going to travel with 6 month old

[peppy5]

so i'm going to travel with my baby to north america. time change is going to be 9 hours and then 10 days later another 3 hours so altogether 12 hour difference. wondering when to feed (still breast feeding) and how to do naps and how to help them adjust. any seasoned travelers out there?

 

[MLBW]

I think it depends on your baby's personality. I've done that trip a few times from Hong Kong and it always takes my son at least 10 days to adjust to what's going on.

My advice--just like with adults, exposure to sunlight helps the body adjust to new time zones. So as soon as you arrive, be sure to get out and take walks in the sunshine. Then from the get-go try to set a schedule. If you already have a nap, feeding and sleep schedule established with your baby, it will be so much easier to do this. You have to set a sort of "artificial" schedule based on the clock at first in order to help the baby readjust. But, if you're only going to be gone for a few weeks, honestly, I wouldn't even bother making it such a big deal. I always stay for several months when I go back so I spend the first week to ten days really running a tight schedule and helping my son readjust.

 

[babymommy2]

Do you know what time of day you will land? We usually end up getting to vancouver in the late morning, and then home around supper time, so then try to stay up and go to bed early. The chidlren are wide awake in morning at the airport and fall asleep on our second flight home. Then usually my chidlren (this also happen when they were babies) wake up in the middle of night wide awake! It is hard because I am tired and could stay asleep! I have let them stay up and play, and when babies walked around for hours trying to get them back to sleep, but it doesn't work, so now I find letting then up a few hours then back to bed has worked best, then the next day I make eveyone get up at the usual time, even if tired. No sleeping in, and we get back to normal life, go out side in thesun, everyone has an afternoon nap, and a slightly later bedtime.
Everyone is a bit out of sorts, and it does take about 1 week to feel normal again.

I find going to hong kong easier because we arrive at 1000 or 1200 at night, up for afew hours unpacking, then everyone to bed. It just seems the jet lag to hong kong is not as bad as the jet lag home.

The best thing to do is make yourself and baby get up at your normal times, go out side in the sun and try to keep to your usual routine.

this is probably not appropriate for a baby, but on our next trip we are all going to take melatonin. Has anyone does this and has it helped?

 

[southside852]

we've traveled a lot with our son and through different time zones (London to NYC at 3.5 months, NYC to HK at 5 months and HK to Hawaii at 11 months). I think the most important thing is to keep your baby hydrated on the plane and afterwards as jetlag is a form of dehydration.

The first week will of course be the roughest. If we arrive in the morning, our bub usually crashes around 4:30pm which is fine....he's up early the next morning, but then we just slowly move his bedtime 20-25 minutes later each night until he reaches the equivalent of what it would be in HK (7pm). If we arrive in the evening, we make sure to go through his entire bedtime routine even if it's at 10pm. During his wake-ups at night, we make sure he's drinking water.

We've given homeopathic jetlag stuff - a mixture of arnica and travel essence at 5 months...not sure if it made a difference though.