Hi again,
Not going to advise about the routine particularly (unless you'd like help?) but happy to share our tips and experience about travelling a long way with a big time change. Like your LO, DD did not sleep in car seat, buggy, couldn't be APOPed in arms or fed to sleep so I was pretty nervous about how the long travel time and flights would go, not to mention the jet lag! Actually I can honestly say the travelling was nowhere near as bad as expected, and the jet lag, although a bit tough for a few days sorted itself out fairly quickly.
My best tips:
- absolutely number one - make your peace with the fact things will be messed up for a few days. Somehow 'deciding' the day is going to be all over the place makes it easier than trying to stick to a routine that won't work
- get a bassinet seat on the plane and take a blanket/snoozeshade or similar that you can rig up to block out some light. Be aware though that every time seatbelt signs are on you have to take LO out of the bassinet so in reality although DD slept some time in there, she slept more on me
- trust that your LO WILL sleep at some point. They just can't stay awake forever. During our trip, DD utterly surprised me by sleeping in my arms, feeding to sleep when exhausted, dozing in the stroller around the airport and in the car once we got there. It reaches a point where they are just *so* tired they can't physically stay awake
- take plenty of snacks on the plane. Abandon all ideas of sensible diet. If LO wants to eat, let them eat, if they want to play, let them play. Completely ignore the clock. Getting through the plane journey is about survival and not irritating everyone around you too much!
- once there, let LO catch up with sleep for the first day or so. After that try to establish your normal routine even if that means waking LO from naps. Do BT at the normal hour at local time.
- at night, if LO is wide awake that's fine, but keep lights dim, quiet play only and settle back to sleep as soon as you see tired cues. I found the wanting to play at night stopped after 2-3 days.
- in the day, sunlight as much as possible
- feed at night if you need to. Because I wasn't sure if LO was waking because of jet lag or because her body said it was mealtime, I went back to feeding if it had been 4 hours since the last feed but only had to do it for a few days
- once at your destination, try to use your normal settling techniques as much as possible ie PUPD/PD, WIWO etc with your normal BT routine and wind downs. We really found this helped LO settle in to a new environment as other than the view from her bed, not a lot else was different.
Good luck, I hope some of that is useful x
