Author Topic: EASY and -5hr time zone change  (Read 1682 times)

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Offline Hoofbeat

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EASY and -5hr time zone change
« on: October 08, 2017, 07:22:13 am »
Hello, tomorrow we are taking our 9mo DS on a long haul 2week holiday from UK -> Caribbean which means a -5hour timezone change. Any advice for how to deal with shifting his EASY routine? He's in a really strong routine at home (he also self settles to sleep and sleeps through the night) and I know it will get temporarily messed up when we're on holiday (and it will all go back to normal once we do get back home to the UK) but am after any tips for helping him adjust to the timezone change?

We have a 9am flight tomorrow (have to leave home at 5am), so it's going to be a very long day for him. Obviously will put him to bed earlier than usual but don't want to bring it too early as then he'll wake early (he usually does 11.5-12hours at night) which won't help any of us adjust to the timezone. I'm thinking we just have to try and keep him up as long as possible during the day but let him have extra naps and give him more to eat (he's on solids and formula).

Thanks for any advice.

Offline creations

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Re: EASY and -5hr time zone change
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2017, 17:54:13 pm »
Hi
Sorry you didn't get any replies before you left for your trip.

Hope things work out for you and you have a lovely time.


Offline rosikaos

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Re: EASY and -5hr time zone change
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2017, 11:11:24 am »
Apologies for not seeing this earlier, I have just come back from a holiday with a -8 hour time difference with a 5mo. You’ll have now had your flight out but we did exactly what you suggested - I let her sleep slightly longer naps on the plane out but ultimately kept trying to extend the daytime routine. We then put her straight to bed when we got to our destination (c7pm local time). The first couple of days we had a night waking but then we were back onto our usual routine.

Just one comment is that we decided not to shift our LO’s routine by as much as 8 hours. So instead of a 7am wakeup and 7:30pm bedtime, we had a 5am wakeup and 5:30pm bedtime. The reason for this was two fold - 1) we hoped the jet lag would be less as she was dealing with a 6 hour change rather than an 8 hour change; and 2) her morning nap would be at 7:30am which she would have in her bed (rather than out and about in the carrier/buggy) and allowed us to get ready to go out sightseeing for the day. She then usually had 1 or 2 naps during the day in the carrier or buggy, but I didn’t want all 3 naps to be done this way.

I thought it worth posting re the flight home in case you hadn’t flown back yet. We had an overnight flight home and kept to our (time zone adjusted) routine on the way home but woke her up early (primarily as the plane was going to land and I wanted to feed her for her ears). We then followed her usual A times but made sure her naps weren’t too long so that she began to switch back to the home time zone. The first day she went to bed c3h later than usual and I woke her up the following morning 2h after usual wakeup time. Meant she had a shorter sleep but that she would begin to adjust back to the home time zone. Second day she went to bed 1.5h later and I woke her up 0.5h after her usual wakeup time. The first two nights she woke up after the DF, I guess because she still thought it was daytime and the DF was enough movement to wake her. I had to do a bit of AP to get her back to sleep - kept her in the dark and held her until she got sleepy again (which was thankfully less than her usual A time).

Hope that might be of some help with your flight home (and any others searching for this type of advice on the forum!)

Offline Hoofbeat

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Re: EASY and -5hr time zone change
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2017, 15:34:53 pm »
Thanks both! Luckily DS was an absolute star and adjusted to the timezone very quickly! We decided not to change anything before we went and just accept that he might wake early for a few days. The first night he woke at 2am local time hungry, which corresponded to when he'd have his breakfast bottle at 7am in the UK. He took a bit of convincing to go back to sleep after that, but obliged. The second night he woke at 4am for breakfast, but then 3rd night he was waking nearer 7am.

On the way home, we just forced him to adapt to UK time straight away, but played naps by ear, i.e. putting him down earlier than we usually would, but we thought this was best given he'd only had about 5hrs sleep that night because of bad turbulence on the plane and then the timezone change.

Good luck to anyone who does something similar in the future with a baby - it definitely wasn't as hard as I expected!

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Re: EASY and -5hr time zone change
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2017, 14:00:27 pm »
Glad to hear it went so well for you!