Travelling with babies or young children
Julie Heginbottom
Are you worried about how to manage Jet Lag? Here are Julie’s Top Tips for Travelling:
- Try to work towards the destination time zone, moving forwards or back 20-30 minutes each night.
- Make sure that all the family are keeping hydrated. You may want to add a couple more feeds if you have a young baby.
- Where possible, breast feed (or use a bottle) on take off and landing to help protect those little ear canals and ear drums.
- When you arrive, limit sleep to 2 hours after arrival, unless it is night time.
- Get in to the fresh air and daylight as soon as you can and go for a walk for at least an hour to help reset your body clocks.
- Take a familiar blanket or bedding from home with you.
- Keep the day of arrival as flexible as possible so you can assess what your baby/child’s body is naturally going to do.
- Accept that your baby/child will probably go to bed earlier or later than normal and try to be relaxed about this for the first couple of days.
- From the time you arrive, arrange your baby/child’s feeding schedule so it matches that of the time zone you are in.
- If the baby/child wakes at night, try not to overfeed or interact too much. Keep with the same approaches you would use if they woke in the night at home..
- If the baby/child is struggling to return to sleep in the night allow a 30-minute waking period and then put them back to bed
- Wake at 6-7am on the first couple of mornings and try to take the baby/child outside as soon as possible for natural light.
- Most importantly: Have a great time!