Travel and Jet Lag With a Baby

Plan on roughly a day per hour of time difference, use daylight as the tool that does the work, and set the room up safely before the first night rather than at midnight on arrival. That day-per-hour figure is a rule of thumb rather than a finding — nobody publishes an adjustment rate for babies. The nearest published comparison is the AAP's, which is that children usually adjust to a one-hour clock change within about a week. Two or three zones tend to sort themselves out over a long weekend; six or more is a genuine week, and worth planning the first two days around.

The other half of this page is the half people forget until they are standing in a hotel room with a tired baby: the rules do not go on holiday. Where she sleeps in an unfamiliar house is a decision worth making in daylight, with the suitcases still shut.

How long a shift takes

There is no published figure for infant jet lag, so anybody giving you a precise one has made it up. What families describe is about a day per hour, often a bit quicker for a baby than for the adults she came with, and that is what the estimate above is built from. Treat it as a planning assumption rather than a schedule.

The one published anchor sits nearby rather than on top of the question: the AAP's account of clock changes is that a one-hour move usually takes children about a week to absorb, with some drowsy days on the way. Flying is not the same thing — you also lose a night to the journey and gain a room she has never slept in — but it tells you the direction of the honest answer, which is slower than you hoped and shorter than a fortnight.

Two consequences. Short trips across two or three zones are not worth restructuring anything for; you will be home before she has finished adjusting. On longer trips, keep the first two days empty, because that is when the adjusting happens.

Whether to shift her before you go

For an hour or two, do not bother. Arrive and use the new day; the difference is smaller than the effect of one bad night on a plane.

For a large shift, the same method the AAP gives for clock changes is the one to use: move naps and bedtime by ten or fifteen minutes a day in the direction you are travelling, for several days before you leave, and move the whole day rather than bedtime alone. Three or four days of that buys you an hour, which is a real head start on a six-hour trip and does no harm if it does not work.

What does not work is trying to move a baby three hours in three days. You arrive with a scrambled routine and a tired baby instead of a rested one. If the preparation is going badly, stop and let the trip do it. The sleep schedule generator will draw the day at the destination times so you can see it before you live in it, and the wake window calculator gives you the awake band to aim at while the clock underneath you moves.

Daylight, and which half of the day to use it in

Light is the strongest lever you have, and it is the one that actually moves a body clock. Exposure to natural light during the day helps reset a child's internal clock, because sunlight has a strong effect on the body's circadian rhythm. Everything else on this page supports it.

The direction matters. If you have travelled east and need her clock to move earlier, get outside in the local morning — breakfast by a window, a walk before the first nap — and keep the late afternoon and evening dim and calm. If you have travelled west and need her clock to move later, do the opposite: keep the early morning dull and dark, and get the light into the late afternoon so the day feels longer than her body thinks it is.

Meals at local times, the same bedtime routine you use at home, and a genuinely dark room at night are the supporting cast. Bring what makes the room feel familiar and takes no space: her sleeping bag, a sound she is used to if you use one, and something to black out a strange window. There is nothing published on melatonin for infants that this site could stand on, and it is a question for your pediatrician rather than a travel tip.

The travel day itself

On the day you move, the naps are what you get rather than what you planned, and that is fine. Sleep in a car seat, a pram or a sling counts as sleep, and a baby who has slept in a sling across an airport has slept.

The caveat is real and specific. A car seat, pram or sling is not a regular sleep place. If she falls asleep in one, move her to a firm flat surface when you reasonably can, and until then an adult stays awake and watching her — the risk with those seats is a head that slumps forward in a way she cannot correct, and it is a risk that only exists while nobody is looking. That means the driver is not the person keeping an eye on her.

Protect bedtime rather than the naps. A day of short, odd sleeps followed by an early night in a proper flat bed costs less than a day spent reconstructing the usual schedule in a departure lounge. Rebuild the day the next morning, with light and the ordinary routine.

Making a strange room safe

Do this before you need it. A travel cot with its own firm, flat mattress is the usual answer, and the mattress it came with is the one to use — not a folded quilt, not an extra topper, not a cushion to make it softer. Firm means it returns to its shape quickly when pressed; flat means flat like a table rather than dipping like a hammock; level means not tilted.

In the cot: a fitted sheet and nothing else. Babies sleep on their back, on a firm flat mattress, in a cot clear of blankets, pillows, bumpers and soft toys, and nothing weighted goes on or over a sleeping baby. Put the cot in your room — room sharing without bed sharing is the arrangement with the risk reduction attached to it, and on holiday it is usually the only option anyway.

What to refuse, however late it is and however sorry the host looks: a sofa, an armchair, a soft adult bed, a pile of cushions, an inflatable mattress. Falling asleep with her on a sofa or in an armchair is the genuinely dangerous one, and it is what happens at four in the morning to a parent who has been up since dawn. If you cannot stay awake, put her down in the cot and lie down yourself.

Then check the temperature, which is the thing most often wrong in an unfamiliar house — heated rooms abroad and heatwave bedrooms both sit outside the usual band, and the room temperature guide covers what to do about each. The safe sleep basics page has the rest of the list if you want it on one screen before you pack.

The first few days there, and coming home

Hold the local times rather than chasing her. Wake her in the local morning, offer naps at local nap times even if she takes twenty minutes instead of an hour, and put her down at a local bedtime that may feel absurd for a few days. Expect night waking at the hour that used to be her afternoon, and treat it as night: dim, dull and boring, however wide awake she is.

Coming home is the same job in reverse, and often the harder half, because home has a routine she is measured against and a holiday does not. Give it the same week, use the same light, and start nothing new until the clock has settled. A few days of notes on a printed day sheet make the difference between "it is still awful" and "it has moved forty minutes in three days", which is the only way you will notice it working.

If a fortnight has gone by and the days are still crooked, stop blaming the flight. Look at the length of the awake stretches first — they grow quietly while you are away — and the wake windows by age guide has the bands and where they came from. If the mornings are the problem, the early morning waking guide covers the causes that have nothing to do with time zones.

When it is not jet lag

Travel makes ordinary things worse; it does not make a well baby unwell, and a week of bad nights abroad is not a reason to wait on something else. If she cannot be settled at all, is unusually sleepy or hard to rouse, is feeding poorly, has far fewer wet nappies than usual, or her cry does not sound like her usual one, find a doctor where you are rather than waiting until you are home. Take her health record with you and know how to reach medical help at the destination before you need it. This page is general information, not medical advice, and it cannot see your baby.