The end of daylight saving time can be a curse for the working mom. You already have to get up earlier than your child to shower, prepare lunch/bottles/diaper bag, make breakfast, get everyone dressed and be to work on time. When the clock changes in November, your child will be waking one hour earlier, eating into your morning ritual and making it that much harder to get everything done. She’ll also be off her regular schedule and need your help to settle into the new time. And if she is already having sleep issues, there is no better time than now to get her sleeping on track.

Why worry about sleep? Because lack of sleep jeopardizes your child’s and your health and can affect your productivity. A new report in Sleep suggests a relationship between short sleep and cardiovascular disease in women (more than in men) and shows that sleep deprivation during a mom’s postpartum period may develop into insomnia and depression. It can also have some of the same hazardous effects on driving as being drunk! For your child, sleep deprivation has been shown to lead to obesity, depression, behavioral problems, illnesses, and more difficulty learning.

So helping your baby to sleep better will actually help you both. Here are strategies to handle the time change and five techniques to help your child sleep better:

1. Time Change – You have three options for handling the time change: First, you and your child can immediately follow the new time once the clock changes. You both will adjust in a few days. This option is good if your child can go with the flow. Second, you can start a few days earlier and move your child’s bedtime 15 minutes later every night for four days. By the day of the time change, he will be back to his normal schedule. This is great for early risers. Third, you can wait until the day of the time change and adjust your child’s schedule over the next few days, making bedtime gradually later so he has time to adjust. This option might take slightly longer, but it works well for children who don’t do well being too tired.

2. Early Bedtime – An early bedtime (6-8 p.m. for young babies and toddlers) is crucial to a good night’s sleep. When babies and young children are overtired, they may have more difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, and will often wake too early in the morning making Saturday sleep-in days non-existent. 

3. Ensure Naps – As counter-intuitive as it is to some, the better a child naps during the day, the better she will sleep at night because she’s less likely to be overtired at bedtime. A more restorative nap lasts at least one hour and is motionless; however, shorter, more frequent naps are common during baby’s first 6 months. 

4. Control Sleep Associations – For example, if your child falls asleep with a pacifier and it falls out, he will awaken and call out for you to replace it. The goal is to have him fall asleep without the pacifier or other type of association that involves you. All of us have natural sleep cycles and we often awaken briefly between them. When that happens to a baby, it is important not to have to recreate the baby’s associations for falling asleep.

5. Manage Night Feedings – It is considered normal for many babies younger than nine months to eat once or twice overnight. Some stop sooner. If a baby is eating more frequently, Mom may want to consider reducing or eliminating feedings. Mom knows her baby best and is therefore best able to determine whether to continue nightly feedings, but, too many feedings and you may have a sleep association, rather than a hunger problem.

Most important, whether you have a family bed or your baby has been in a crib since birth, whether you breastfeed or formula feed, everyone’s situation is unique, and, what works for one family, may not work for another. It takes courage and dedication to work through sleep issues, but the time you spend will be well worth it for both your baby and you.

Nicole Johnson is a sleep coach and owner of Pick Nick’s Brain (http://www.picknicksbrain.com) specializing in baby sleep products and consulting services. She is also the President of Babble Soft (http://www.babblesoft.com), a premier baby software company, in order to further help new parents. Nicole is a wife and the mother of two boys. With a B.A. from UC Berkeley and MBA from Ohio State University, Nicole has also received an honorary degree in “Surviving Sleep Deprivation,” thanks to her son’s “no sleep” curriculum.