It takes one or two weeks to reset your baby’s body clock

When your baby’s night waking is excessive, well beyond what is developmentally normal night waking, it’s time to reset your baby’s body clock. This is most effective if it is done alongside the other steps detailed in The Possums Sleep Program.

When we are so incredibly sleep deprived and exhausted, we naturally crave a quick way to find some relief. But if you try to reset your baby’s body clock too quickly, the days and nights with your baby can seem to fall apart altogether, because baby’s sleep pressure is suddenly very high very often and she becomes much more dialled up than she usually is. This doesn't help, and is even more exhausting!

Parents find the reset goes best when they make incremental changes at one or more of the three pressure points of the body clock, just by ten or 15 minutes a day. If you keep nudging back sleep times gradually at your chosen pressure points, you'll usually find you have much better consolidation of your baby’s sleep at night and a return to developmentally normal night waking within a couple of weeks.

It can help to think about your own experience of jetlag, if you have ever taken flights across time zones. It typically takes a week or so to reset your own circadian rhythm. This is also true when we are aiming to reset the body clock of babies. If your baby’s excessive night waking is severe, it might even take up to three weeks to change. But slow and steady changes are best.

If you have a newborn or a baby less than two months old with sleep problems, please read here. If your baby is no longer a newborn and you are in a sleep emergency, please read here.