advice for jet lag baby

we had a 2.5 weeks trip to UK recently and returned on wednesday. that night, baby only went to bed at 4am. since then, no matter how long he slept at night, i would wake him at his usual 7am and put him down at regular nap times.


he is going down and sleeping well for naps. for bedtime though, he goes down at 6.30pm instead as he is too exhausted to stay awake and will wake up crying anytime from 9pm onwards, off and on sleeping until he eventually crashes out about 12-1am. we do a dream feed and if he does wake up around that time, i feed him and try to get him back to sleep but not much success with that.


i know it takes time to get him back on routine and granted i was very quick to take him to our bed in the UK if he happened to cry at night (usually 5am, think he never adjusted fully to UK) because i didn't want to disturb the rest of my extended family (some working). but i am nursing a bad cold and have many things to sort out, including a house move in the next one month. hence, i am abit more anxious to get him back on track so that i can attend to other urgent matters.


any advice on how to adjust a jet lag baby will be most appreciated. i do things like keeping daytime naps very bright and darkening the room for bedtime to show day/night difference, etc. and we have the usual bathtime/bedtime/feeding routine. i just need to know if there is anymore i can do or do i just need to give it more time and try to ride it out in the next 2 weeks? we gave him a few days to settle but since last night, we stopped going to him to comfort him - but we check on him and he is stuck between cot bars, we turn him on his back again, without talking, dimmed or no lights.


thanks!

Our baby took about 7-10 days to really get back on HK time. I think you are doing everything right - just maybe try putting him to bed earlier if he is tired.

It will get better!

I don't know how old your baby is but maybe you could add another nap during the day so he's not too tired by 6:30pm. Maybe being over-tired is keeping him from having a good night's sleep. Then when he gets back to a "good" night schedule you can slowly stop with the extra nap you added.

thanks for the advice.

yes, think i'll need to add an extra nap for the time being or put him to bed earlier. he has one hour nap in the am and 2 hours 12.30pm to 2.30pm. he is now 6 months and i understand that's pretty standard for a baby of this age. but he gets very tired again by about 4plus and needs to put his head down.

What you're doing sounds great, it will work eventually. Try to take a nap yourself in the day to catch up as well, otherwise you will be running on empty and might find the move even more stressful than it needs to be.

Agree, you're doing all the rigt things. Ours took about a week to adjust at that age. Make sure that you adjust your schedule too, and try not to burn the candle at both ends. It gets easier as they get older (our 4 year old is better at overcoming jetlag than her parents).

dora,


i sure hope it gets better as they get older!


:-)) - i have been trying to catch a nap when he naps...usually i'll be busy with housework but since my return, i think i need it in order to have energy for the little one at night!


last night wasn't so bad, he cried briefly at 1am but not sure if that was due to jet lag or the big ripping fart he made!

I also just returned from UK- it has taken me 2.5 weeks to get my baby back to normal, he still wakes briefly at around 10.30 ( 2.5 hrs after going to bed). We no longer feed him during the night, and normally he sleeps from 8pm- 6am no problem. He was Ok-ish when we first got back, but quickly started waking every 2 hours, for around a week. I have been exhausted, but this weekend he broke through and seemed comfortable again. I spoke to a paediatrician ( I was at the end of my tether and wondered if he was actually ill), who said the body clock is so closely related to food, that once the baby goes into a different time zone, the appetite basically messes up. Even if you are feeding at the same times as you would here, it still is not the right time for food in the baby's mind ( whether they eat it or not). So- I felt alot better, and carried on feeding and napping at the same times as usual, and eventually we have cracked it.

Doc also said social factors are more disrupting than we realise- esp. if the baby has had lots of attention and slept in a different place- they can feel 'lonely' once we bring them back. Not sure if this is rubbish or not, but it made sense to me at the time.

Good luck, its hard!

phoenix,


i am so going through the same thing except last night was slightly better!


i think your doc is right on the money about this - mine feeds a different amounts for his feeds with the bedtime feed being the biggest. since we returned, he couldn't even take half of the bedtime feed, which indicated to me that he was still on a different timezone. but last night we saw a vast improvement and he definitely drank more!


so is the social factor - he was the centre of attention everywhere we went, there was always someone playing with him too! so i guess it's a shock returning to sg to a house with just mum and dad! :)