Sleep has been a big concern for us at the Carrot Patch over the past 2 and a half years. As I detailed in my last post, Baby C is easily defined as a “low sleep needs” kid, and shortly after her 1st birthday, she began moving her fall-asleep time later and later. She’s now a little past 3 and a half, and her sleep splits into “weekday” sleep, which includes a nap due to daycare rules, and a specific wake-up time in order for us to manage our commute/work/school schedule; and “weekend” sleep, when we wake up whenever we want and don’t nap. On weekdays, Baby C averages a 10:30-11 PM bedtime, and on weekends, it’s somewhere between 8-9 PM.

This week, I scheduled a follow-up call with a sleep consultant we spoke with to 2 years ago, when Baby C was 18 months old. We were worried at the time that she wasn’t getting enough sleep, and her bedtime was trending later and later. The consultant went over all our routines and practices, and told us that we were doing everything right, and it sounded like Baby C’s biological clock was just set to a later sleep time than most. This time, we wanted to talk about the extremely late bedtime Baby C leans toward during the week. Deep down I suspected that the same answer applies – Baby C’s clock is just set to a later timeline – but I wanted to have an expert tell me that I wasn’t doing something to mess up her sleep.

Thankfully, that’s exactly what we heard in our call. The consultant told us that timing wise, Baby C is sleeping a little less during the week (about 9-10 hours total, including nap) than she is on the weekend (about 11 hours), and that what’s happening is that the nap is giving Baby C an extra energy boost that keeps her awake longer than she otherwise would be without a nap (and why she can go awake ~13 hours on a weekend but goes closer to 14-15 on a weekday). Overall, however, she’s not sleep deprived, and while the late bedtime sucks socially (especially for her morning person mom!), it’s not bad biologically. Her body is just not ready for sleep until late, given the energy replenish of the nap. The most important things are that she’s eating, gaining weight, learning and growing appropriately, all of which is the case with Baby C.

Mr. Carrot and I breathed a sigh of relief after the call, and are officially giving up the fight, which thus far has included trying to wrestle our kid into bed at 9 and then fighting with her for over an hour as she would get up, want to play, want to talk, and do pretty much anything other than being in bed, leading to endless frustration for all of us. There are some things that we’re going to keep doing and start doing, however, to make this night owl of ours a little more manageable as we ourselves are ready to turn in for the night and she’s not quite yet.

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  1. Continue with our calm-down environment approach. The rules in our house are to turn off electronics at 7:30 at the latest, and dim the lights by 8 PM. We turn off half our living room lights and swap central lights for table lamps in our bedrooms. Baby C can continue to play, but the lower lights begin to boost her melatonin and getting her relaxed for bedtime.
  2. Calm activities after 8 pm. We avoid anything noisy and very active after 8 PM and will continue to do so. Baby C’s room doesn’t have any noise making toys in it, and as she gets older and gets into pretend play and board games more and more, we’ve been aiming to do more of those activities as it gets later in the day.
  3. Move to PJs and reading time a little later. Currently, we’ve been moving to bath time, PJs and pre-bed reading by 9 PM, and getting Baby C in bed by 9:30, which doesn’t work well with her tendency to fall asleep as late as she does. We’ll aim to move this routine closer to 9:30-9:45, and aim to have her in bed for some wind-down time by 10:15.
  4. Monitor the cues. As Baby C gets older, she might naturally stop napping at daycare. Unfortunately, we don’t have a way of knowing that, since older classrooms don’t report on daily activities, so we’ve been actively monitoring Baby C for how she’s acting and feeling. Occasionally we notice she’s more tired than not, which usually indicates she didn’t nap or only napped a bit, so we adjust accordingly to get her to bed faster.
  5. Encourage more independence. Baby C’s room is right next to ours, so as she gets into more play on her own, we aim to leave the room and let her be. Often she wants company, however, so while we don’t want to deny her that, we also want her to be OK on her own so that we can sneak in a little bit of time for ourselves too.
  6. Take care of ourselves during these late nights. I admit, this rhythm is really hard for me. Mr. Carrot and I are both working full-time, and I’m a strong introvert with a very extroverted job, so I’m usually exhausted by the end of the day and just want some quiet time. I find that on really tiring days, I’m staring at my phone more and trying to distract myself from active interaction, which isn’t fair to my kid. And I’m usually ready to sleep by 10, while my kid is still going strong, so self-care is key. This might mean a little reading time for me while Baby C plays with Mr. Carrot, us taking shifts engaging with her while the other takes a break, etc.

I’m hopeful that if we can find the sweet spot with Baby C’s sleep and remove some of the fighting we’ve been doing at bedtime, we’ll be able to finally get rid of the pacifier, which we’ve been hesitant to take away because it takes her so long to get to bed and she seems completely overwrought without it, and give all of us a better sense of calm. Recommendations for quiet activities to fill up the long evenings are always welcome!