What time does your baby/child go to bed and when do they wake up???

[Andrea S]

DH thinks we put Andrew to bed to early. Even though since we have been putting them to bed early he has been sleeping through to 5 am instead of waking up a couple of times. He just wants him to sleep later, but when he goes to bed later he still wakes up and the same time.


Andrew goes to bed 7-7:30
up at 5-6am for feeding
up for day 6-7 (mostly 6)

Andrea
mom to Andrew 8/14/02

[twins r fun]

My boys go to bed at 7:30 and have for many, many months now. I too found it did not matter what time they went to bed (within reason), they always woke up at the same time (6:30-7:00). They didn't start sleeping later until they were almost ready for 1 nap (14 months or so). At that point they started waking up at 8:30 and I was able to drop their morning nap.

Nicole

[egoldber]

On "most" nights, Sarah sleeps from around 8/8:30 to 7/8.

The last month has been terrible though, as she has gotten 5 teeth including 3 pre-molars and the last pre-molar is currently working its way out. :(

But I have also noticed that no matter what time Sarah goes to bed, she tends to wake up around the same time.

[jojo2324]

Hi Andrea! Though we are nowhere near a shadow of a schedule, DH had the same idea. He wanted to put DS to bed later so that he might wake up later, but all that resulted from it was one very cranky baby.

I have noticed in the last week that DS has been falling asleep much earlier due to the fact that he is steadfastly refusing to nap. We squeezed a nap in today (but only because I was laying down with him), and by his normal bedtime (6pm) he was really cranky. And his nap had only been about two hours before! He wakes up at 5am, much to my dismay, regardless of naps, no naps, munber of times up through the night, what time he went to bed. :(

[August Mom]

Justin used to sleep from 10 p.m. to 7 or 7:30 a.m. He would not go to sleep before 10 p.m. In the morning, after nursing, he would sometimes go back to sleep until 9:00 or 9:30. In the last month or so, he has seemed tired earlier in the evening. So, we've been putting him to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. Unfortunately, he has been pretty consistently waking at around 5:30 a.m. He won't go back to sleep unless he nurses. After nursing, he usually sleeps until 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. and then he wants to get up for the day.

[COElizabeth]

James' "schedule" goes something like this:

Bed between 6:00 and 7:00.
Nurse around 9:00 PM.
Nurse around 2 or 3 or 4 AM.

Up about 6-7 AM. If he has not eaten since 2, he sometimes wakes up around 5:00 AM, and then I feed him and put him back in bed, and he may sleep until 8.

Elizabeth
Mom to James
9-20-02

[brubeck]

I am also one for later bedtimes. My theory is that I want the kids to sleep when I am sleeping, so that I'm not interrupted. :-)

Both my 28 month old daughter and my 3 month old son go to bed at 10 pm, sometimes 10:30 pm.

My daughter sleeps until 7:30 to 8 am and takes a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. My son has just started sleeping past 7 am (yay!) with no wakeups in the middle of the night. Of course he naps all day being an infant.

I do think that this is something that is different for every child. But if you want to change their bedtimes, try it for a week. I think it takes more than one night to adjust the body clock.

[atlbaby]

Arielle goes to sleep around 8-8:30 (not to be confused with FALLING asleep always!!) and wakes up anywhere from 7:30-8:30. The past 2 months or so she's been transitioning from 2 naps-->1 nap, and her sleep tendencies were all over the place (not falling asleep till 10pm, waking up at 9:30 am sometimes...) but I think she's finally got a schedule down again.

Oops, I hope I didn't jinx it by stating her current schedule!

-Rachel
Mom to Arielle Jill, 10/30/01
#2:) EDD 10/24/03

[Momof3Labs]

Colin goes to bed around 6pm, sometimes as early as 5:30pm. He has always wanted to go to bed early - even at a couple of months old - so we don't fight it. He usually sleeps through the night and is up for the day around 6am.

[Annette_C]

Sabrina is asleep by 7pm and is up at 5am. She wakes up plenty of times during the night and has, just in the past month, gone back to a 2am feeding. Sometimes she stays up for an hour or two in the middle of the night but, no matter what, she always gets up at 5!
Who would have known she would be like this in the good ol' days when she would sleep through the night (from birth to 3 mo. old)!!

Annette
SAHM to Sabrina 6/24/02

[sparkeze]

My DS goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:30PM and wakes up between 7-8. If he didn't take an afternoon nap he goes to bed as early as 6:30 PM and if his afternoon nap was late he goes to bed as late as 9:30 PM though. I noticed that if I inadvertently don't get him to bed on time, he wakes up ealier the next morning! I am not a morning person so I was hoping I could shift his schedule closer to mine but no such luck!

[newbelly2002]

Up until a month ago Dante was going to bed around 7:30/8:00 and sleeping through until 7:00. Since returning from America (the jet lag seems to have stirred things up), he's been going to bed around the same time but waking up at 4:30/5:00 AM raring to go. No going back to sleep for him. It's killing both DH and I and Daylight savings time can't get here fast enough.

Part of the early wakings seem to be attributed to a very squeaky bed in our room (and I tend to start getting restless, turning more, etc at around 5:00) and very good hearing on DS's part. Two nights ago our dog was dream-yipping, and that woke DS up. Ugh.

Paula

[egoldber]

I HATE that. Since our weather has gotten so nice and I have had the windows open during the day, my dog (who has always been a bit of a barker) barks at the "new" noises she is hearing from outside. Well, after the third day in a row of the dog waking Sarah up from her afternoon nap prematurely, I have started crating the dog during her nap.

[Rachels]

The only thing all the sleep books seem to agree on is that earlier bedtimes make for longer sleep. Babies get tired before adults, and they need more sleep than adults. That said, I have a night owl. She's clearly tired at 7, but won't stay asleep. She sometimes catnaps, but usually really conks out around 9:30 and gets up for the day around 8. What happens in between varies wildly but NEVER involves sleeping all night.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[momathome]

Kasey (25 months-old)goes to sleep at 9:00pm and usually sleeps until between 7am and 8am. She usually naps in the afternoon for 1-2hours. There are exceptions - she was up at 6:30 this morning - ugh!!! Generally speaking, though, since she was 7 months-old, she never wakes during the night - once she's out, she's out!
-Lauren

[juliasdad]

Dr. Weissbluth's book talks about this phenomenon. He makes the claim that essentially, there is a different quality of sleep that happens at different clock-times, and this is not something that is time-shiftable but rather something somehow inate and linked to the sun time. In other words, if your baby needs 12 hours of sleep per night, you will *not* get the same results going 10pm-10am as you would 7pm-7am. He also makes the claim (and he points to studies) that the childs wake-up time is to a large extent independant of their bedtime.

This is all certainly counterintuitive to me; until we tried it. We used to put Julia down at around 9-9:30pm (and we thought that was early, since until about 3mo, she would never go down before 11pm). Her sleeping was horrible. She'd go to sleep, but be up every 2 hours. After reading Weissbluth, we decided to try a bedtime shift. DW wasn't happy with the idea because it meant that I didn't get much baby-time after coming home from work. But, we decided that if it really worked, then it's what she needs. DW also didn't want the baby to be getting up at 5am!

My goodness, but did it work. We put her down that night at 7pm. There was some protesting, and at 6mo we decided to let her protest. And that was it. We got an amazing night's sleep out of her, and she still woke at her usual 7:30 or so. And it's been pretty much the same since then. Her pattern is now much the same as Andrew's: bed at 7-7:30, a single feeding anywhere from 3:30am to 5:30am, and up for the day at 6:30-7:30am.

If DH wants to put Andrew to bed later, either in order to have more time with him or to get him to wake up later, I'd really advise that he at least read Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child".

-dan

[jenmcadams]

We have definitely found this to be the truth...we have slowly moved Abbie's bedtime earlier and earlier and she still basically sleeps through to the same time. We normally put her to bed b/t 6:45 and 7:00 and she sleeps through pretty consistently. She'll often get up and play in her crib for 20-30 minutes at some point b/t 4-6AM and then she's always up for the day by 6AM. We actually make a point not to get her before 6AM, so sometimes she goes back to sleep after playing or she just plays until we come get her

[mamahill]

Ainsleigh goes to bed between 8-8:30, unless she has had a super afternoon nap (more than 2 hours), and then she'll go to sleep at 9 (but even with a long afternoon nap, she'll sometimes go to bed between 8-8:30). She is generally up between 7:15-8 am. She'll have a 1.5-2 hour morning nap, and another one in the afternoon. Of course, this is all dependent on her mood. Mostly I just watch her for cues (Weissbluth reader here!) and put her to bed before she exhausts herself.

And of course, with teething all this goes out the window...

[Andrea S]

Thanks for your replies. I have been reading Weissbluth's book and we are going to keep his bed time the same. Andrew is ready for bed then and he is sleeping through to 5 am which is better than he has done for the 1st 6 months. Now we are working on naps. I wanted to see what over people do our friends do not seem to be as fanatical about being home for bed time as we are so I think DH was thinking we were the only people putting their kid to bed 9 pm.

Andrea
mom to Andrew 8/14/02