7 sleep tips for babies and toddlers during the holiday season

Are you planning on heading away this holiday season, even for a night or two to see family? Are you worried about how your baby will respond? Here are my 7 tips for lowering the stress of travelling with babies.

1. Maintain your sleep ritual

Remember that we are all creatures of habit and so are your babies and toddlers. Children of all ages respond well to ritual and routine. So if you are in a new environment these holidays, try and maintain good rituals as best you can, particularly around sleep times. Keep the same ritual and routine you have had at home: a bath, a bedtime story, a particular song – all these things can make a baby feel comfortable even if their environment looks a bit different.

2. Keep routines even if you have to be flexible

Try and keep nap times as close to what they have at home. If you can’t, try and make sure they get one good sleep in a cot (for younger babies still on two or more day sleeps) and make sure they are going to bed by 7pm, particularly if the days are busy and full of excitement.

3. Don’t forget the comfort items

Take what items you can that are of comfort to your child, like the same swaddle or sleeping bag, their comforter (dummies, soft toy, music etc), and you can even use the same cot sheets if they have a particular pattern.

4. Keep it dark

When you’re in a hotel or holiday house, you don’t know what the sleeping conditions will be like. Removing stimulus by keeping it dark is a huge help. If you need to block out windows, garbage bags are a great way of doing this. So don’t forget to pack them along with some masking tape.

5. Avoid introducing new settling techniques on holiday

If you are staying with friends or relatives, or have the baby in your room when they usually don’t sleep there, then a baby’s sleep can be disturbed. Try not to introduce too many new things to settle your baby overnight, including new people if you can avoid it.

6. Keep moving forward

If you have already dropped night feeding, try not to resort to that to help your baby settle overnight. If they do need some assistance, just pat or soothe them until they fall back to sleep and know that after a couple of nights the sleeping usually returns to normal.

7. Remember to relax and have a great time!

If things do go a bit pear-shaped they can easily get back on track once you are home. So don’t beat yourself up about it!

And some bonus tips on handling a time zone change!

Babies will always be affected by a time zone change. Some babies adjust quickly and others take a bit longer. It’s difficult to know before you actually do it, unfortunately! I have found younger babies readjust easier though and babies are usually affected more coming back to Australia rather than going over.

• On the plane just let them sleep when they want
• Once in the new time zone, implement your usual routine
• Don’t let your baby sleep more than two hours at a time during the day. This means you may need to wake them up
• Overnight, try and keep the baby in their room with it dark and quiet but there may be one or two nights that they are awake for long periods
• Feed the baby at the same times they were being fed at home. So if your baby had a milk feed at 7am Sydney time, then feed them as close to 7am in your new local time zone
• If you are in a warm sunny climate, get them outdoors during the day and get a good 10 minutes of sun exposure.

Happy holidays from me and the BabyBliss team!

Jo x

P.S. Until Christmas Day, we are offering our incredibly effective Baby Sleep Saver service for $151 off the regular price!