps from 8:30-10am. Today they only slept from 8:30-9:30, woke up super hungry, so you decide to offer a feed at 9:30 instead of the typical 10:00 feed. Here’s what you do:
Next feed, aim for 12:45 (typically feed at 1:00)
Next feed, aim for 4:00 and now you’re right back on track!
This also applies to the nap. If they normally nap at 11:30 but woke up at 9:30 and can’t make it to 11:30, aim for 10:30, then 1:15, then 4:30 and you’re back on track.
Now, if your day is SO thrown off that you cannot adjust by just 15 minutes, you have two options:
Adjust by 30 minutes each feed/nap.
Do your best, make it to bedtime, and try again the next day. It’s no big deal!
Again, babies are not robots, so when these days happen, please don’t let it stress you out! In the long run, these bumps in the road will not be a big deal, so do your best and everything will work out!
If all of this feels like a foreign language to you, that probably means you have not gone through my method. If you’re ready to get 12 hour nights and long, predictable naps during the day, head to thesleepfairyway.com to learn more.