How to get your child to sleep whilst traveling

So if I knew the secret to getting kids to sleep whilst traveling I'd write a book and sell a million copies but here are some things that have worked for us in the past.

Before the Trip

Slowly start bringing baby over to US time (or time at destination). We always aim to morph about halfway so that she's only 2.5 hours off either time. Our children who normally go down at 7 pm are staying up till 9:30 pm, and instead of waking up at 6 am sleeping in till 8:30 am.

Here is a suggested schedule:
6 weeks prior to the trip: move bedtimes and meals forward by 30 minutes
5 weeks: move bedtimes and meals forward by 1 hour total (an addition of 30 min from last week)
4 weeks: move bedtimes and meals forward 1 1/3 hours total
3 move bedtimes and meals forward 1 2/3 hours total
2 move bedtimes and meals forward 2 hours total
1 move bedtimes and meals forward 2.5 hours total

I find that at the beginning and end I am more committed to it, hence why the 20 min forwarding occurs in the middle.

Sleep Associations

Children and babies like us can have strong sleep associations. If you can predict what will help your children sleep, you will be more prepared.

For babies

• what worked well for us this time was a fan heater when I was breastfeeding to sleep. The roar of the airplane is similar and in the States my parents put a fan heater in our room. In a hotel, esp during winter, it is easy to request one.
• other sleep associations might be 
• a bath
• baby massage
• cotton sleepsuits
• cotton swaddling
• a special toy
• a special song
• or all of the above - in an unbreakable order - it may be tempting to cut corners so you can visit with family you traveled so far to see but don't even be tempted. You will regret it when she wakes up in 2 hours acting like 'That was a nice nap, Mom!'

For older kids

• Do they sleep in complete darkness or have night lights? 
• Make sure you take nightlights or get the grandparents to invest in nightlights. 
• A strong routine works well here too: cereal snack, storytime, goodnight song, prayer.

Whilst Traveling

On the airplane and the kids don't sleep, don't despair - our friend's kids sleep beautifully on the plane and then never adjust to the time difference. If your kids don't sleep, just remember they'll probably adapt faster at the other end and you'll be glad for it in a few hours when you're trying to sleep at your destination because they'll actually be tired too.

Creatures of Habit

My kids make some military regimes look like a honeymoon. They absolutely need a routine.

• Don't neglect exercise. We found a brisk walk every day helped the kids adjust and be tired at the right times.
• Also don't neglect other routines - such as homeschool first thing in the morning.
• Look on the bright side - you can finish homeschool before everyone else in the house wakes up

Regrets

Have realistic expectations - they are just kids. I made an enemy of a neighbor in our apartment when I let a jet-lagged toddler cry for hours after we got back from a trip. Don't be like me.

This revelation changed our travel experience!

When you arrive at your destination, move your eating schedule to get on time faster. A big part of what wakes you up in the States is hunger cues at breakfast time your time. If you can push your breakfast back a half hour every day, you'll get onto the time faster.

After the trip

Back home in the UK: we tend to expect the older kids to wake up at midnight and have a sort of 'midnight snack and reading time' for the first two nights, then wake up for a drink and go back to bed on later nights. For babies, it'll take a week or more.

Traveling with Three!

So on this trip we had the usual diarrhea and urine leakages but we also had an epic breastfeeding fail. After breastfeeding for more than 6 years straight (except for most of two pregnancies) I thought I got this breastfeeding thing. Here I am using my English reserve to understate this: not exactly.

the baby in her traveling outfit

I normally feed the baby at 7:30 when we both wake up. The day we flew we had to be the airport at 7 for a 9 am flight. So when I woke up at 5:30, I fed the baby. Job done, right?

Wrong. At 7:30 just as we were halfway through security, my breastmilk let down. I was tiptoeing in socks as my shoes had been taken and folding my arms across my chest while security personnel said things like 'Is it okay if I check this bag/baby food...?' and 'Can I check this bag?' and I was like DO WHAT YOU WANT.

I had forgotten my breast pads. Note to self: passports are not the only important thing to pack - think passports and breast pads, the two P's in future!

Anyway by the time I got through security it was too late. My shirt was drenched.

On every trip for the last 7 years I have packed a spare shirt for myself and never needed it. So when I was packing for this trip I said to myself I never need a spare shirt so why pack something useless?

during a layover at the Newark airport

I ended up buying a shirt. At an expensive beyond-security-airport-shop. It was supposedly half price so I guess I should be thankful. It is also the nicest shirt I own. As it should be. The fabric for my wedding dress cost less. This shirt basically cost more than my wedding dress.

Anyway so after going wedding dress I mean shirt shopping, we hunkered down by the smaller but still existent soft play in the Edi airport. Why did they remove the good and bigger soft play?

The whole trip single people kept stomping by me muttering 'Ridiculous' and 'Can't believe this' under their breath and I felt like standing up and saying 'You don't have kids, you have NO IDEA what ridiculous and can't believe this mean!'

waiting for the shuttle in Newark - Primus and Secondus refused to wear coats; Tertius in the sling with scarf over her head

We were impressed with the Edinburgh-Newark flight. The difference between a 9 hour and 6 hour + flight is huge - it's those last 3 hours where everything really falls apart!

People in Newark airport were pretty nice. Not all of them but a lot! Compared to 0% of people being nice at the Atlanta airport, this was a nice change.

Our layover in Newark was due to be 7.5 hours. I figured we would just look for the breastfeeding room advertised on the Newark airport website and hunker down. But then we got rescheduled for a 8.5 hour layover and my husband wisely said 'Let's get a hotel.'

It was the best decision ever. On our way back we tried vainly to locate the breastfeeding room and got sent on a wild goose chase for an hour around the terminals and air trains that ended with finding a locked family bathroom.

But the hotel was great! We paid basically the equivalent of a full night's stay for the 8 hours but it was so nice to have a place to change the baby, nap and have free wifi. The kids had a whale of a time. They were supposed to sleep but I think they thought it was a sleepover. Why do hotels always put beds just far enough apart for kids to jump from one to another?

on bed at the hotel

We made coffee and there was free ice water downstairs and a pool, though we didn't use that. The shuttle was free. It took longer to get to than I expected, having been spoiled once in Paris by staying at an Ibis that you could walk to and was literally next door to the airport. That was sort of what I expected but alas. All the other hotel's shuttles came and we were told that the Fairfield's shuttle driver was asleep in the car park across the way lol.

Despite starting a month early on getting the kids onto American time, the baby was seriously weirded out by our trip. I thought my Super Mom of Three powers might do away with all the waking-up-in-the-night-hourly nonsense but no, baby still reverted to her newborn state for the first week. She also broke a new tooth. It was fun.

middle child cuddling baby in airport

Observations about traveling with three:

• instead of sewing cute swaddling blankets from upcycled materials, I grabbed two bin bags for changing diapers on. they folded up smaller than my reusable diaper changing mat and were disposable, or could be used for rubbish or soiled clothing.
• Baby got that game on the kindle where you hit the 'Tom' cat rather than classic board books like her brothers
• we packed 3 kindles which was good because the built-in tv in front of my husband and sons were broken! Thank goodness for the Ninjago game app!
• instead of sewing my own sling, we used the one we bought this time around. It had clever buckles and was a lot less warm and fiddly than my homemade slings!
• Baby wore her 2nd nicest dress and best frock coat as opposed to my sons who I think wore sleepsuits and jean overalls on their first flights. Baby had a huge following of enthusiastic fans. People offered to hold her so I could eat and take the middle child to the bathroom!

Things I regret on this trip:

• not packing a backup shirt so I had to go shopping for the-shirt-more-expensive-than-my-wedding-dress  

  

  the infamous shirt on the left, verses the wedding dress on right

• not packing the baby's moisturizer creams - after all my banging on about not forgetting prescription medicines, I forgot the baby's
• trying to bag up and bring up diarrhea-covered clothing to wash later. It just got thrown away at a later date after being accidentally discolored in a bucket of bleach by a braindead jetlagged mum.
• not asking my in-laws to turn the heating on the night before - it took hours for our home to warm up and we were freezing
• feeling like I was spending so much money. You spend money to get prepped, you spend money while you're traveling on shirts and food, you spend money to come home. It just felt like an endless spending expedition.
• not being Super Invincible. There was still that feeling of going on when too exhausted to do anything but exist (and maybe not even that). 
• There was still the feeling of being watched all the time and like my parenting was being judged and found wanting - like when I stared fixedly at walls rather than engage my children in nurturing discourse. Or when I fed them candy instead of craisins. Or when I should have taken the baby to the nasty, smelly airplane bathroom for a diaper change but everyone around me was asleep, it was dark, and I just did it on my lap in about 25 seconds and hoped no one noticed.

Recovery

I think it takes a week per person for the family to recover. So if there are 3 of you, it takes 3 weeks, if there are 5 of you, it takes 5 weeks.

So here we are 5 weeks on and starting to feel normal or as normal as you ever feel with 3 children under the age of 6.

Planning a Burns Night Supper

We like any excuse for good food and after all the sadness that Christmas being over causes, it's nice to have something in January to look forward to. It can be a fun homeschool project.

We generally start with the decorations. The kids enjoy helping set the table! It generally involves their dad's horn drinking cup and a few weapons.

The food

January is an excellent month for hearty, filling food. The must-haves at a Burns Night Supper are:

• haggis
• neeps (mashed turnip or swede)
• tatties (mashed potatoes)

Last year we experimented and added:

• cranachan which my church friends taught me how to pronounce (emphasis on the beginning)
• selkirk bun which my mum-in-law calls 'just a really fruity loaf' and this is the perfect description for it. It doesn't even have cinnamon in it! The shock of having sultanas and no cinnamon actually makes it surprisingly original. You can really taste the sultanas and you really feel you're eating carbs. 

The Rituals

Robert Burns is known for his poetry after all. I don't know if these things are original Burns or if they are things he wrote down or just Scottish things but this is what we do.

We always say the Selkirk Prayer:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

For our kids we generally do an abbreviated form of the Address to the Haggis:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, 
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle [thistle].

and my husband will show the boys how to cut the haggis with a dirk - see picture below, it is a knife about the length of a newborn baby.