Sleep through Christmas and other disrupted weeks
A week of visitors, late meals, other people’s houses and a small person who is overstimulated by all of it. You cannot run a normal schedule through it, and attempting to is what makes it worse.
3 min read
The mistake in weeks like this is treating it as all-or-nothing. Either everything is protected - which is impossible and makes you miserable at your own Christmas - or everything is abandoned, and you come out the other side with a fortnight of rebuilding.
The workable version is to choose two anchors, hold those regardless of what else is happening, and consciously let go of the rest.
The two anchors
The morning wake-up time. Within half an hour, every day. It holds the body clock in place and everything else can drift around it.
The bedtime sequence. Not the time - the sequence. Same steps, same order, wherever you are and however late. It is the signal that survives a strange room.
Everything else is negotiable. Nap times, nap locations, bedtime by the clock, who does the settling, how much help they get.
Decide this in advance. Written down if necessary. Deciding in the moment on day three means holding nothing.
Getting through the week
Take naps wherever they happen - pram, car, on a relative. Bring bedtime forward on the days that fell apart. Protect one still nap at home if you can, and let the others go.
Watch for overstimulation rather than just tiredness. A baby who has been passed round a room of relatives for six hours needs quiet time before bed more than they need a shorter wake window, and twenty minutes alone in a dim room with one parent is often the whole fix.
Two anchors, held without exception. Everything else is allowed to be a mess, and saying so in advance is what makes it work.
Afterwards
Go back to normal on the first ordinary day, completely rather than gradually. Three to five days is typical for recovery if you start immediately, and considerably longer if you wait for a convenient moment.
If habits crept in - feeding to sleep, sharing a bed, an hour of rocking - deal with them in the first week rather than the third.
Watching for overstimulation
In weeks like this, the thing that breaks bedtime is usually not tiredness but overstimulation - noise, lights, unfamiliar faces, being handed round for six hours. An overstimulated baby looks wired rather than sleepy, and adding another twenty minutes of wake window makes it worse rather than better.
The response is a longer, quieter wind-down rather than a shorter one. Twenty or thirty minutes in a dim room with one parent, before the usual routine begins, resets a great deal. It is also worth removing your baby from the room for a stretch in the afternoon rather than waiting until they fall apart at six.
The return afterwards
Pick the first ordinary day and go back completely - normal bedtime, normal routine, normal settling, in one step rather than gradually. Three to five days is typical for recovery when you start immediately, and considerably longer when you wait for a moment that feels right.
Whatever crept in during the week is the thing to deal with first: an extra feed, sharing a bed, an hour of rocking, a much later bedtime. If you noted them as they happened, work down the list in the order they appeared. If not, the usual suspects are bedtime and the settling, and starting there covers most of it.
When to stop troubleshooting
Sleep that has not recovered a fortnight after a disrupted week is its own problem. Check the schedule first, since your baby is a fortnight older. Persistent difficulty alongside illness or a change in mood is worth raising with your health visitor.
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