The Reality of Sleep on Holiday:
My experience of travelling with little ones, plus my top tips!
Last week we went on our first holiday abroad as a family of four. We all desperately needed the break and couldn’t wait to get away for a week in the Spanish sun, but the thought of a 6:45am flight with two small children had me feeling all sort of anxiety!
The super-early flight meant waking my 2 year-old son and 4 year-old daughter up at 2:30am (eeekkk!) so that we could drive to the airport and get there 2 hours before the flight. We thought about getting a hotel room near to the airport the night before but actually I know from experience this would’ve created more excitement and therefore less sleep for my two!
My plan was to dress the children in their airport clothes the night before and try to get them down to sleep as early as possible. Of course, my son refused to nap at nursery that day so was already overtired and grumpy! The idea was we would put them straight into the car and they could sleep for the 1hr 40minute journey to the airport. I also thought my son might sleep on the plane or the transfer bus once we arrived if I snuggled him into me with his comforters…. But none of this went to plan!
When I tried to wake my daughter at 2:30am she wouldn’t wake up! She was flopping about and pulling the covers back over her… when I finally roused her enough to talk to her, she got upset. Great start.
Of course, both children were wide-awake with excitement on the journey; chatting away and looking out at all the lights. My son only nodded off at 4am for 20 minutes.
There was no way either of the children would sleep on the plane or on the transfer to our hotel as planned either. If you’d have said this to me before we left, I would’ve been sent into sheer panic, but actually it was fine! Both children were so distracted and excited by everything that was going on, when we got to the hotel you wouldn’t have known they’d been up for over 10 hours and had only had 7.5hrs sleep.
On arrival we went and got ice cream (of course) then I thought it would be a good idea to put my son down for a nap. I was a little worried because it was quite light in the room and he’d not even seen the sleep space before, but I replicated our nap routine that we do at home and popped him down in his sleeping bag, with his teddy and white noise on and he was out like a light – and slept for over 2 hours (phew!)
The accommodation we were staying in was a one-bedroom apartment, meaning my son was sharing a room with us in a cot and my daughter was on a sofa bed. That night I did get both children down to bed straight after dinner at 7:30pm (there was a 1hr time difference making it 6:30pm for their body clocks). Both slept peacefully all night and didn’t wake up until 8:30am. I was surprised at this because overtiredness often makes us more wakeful and can cause early rising – thank goodness that wasn’t the case for us though!
Because of the later start and the set mealtimes at our hotel we had to push naptime later. My son usually naps around 12:20pm-2:30pm at home in the UK which would have been 1:30pm-3:30pm in Spain. I found that even if I tried to put my son down at 2pm though, all the stimulation from the morning meant he just wouldn’t settle. After a couple of days, I found that putting him down around 3:30pm and letting him sleep until 5:30pm worked best. He settled quicker and it meant that actually we could keep him up a bit later and enjoy the kid’s entertainment. Bedtime naturally became around 9pm and both children would sleep until around 8-9am (in fact I had to wake my daughter every morning!)
At home we are quite strict with timing because sleep is a priority for me and I know my son can be quite sensitive… but when we were completely out of routine, doing completely different activities to normal, I found the best thing was to relax and follow his lead.
Never in a million years did I think my children would sleep 9pm-9am and my son nap 3:30pm-5:30pm but it worked for us!
We were staying at a hotel specifically for young families so I spoke to a lot of other mums on holiday about how they managed their little one’s sleep and a lot said they were either structuring their day around naps, like us, or their little ones were napping on the sun loungers in the shade (something my son would never do as he just wanted to be in the water the whole time!). There were also lots of parents circling the complex with little one’s asleep in prams. This is a great option too but I will just say, for safety reasons, please don’t be tempted to put a muslin or blanket over the pram to keep your child in the shade as these have been proven to increase the temperature inside and are pretty dangerous! If you want to protect your baby from the sun and create complete darkness then I highly recommend investing in a SnoozeShade – they are universal so will fit any pram and offer complete UV protection (you can get 10% off at www.snoozeshade.com using the code PEACEFUL10)
Our return was to the UK was slightly more stressful as I think for my son there was a build-up of overtiredness which happened over the week through having longer morning wake windows. We had another early flight home and had to wake the children at 6:30am, which doesn’t sound too bad but actually my son was very grumpy on the plane and then was hyper and almost delirious on arriving back to the UK (great fun when he was running around like a wild animal while we had to wait for his pram to be unloaded from the plane’s hold!)
Both children must’ve been exhausted because they were asleep within minutes once we got in our car at 1:30pm. They both slept the whole journey home and went to bed at 7pm on the dot. And after doing a mountain of washing, I was asleep for 8:30pm too!
So after my experience, my holiday top tips are:
- If you’re getting up early or flying late, plan for sleep opportunities during the journey.
- Don’t panic if things don’t go to plan. You can’t force your child to sleep.
- Give your child the opportunity to make up for lost sleep – whether it be a late nap or a sleep in the pram.
- Try to get on to the new time zone as soon as possible. Our bodies are programmed by exposure to light so making sure your baby is outside during daytime hours will help with this.
- Replicate and sleep routines you have at home – little one’s recognise this more than what time it is.
- Bring familiar items and anything your child associates from home such as white noise, sleeping bags and comforters.
- Relax and go with the flow – if something is working, go with it, even if it’s not what ‘works’ at home.
- Once home, get straight back into your usual routine. It may take a couple of days to adjust and it may be worth letting your little one nap a bit longer if they have lost out on sleep – but they WILL get back on track!
- Follow @whereisbriggs on Instagram – I LOVE this account and it has so many simple practical travelling tips for babies and toddlers.
My 1-1 sleep consults and packages are the perfect way to help get sleep back on track if it has been disturbed in any way so if you find you’re back from holiday and sleep is still and issue do get in touch. Click here to book a free initial call and let’s chat about how I can help you.
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