When 7 am suddenly turns into 6 am, your baby doesn’t have a clue that they are suddenly supposed to be sleeping in an extra hour. It is still 7 am in their world. Falling back the extra hour, however, can be easier than you think.
Here’s how I’d recommend making the change depending on your babies age:
Newborn (1-2 weeks) & Newborn (3-4 weeks):
This is probably an easy age to make the “change” since your baby most likely isn’t anywhere near a perfect schedule yet. He is still eating every few hours all through the night.
Let’s say he normally wakes at 5 am and then again at 7 am for food. In your world that just turned into 4 am and 6 am. Go ahead and feed him at 4 am when he wakes.
Then feed him when he wakes around 6 am and put him back to sleep. Wake him at 7 am if he is not already awake, and feed him again (even though you just fed him 1 hour before).
He’ll end up with an extra feeding, but that’s completely fine! Continue about your normal day. You’ll have your new schedule set up just like that and he probably won’t even notice.
Month 2, Month 3 & Month 4: At this age your baby will have a decent schedule set up. You’ll want to start making the change about 12 days in advance so you can ease your baby into the change.
Start keeping your baby up 5 minutes later each night until he is staying up an extra hour. Your goal is to shift the entire schedule by 5 minutes each day. Let him sleep in an extra 5 minutes as well in the morning.
If he sleeps in more than that, let him (that simply means your schedule shift will happen quicker)!
Take all the extra time you can and adjust your schedule by the amount of time that he sleeps in.
On the first night, your goal is to keep him up 5 extra minutes. In the morning, don’t go get him until 5 minutes after his desired wake time.
If he normally sleeps until 7 am, don’t go in until 7:05 am.
Push your schedule out in 5 min increments each day. Repeat daily until you make up the extra hour.
Months 6-9: Use the same concept as above, but using 15 min increments.
Months 10-12: Use the same concept as above, but using 30 min increments.
12 months and up: Adjust by the full hour the night before.