Episode 176: How to Travel with a Baby or Toddler

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

---

Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome to the kids sleep show, podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zenz, and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together. Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids sleep Show. I’m your host, Courtney Zenz, and today we are going to talk all about traveling with infants and toddlers. How do you create the ideal sleep environment so that your child settles independently, sleeps through the night and wakes rested and refreshed when you’re on vacation? Believe me, I am the first person to admit I didn’t travel anywhere with my kids for the first two years of life, with the exception of our beach house, because we had a separate bedroom, because I did not want to hear anything from them overnight and I didn’t want our sleep disrupted. We tried one time to go to a wedding when my son was, gosh, maybe six months old, and my husband still has never let me live it down and is still not going to any family weddings anywhere in the country, because it was just such a nightmare trip, and we ended up having to drive home in the middle of the night from Ohio when our flight was canceled with a six month old. So needless to say, I definitely never lived that one down, and it kind of paused our traveling for a bit when it came to babies. But now, having been a sleep consultant for 10 years, I can tell you how to do it, and how to learn from all the things that my clients do, that I’ve taught them to do, and all the things we do now with our children, who travel much easier at eight and 10. But that being said, when it comes to sleep for children, the biggest piece of advice I could give you is to not allow your child to be overtired if it means they take broken naps that are sporadic throughout the day, because you’re at the airport and you’re in a car and you’re driving to the airport, and then grandma’s holding them. It doesn’t matter, just get your child’s sleep properly spaced throughout the day to avoid over tired, because overtired triggers adrenaline and cortisol, which causes trouble settling multiple night wakings and, frankly, early morning wakings, which you don’t want when you’re on vacation, it’s important to also remember, on vacation, you’re generally busy, you’re doing things, you’re going places, and kids get tired, sun, tires them out, travel, tires them out, water, tires them out. So just pay attention to that, and always shoot for early versus later when it comes to vacation, if you’re going to be traveling somewhere, even for just a long weekend, which we are this President’s Day, you want to split the difference, right? If it’s going to be an hour before or an hour after, then you want to make sure that you kind of split the difference. You’re not going solely, like one direction or the other, because if you’re only going for, like, a long weekend, your child, frankly, isn’t going to have the ability to adjust their body clock. That takes about a week to do. So just kind of head your bet and say, All right, well, I’m not going to put them to bed at six, but I will put them to bed at 630 which to them, is 730 if you’re traveling like an hour to the time zone, to the west, for example, we’re in Philadelphia. If I was traveling to Dallas, Texas, that would be how I would handle it with an infant. Now, you want to create a sleep environment whenever you’re going somewhere where, when you arrive, you are going to have your child sleeping in that same conducive environment. First and foremost, babies should be on a hard, flat surface, on a pack and play, or on a Travel Crib, or on a crib that’s there. And you know, something like the slumber pod is a great blackout option for the space or the room, if you’re just trying to black out for baby, and also create, perhaps, like an individual space, like in a hotel. A lot of times, baby goes to bed at seven. You don’t want to go to bed at seven, but you can’t have all the lights on and everything. If you put them in a slumber pod, you can zip them up it’s dark, and then you can kind of go about reading in bed with the light on, or, you know, you know, maybe crocheting a blanket, whatever you’re into, and baby will still sleep. And with the slumber pods they have, like the little portable fan that comes with it, so that kind of acts as a little noise machine, which is nice. We love our yoga sleep dome sound machine. So I’ll link all these things in the show notes, because they’re just our favorites to travel with. And they have a nice travel size one that’s super convenient. 10 years later, we still use it with our kids whenever we travel anywhere. And actually, now that we don’t use the slumber pot anymore, I still travel with the fan because my son likes it pointed on his face, just like my husband. So we’re kind of bougie when it comes to sleep, but I guess I’ll blame the day job, right? But you want to make sure that the. Environment itself is conducive to sleep. If you are in an environment and you don’t have a slumber pot, or perhaps you have a toddler and they’re sleeping on a roll out bed, a roll away bed, or on like the slumber tot that the slumber pod goes over fine. As adults, I like darkness. I cannot sleep. It just happened last weekend. We were at Hershey, and we were in the lodge, and they have, quote, blackout curtains, but they’re not really black out. And it sucks, because the lights from the parking lot, which are on 24/7 come in, and then it creates just this like, kind of light environment, the lights from the hallway. My daughter is like, real bougie now, with her sleep in the dark, she’s like, can you put a towel in front of the door like I can see the light, and I don’t want to see anything in the room. I want it to be pitch black, and I hear you, sister. So I will generally travel with two different products. One is the outer space blackout curtains. They are super easy to put up from a portability standpoint, and they have these great blocks that black out all that weird kind of residual light that can come in at the top of a window. We also travel with a portable travel blanket. It’s a pocket blanket. I will link that in the show notes as well. I got it on Amazon. We actually used it for sports. But I was like, This is great from a cover standpoint. I could easily block out the windows in the car with a couple T pins to create, like, a black environment in the back seat when we were driving and my kids were trying to go to bed at bedtime, right? They’re used to going to bed at seven and it’s light till like nine o’clock here in the summer. I would use them at hotels. I travel with them. If I’m not checking a bag and I’m really limited on space, I’ll throw that in my bag, and then I have like, four push pins, and I just pin it right up into the side. Nobody sees the holes. And it’s great because then it creates that total blackout as well, and it’s more of a compact, easy to travel with, kind of travel friendly option. When you’re traveling with toddlers, it’s important to set expectations. I know, in some situations, myself included, we have gone away to like, Irish dance FeS, and we’re supposed to have two queen beds, and we get a king and a pull out. And I’m like, Okay, well, this is not happening, right? And then my son gets, you know, he doesn’t want to sleep with Savella, and they kick each other if it’s like, a full bed versus a queen bed, and blah, blah, blah. So, like, I’ll put max on the pull out, and then I’m like, All right, Savella, you can sleep with us, but you’re not welcome to touch me. You’re not, you know, I like, roll up a sheet and put it in the middle of the bed.

Speaker 1 7:18
I will sometimes set the boundary that says, hey, we’re at Nana’s and there’s nowhere else to sleep, but when we go back home, you’re back in your room. Do you understand? And I always kind of set that precedent, even now, frankly, my kids are eight and 10 because I don’t want it to be an expectation that my bed is a place where you sleep. I’m very much a sleeper who wants nothing to do with anyone else, and I don’t want you to touch me. From nine to five I’m sleeping, and that’s when I get restorative, quality sleep, and it’s very important for me, but frankly, it’s also very important for kids, as they’re developing, to get quality, independent, restorative sleep. Sleeping through the night should be a goal for every family, and something that is actually attainable when you take action to correct what’s challenging. It Right? When you have a toddler who struggles to go down at bedtime, who wants you to sit there for three hours, who is in the midst of, you know, some separation anxiety, or waking frequently throughout the night, a lot of times, I have to explain to clients that you’re kind of causing the problem, right? And I mean that with all the love in the world, but usually we’re doing something that they desire, right? If you’re willing to let them co sleep, and then when you get home, you’re still willing to let them co sleep. Why would they stop asking if you rub their back at 2am Why would you stop asking if they get a cupcake at 3am why would they stop asking like we as parents have to look at our behavior and go, hey. Well, if we pick them up and rock them to sleep every time they wake overnight, our toddlers going to expect that when they wake and go, Mom, come here and you come in and pick them up and rock them to sleep, like they’re expecting you to rock them to sleep. So of course, there’s going to be protests when you don’t because they’re pissed off. It’s a behavior they know how to sleep they’re choosing not to right? So with toddlers, it’s very much about like a little game, a kind of mini chicken, where you’re keeping them in check, right? Here’s the expectation, here’s the bedtime rewards chart, which I’ll link here as well. We have a ton of freebies out on our website, but I’ll put the link to the toddler reward charts, because those are really helpful when you’re traveling, because you can have, you know, all the different activities. We’re still going to wash our face, we’re still going to brush our teeth, we’re still going to try to go potty. We’re still going to read a book and say our prayers. Then you’re going to get in your bed, whatever that looks like, and you are going to sleep through the night, and then I will see you in the morning when your clock comes on, because we’ve traveled with that as well. You know, you keep the routine consistent, and kids stay consistent with sleep. It’s where you bend and you’re like, oh well, we’re at Disney for a week. You can just co sleep. Like, make no mistake, when you get home, you’re going to have to fix that, or you’re going to have to hire us to do it, because it’s going to create it an expectation and association. Okay, so with that, you know, I would say going on to toddler, teen, adult, sleep, right? Screens, blue light is detrimental to the ability for our brain to shut off. Okay? When you look at a screen. Regardless of what time it is, whether it’s two in the morning or two in the afternoon, it fires your brain up and it says, Oh, hey, like, all right, sometimes it’s blue light, sometimes it’s just exposure to what you’re watching stimulates your brain, and your brain thinks, Oh, heck, you’re awake. All right, let’s go, man, let’s go. And so you have to be really careful about that, because you don’t want that to happen when you’re traveling with kids, with adults, with teens, right? Phones. Have a bed in our house, and you are not to touch them. We don’t take our phone upstairs. If you need me, the cops have to knock on my door. I’m not even kidding. My dad was in the hospital the other night. The gentleman did not even know how to call me. It was my dad’s neighbor, and I got a Facebook message at five in the morning when I woke up that they took my dad in the ambulance. Okay, I didn’t have my phone, and frankly, he’s at the hospital. I couldn’t have done anything better. He’s with exactly where he needs to be right now, going forward, I will probably start to figure out some capacity of like, emergency numbers, but that, you know, we’re not that point yet. And I don’t want my phone dinging and pinging and vibrating and buzzing and moving all hours of the night I sleep, and that is when I’m my best. If you’re at the doctor, great, they’re going to take care of you, and I’ll see you around six o’clock in the morning. You know, obviously, when my kids start to sleep out or whatever, that’s a different situation. But we’re just not there yet. So we have a very strict rule, like my husband and I do not bring our phones upstairs. We do not have tablets upstairs, like there’s no technology upstairs, because it’s such a fine line, and it’s so easy to look at the phone and go, Oh, what time is it? Oh, that son of a bitch, he texted me, right? And then you go down this rabbit hole of some like Facebook post or a text or whatever. I used to it happened to me one night when I was still in corporate, and I still remember the night, and it was a gentleman who was emailing me about a project called our world that I was working on at the time. This was at least 15 years ago now, and I lost my mind in the middle of the night at this guy in like, my head, I didn’t write it, but I was laying there, like, you got kidding me? And my husband, like, freaked out, and he’s like, What are you doing? I’m like, This guy, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, Dude, it’s three in the morning and I wasn’t he’s like, that’s it. We’re done. Like we’re done. Like, we’re done with phones. Like this is crazy, you know. So from that night on, we’ve never had them in our rooms, because it is so easy to, just like a squirrel, find something to go off and chase the nut, you know. So definitely being mindful of that and the blue light glasses can certainly help but also giving your chance for your brain to unwind, you know, so kind of calling all devices an hour before you go to bed, read a book. I’m very much like a paper book person, but also alcohol, right? You’re on vacation, you’re like, Yeah, I’m gonna have a day drink at the pool or whatever, right? Alcohol will allow you to fall asleep quicker, right, but it actually prohibits the proper production of melatonin and can seriously impact deep, restorative sleep, and therefore you’re waking at like 2am with the sweats. You can’t fall back to bed. Your broken sleep is just a mess. That is generally the cause from too many alcoholic beverages, right? So just being, you know, as an adult, consistent with like going to bed at your same bedtime and not over consuming, whether it be food or drink, to the point where your body has to adjust to feel comfortable, right? It takes quite a few days to recover just from one night of a couple drinks, honestly, when you start to get into the science and alcohol. And so it’s definitely something that you need to be more mindful of when you’re traveling, because I know often when you’re traveling, it’s usually an aspect of celebrating in some capacity, right? So just definitely something to be more conscious of. We travel with our zenimal, which is an amazing mindset meditation turtle. We’ve used it for at least eight years now, probably since she’s been around, which is about eight years. And the xenomal is awesome because there’s an adult one, there’s a kid one. We use both, and we fall asleep to meditations. It has a little earplug thing. If I, if I do it when my kids are already sleeping and we’re all in one big hotel room, I can still do it with the headphones, and then I just fall asleep. And eventually the headphones fall out when I’m sleeping, and I don’t care, you know, that is really consistent in how we travel, like I have wait over tired. We manage our drinking and eating, we make sure that we go to bed at the right time, and we just do all these different things that can be so helpful for us. As far as it relates to getting out of the norm, try to keep things as close as possible when you’re traveling. In the notes of this section, there’s going to be a baby travel checklist and a toddler travel checklist, you know, use those when you’re packing to, like, not forget the little things, and just remember to give yourself grace, like two or three days away on vacation. Just don’t screw up all the progress you made with your baby, settling independently, sleeping through the night, napping on a schedule, right? Like, just try to do your best to keep it as close as you can. I always tell clients, you know, you’re always accessible, just not excessive in your response and to be balanced with the schedule, avoid that over tired, do what you can to get them to sleep, just not overcompensating with, you know, habits and such. So hopefully this will help you, if you are going away this weekend, as we are up to the Poconos and we also have the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl Parade, which we will not see, but we will watch. TV, but I’m sure it’s going to be crazy town. So enjoy this episode. Hopefully it’s been helpful for you. You’re learning some things. We always appreciate a positive review, or any kind of a review, and be sure you subscribe and we’ll see you next time here on the kids sleep Show podcast. Bye for now. You one more thing before you go, don’t forget to subscribe. Leave a review or share this episode with someone you know who could use a little more sleep in their life for tips and resources. Be sure to visit us@tinytransitions.com or follow us across social media. Here’s to better sleep, brighter days and healthier, happier examples you.