Please watch my video below on how to cope when holidays affect your child’s sleep.
Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.
This week’s question comes from Kara:
“I’ve been using the Sleep Sense method for a while now with my 6-month-old and everything is going well. He is awake for two hours and then sleeps for one hour at each nap. His bedtime is 7:30. My question is regarding the holidays. What should I do about the busy days at both Thanksgiving and Christmas? I’m not sure he will be able to sleep in his car seat and I am not sure how to handle this situation.”
That is a great question. With the holiday’s approaching, I thought this was a good subject to talk a little bit about before everyone goes on Christmas holidays, which can be a busy time. There might be people you need to see and maybe people who haven’t met the baby yet and lots of aunts, uncles, family, and friends so what should you do?
With travel, my first piece of advice to parents is, don’t over schedule. You know a few days of him missing his nap or taking 10 minutes in the car from here to there and going to bed later than normal can lead to an overly tired baby. When babies are overly tired, they can sometimes forget and what they normally forget is how to sleep well.
You might find after a few days of being overly tired he is crying hard and long at bedtime out of the blue or not going down for his nap; acting up in general, which is usually caused by being overly tired.
As best you can if it’s just a day or two of one missed nap or if bedtime is bit later than normal, then that is okay. I mean, life still needs to happen and you still need to attend family events and visit. However, as much as you can, honor your baby’s schedule.
If I traveled with my kids, I always made sure there was a place for them to nap when it was naptime. I also made sure there was a place for bedtime as well. We took our pack-n-play with us just about everywhere. I would do a bit of the bedtime routine and put my son down in a quiet room somewhere and the more we did it, the better he was.
He would occasionally test the waters in new locations with a little bit of protest to see if my rules were still the same. My rules were always the same so he knew quickly that it did not really matter if we were in grandma’s house or in a hotel; the rules were still the same and I still expected him to sleep and sleep well.
If it is a major change such as, jet lag and your baby is having a difficult time adjusting to the new environment, you can spend a couple of days in the room.
We went to Costa Rica for a month when my daughter was two and the time change and difference to her daytime schedule caused her to have a hard time with her nap. When we got there she was upset and this is a baby you know who slept well just about from the day she came home.
This was unusual for her and I knew it was caused by the anxiety of traveling. I just spent a day or two standing beside her crib until she fell asleep. Then gradually she got used to the environment. I would exit the room at naptime and she got used to it.
It is okay to bend your rules a little because it could be anxiety causing the problem. Staying in the room for a day or two can ease your child into this a little bit but be careful that it does not go too far. You do not want to pull the baby into bed with you, feed, sleep, or rock him/her to sleep. You do not want to go back down roads you have already journeyed through successfully.
Be careful that you don’t backslide. Sometimes you just need to explain to people, she’ll be awake from 2 until 7 or from 4 until 7, that’s visiting hours. Most people understand when you explain that naptime is from these hours and visiting time is after the fact so keep those things in mind.
If everything fell apart, let’s say you went back to bed sharing or you started nursing again; don’t make it the end of the world. Once you get home, you just start all over again. You just get right on page one of Sleep Sense Program and start again knowing that because your baby already has the knowledge of how to sleep well and independently, it’s just a reminder. It’s not going to be as hard as it was the first time and it usually only takes a day or two before your baby is back on track and realizes, “Okay, we’re home now. Things are back to normal and this is how I do it.”
Keep that in mind when traveling through the holidays. Keep things as close to home as you can and honor your baby’s need for sleep. Thanks for your question and sleep well!
