J gets up anywhere from 5:30-8:30 depending on day and situation. I don't see it affecting his napping or night sleeping but I'm wondering if he needs more of a schedule. I keep hearing things about "setting a consistent wake time" but it seems pretty impossible. Would love your thoughts.
Re: How important is a consistent wake up time?
Good question.
We're a baby lead family here. He sets our schedules.
I think we are too....lol. I am a VERY scheduled person but have never had the urge to put J on a schedule. I almost resist it for some reason which is very strange for me. I just keep hearing about "consistency" so I wonder.
if it aint broke, don't fix it. If your kid sleeps fine, why start messing with his schedule?
We're a Ferber house and he does recommend a consistent wake time (because without a purposeful schedule, babies will have a 25 hour/day internal clock. So if you let them sleep in, they're going to want to go to bed later and later and it will cause problems with going to sleep and staying asleep). However, we have never been consistent with her wake time (on weekdays we have to wake her up at 7 for daycare. On weekends we let her sleep until she wakes, usually around 8 or 830). Since it doesn't cause problems with her falling asleep or staying asleep we let it be!
We are baby lead too! Works for now because I am practically at SAHM. I tried sleep training and being on a consistent schedule and it was producing unnecessary stress for all of us. Now it seems she is leading us to a close-to-consistent pattern of waking and sleeping and if there is a change, I may whine here but in reality it really isn't all that bad.
Fortunately, for the last month or so, my DS never wakes up crying... he does one of two things... he sleeps until 4-6 a.m., wakes up and starts to babble/shriek/etc. If it's before 6:30 a.m., we go in, change his dipe, feed him and put him back down -- and he'll usually sleep til about 7:30 or so.
If he starts to wake up after 6:30 a.m., we call it a night and go in there all cheery and good morning.
I have made it a point to not go into his room to wake him up for the day before 6:30 a.m. I read in Weisbluth that you should set a line and not go in before then, or they'll just wake up earlier and earlier every day. Then again, he's not crying so that affects how we play this.
I'm not sure that made any sense :P
This. DH, DD, and I are night owls. We go to bed late and sleep late. I wake up when DD does- she normally falls asleep bwtween 10-11 pm, sleeps until 7-9 am, eats, and goes back to sleep until 10-11 am. I only wake her if we need to be at the drs office.
This is us... Any time we have tried to put her down for a nap when she didn't want to it's been a nightmare... If we let her nap/sleep/wakeup when she wants she's a much happier baby.