Baby jet lag

[lin]

I know people post often asking about traveling with babies, but I'm looking for some baby jet lag tips. We're traveling a month from now and DD will be four months old. We're going from Thailand to the UK for two weeks and then on to the US for a month and then back to Thailand, so I'm looking at three bouts of major-time-difference jet lag coming up. Any advice? Any tricks that worked for you in the past? Is it worth trying to gradually push back her bedtime over the next several weeks to try getting her closer to UK time ahead of our getting there? (current bedtime is about 6:15-6:30pm, which is basically noon in the UK.) Any thoughts or wisdom at all would be appreciated!

[potatopie]

we we traveled with DS at that age, we didn't do anything to prepare and he was fine. When we first went back 8 hours, he magically got onto schedule right away (sometimes the whole routine throw off with such long travel can do that to me too!). But when we went back, it took about a week to get back to a normal routine.

[frlcb]

We always find it harder to travel West than East, but even then it takes a day or two to adjust. I wouldn't bother trying to start adjusting now, just realize you will have a few days of getting up early. I would try to spend time outside in the sun as much as possible, that helps.

[House4Me]

At 4 months they take so many naps during the day that you should not have any major issues. If anything the first or second night the baby could be up. Best thing to do is keep the lights off/real low, feed them a bottle when they wake up and they should go back to sleep if it's your "new middle of the night".... now if they were 16 months - 4 years... that's a whole different ball game. Enjoy this easy jet lag, it only gets harder as they get older. 

[pittpurple]

We find going west harder as well. I read somewhere that it's 1 day / hour of jet lag to get them back to schedule and that seems to roughly work out for us. We had no sort of schedule at all at 4 months so I'm pretty impressed that you even have a bedtime! I don't think it's worth trying to do anything ahead of time - babies feed off of cues around them that it's bedtime, so messing up the schedule (IMO) won't really help anything at this point. I'd just be ready for a few potentially bad days at the beginning and let it settle.

[dutchgirl678]

We took DS and DD to Italy from the US when DD was 3 and DS was 3 months old. We didn't do anything to prepare them. On the way over, they didn't sleep on the plane at all but they adjusted to the new time within a day. On the way back it took about a week. At first they would wake up around 3am, then 4am, etc until they were back to normal. I would just try to go with the flow and know it will work itself out.

[paradebegone]

I took DD to the Philippines at about 4 months and it wasn't too much trouble, especially because she barely had a schedule at that time. But she did have a bedtime routine established so if you don't have one of those yet, it might be helpful.

[travelingturtle]

For 4 months I would just follow their cues and also try to get them out during the day. I actually don't stress about it too much anymore. We tend to take 1 or 2 nights to adjust depending on the direction of travel.

[Deleted]

I'm wondering this too -- we're flying from the UK to US next week, for two weeks, then back to the UK for 3 weeks before we move back to the US. Fortunately it's the East coast, so there's only 5 hours of time difference. I'm worried about what this will do to to LO, but he's pretty adaptable, and I think he'll be okay as long as we try to stick to his bedtime routine at bedtime. Most of all, I've learned not to fight it when he's tired.

[pittpurple]

I actually don't think there's any point in trying to do anything different, might as well enjoy the good days as you get them! It hasn't mattered what I've done so our new strategy is just trying to get her to sleep as much as possible on the flight and then dealing with whatever comes. It seems to take her 4-5 days to settle, regardless of direction or amount of change so we just allow for that in any planning and just assume we'll have a few days of not great sleep on either end.

[Deleted]

We are traveling next month too and LO will be 4 months. Should be interesting! But as I've not done it before, i have no advice

[orriskitten]

I've traveled with my DD (now 2) when she was 7 months and just moved while my DS is 3 months. At these ages we didn't do much for it. We tried to switch to local time as soon as possible and just wait it out. We prepared for sleepless nights or sleepy days, but just went with it as much as possible.