Author: Shereen Nielsen Early Childhood Parenting
Are you travelling soon, or thinking about booking a holiday, but you're concerned about how your child’s sleep will be affected? You don’t need to worry! Be assured that you can go on a fabulous family holiday, anywhere in the world, and feel confident about attaining your child’s amazing sleeping habits.
As a gentle sleep consultant, I have had many of my clients travel on holidays and seek my help to plan how they can approach their child’s sleep whilst away, and below are my top tips.
1. Use all of your child’s sleep associations that you use at home to recreate the home environment - make sure you pack any comforters, blankets or other items which your child associates with sleep. If you use white noise at home, be sure to check out Ewan the Sleep Sheep which is a portable white noise machine, so it can travel with you wherever you go and provide white noise for your child when you’re on-the-go.
2. Your attitude is everything. If you are nervous about settling your child whilst away, they will emulate your feelings and you will have difficulty with the settle. Try to relax (as much as you can!) about sleep and appreciate that it may take a little longer for your child to settle than it does at home.
3. Allow your child the opportunity to get used to sleeping in the porta-cot or in a baby wearer before you leave for your holidays.
4. Ensure that any sleep environment for your child is dark to avoid environmental over stimulation, this is particularly important for their night sleep. For their day sleeps, consider a CoziGo stroller cover which blocks out light and movement and reduces over stimulation.
5. It takes 3-5 days to adjust completely to local time and get over any jet lag. Be sure to expose your child to a regular pattern of food, light and social interaction so that this can happen swiftly.
These tips are useful for wherever you’re travelling, regardless of the length of your stay. If however you’re travelling through multiple timezones, or have an extended holiday plan you can contact Shereen directly (details below) for assistance with a Travel Plan, which will help relieve any anxiety or concerns you have on the topic of sleep. Shereen will work with your itinerary and provide you with a detailed strategy on when to offer your child sleep, whether it needs to be at the airport, on the plane or another mode of transport. She'll also provide you with strategies on adjusting to local times and also some great tips on how you can approach naps when out and about and even preparing for travel.
We know that strictly adhering to a nap schedule and being at your accommodation destination every day for each nap is unrealistic and not even something that you would ideally like to do (which is why we developed CoziGo!). With this in mind, Shereen offers advice on how to approach naps whilst you’re sight-seeing, how to reduce over tiredness and things to consider when napping out-and-about.
If you are travelling soon and would like to have a personalised plan to keep your child’s sleep as smooth as possible, a Travel Plan would be perfect for you!
Contact the author of this blog:
Shereen Nielsen
