Big topic here! For babies who excel with a rigid sleep schedule, going on vacation and having some jet lag can put the whole family in for a spin.

Here’s how to think about jet lag and how to get around it.

Babies of different ages, and jet lag

Here’s a quick idea to show the “bright side” of traveling with a younger baby if you wish to go far.

Consider the following:

  • Young babies have less of a schedule: the “younger baby” phase could be a great time to travel far away.
  • Older babies who have rigid schedules may need time to adjust to new time zones and may put up more of a fight with adjustments to nap times, wake windows, meal schedules and bed times.

While it’s an unpopular opinion, it certainly makes a case for taking a big trip during parental leave, maybe before your child is six months. Everyone will have a different experience with that!

Plan inbound and outbound flights to get sleep

With the price of flights these days, having your top pick isn’t always possible. But if you can swing it, try to plan your departing flight and your return flight at sleeping hours, so that you avoid tired parents and tired babies.

Quick tips:

  • With flights at night, it’s a good time to pack in some hours of sleep. Your child will likely be ready to snooze as well, and the plane’s lights will be dimmed so that passengers can doze off.
  • When you get to your destination, you can get babies on their schedule by using daylight and activities to your advantage, and winding down by nighttime in the new place.
  • Plan the return flight either as an overnight / red-eye, or at a time when getting some night sleep is possible.

Different types of jet lag

If you’ve traveled before, especially to another time zone, near or far, you know all about jet lag!

“Close” jet lag (1-3 hrs)

With jet lag on the same continent, with only 1-3 hours difference, “gradual adjusting” works for some babies. Adjusting bedtime by 15 minutes per night, leading up to the trip, or 30 minutes at a time, could work wonders in some babies for the jet lag adjustment. Use our jet lag optimizer tool to create a personalized sleep schedule for your trip.

“Far” jet lag (4+ hrs)

There are lots of resources to use for combatting farther jet lag in babies and toddlers

Come prepared with all your sleep routine products: travel black-out curtains, sound machines, sleep sacks, stuffed animals and pacifiers. It’s time to bring out all the tools for initiating sleep for your baby or toddler.

Drag out naps or skip naps in order to get to a new bedtime on the new time. This will likely just be for the first few days of the trip. If your child falls asleep due to tiredness when you’re aiming for “awake time,” you can try cutting the nap short and waking up to an energetic milk feed or snack, to power them through until the adjusted bedtime.

Jet lag on short trips vs. long

The more we travel, the more we really consider the length of a trip in relation to jet lag. For a quick trip (2-3 days) that involves jet lag, I’d rather keep my baby or toddler on “home time” so that we don’t have to un-jet-lag or re-adjust them back to home time after we return.

It’s the same method I’d employ for myself, if I took a quick trip to the opposite coast, and kept myself on “home time” so that I didn’t have to re-adjust a second time, later.

But for longer trips (one week, two weeks or a month), start tackling the jet lag before you leave, whether it’s adjusting bedtime earlier or later, so that landing in the destination is slightly more of a breeze. Use our jet lag optimizer to plan your sleep schedule adjustments in advance. And if your trip is long enough, you can even start the readjustment period toward the end of the trip so that coming home is a dab more survive-able.

Things to know about jet lag

We were really worried about jet lag when we went to Mexico City, which was 2 hours “earlier” than our home time zone in NYC. With our toddler’s now-rigid and predictable sleeping schedule, we knew that “7pm to 7am” might turn into “5pm to 5am.”

Within a day, our toddler adjusted, and we were incredibly impressed. And this is exactly what so many resources told me, and what so many friends warned me might be the case. I had read resources that babies and toddlers can take around 3 days to adjust. It was accurate! After all, babies and toddlers have ways to adjust, and there are strategies to employ in order to make jet lag work out.

I’d say, expect some early mornings, or confused middle-of-the-night wake-ups. Expect drowsy evenings, or evenings that go on forever because your toddler thinks it’s still the afternoon (if you went to Europe). With some smart uses of daylight and nighttime darkness, hopefully you can overcome jet lag in your baby, or work around it to make the trip still memorable.

Of course, jet lag is not all rainbows and butterflies, ESPECIALLY when you return from the trip. It can be hard to adjust back for days of daycare, your caretaker’s schedule or just simply night sleep, once you are back home. The bottom line is that it does not last forever!