Author Topic: Sleep schedule all over the place after a 9h jetlag eastbound  (Read 1621 times)

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Offline jetlaggedmom

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Sleep schedule all over the place after a 9h jetlag eastbound
« on: August 25, 2018, 14:11:28 pm »
Hello everybody,

This is my first post here, and I'm reaching out to you in a state of desperation...  :o
I have an 8 month old baby and we are just coming back from visiting family in the US (we live in Europe). Going over there was okay, everybody adapted quite easily. But then we came back home... and all hell broke lose !

First, the little one has been going through separation anxiety for about a week so that alone made bedtime pretty much hysterical. We took everybody's advice on how to deal with baby's endless red-faced-crying-leg-kicking-paci-throwing at bedtime and multiple night wakings (he was until then a pretty decent sleeper, with a consistent routine) but we didn't have much success.

Now we add to that a 9h jetlag eastbound that messed with everybody's sleep.

Yesterday we managed to have baby down for the night at 7pm, his regular bedtime, but he woke up at 9pm... to never sleep again. At 4am, after a thousand back and forth to comfort, soothe, rock and nurse him to no avail, we decided that we would just resort to cosleeping now as this is the only way he would sleep at all, and deal with the consequences later. At 5am our time, everybody fell asleep, and we all woke up at 3pm today... We are doomed.

It seems that his internal clock is still pretty much set on pacific time, where we were on vacation : his "night" of sleep from 5am to 3pm our time correspond to 8pm to 6am pacific time.
Now we as adults have a hard time adapting to the time change, but we can rationalize it. The little one, however, does not so we end up being forced on his schedule.

We don't know how to fix it, as 9 hours is a damn long time to work on with baby steps... We will be back to work in 4 days and he will be in daycare. I am desperate to have everybody's sleep fixed before that.

Please help...

Offline Katet

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Re: Sleep schedule all over the place after a 9h jetlag eastbound
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2018, 03:03:47 am »
Generally my Dad who did lots of international travel said it's a day for every hour time difference in adults, my sister who travelled a few times with babies (UK to Australia & return) said the babies usually got back on track faster than the adults.

I know from my own travels East to West is always easier than West to East & US to Europe is West to East, so it will be harder.

With babies when they reverse cycle the key is to not let them nap too long, so if the pre-travel Naps were say,  1.5hours then start waking at 1.25hours & make sure for as much as possible the awake time (as long if not slightly longer than the A time you want)  is spent in sunlght and quite stimulating, Then when he is awake at night its totally in the dark and being with him in a calm way (don't let him cry & get upset too much as that will keep him in the cycle of being awake - as well as make the SA even worse).

We took everybody's advice on how to deal with baby's endless red-faced-crying-leg-kicking-paci-throwing at bedtime and multiple night wakings (he was until then a pretty decent sleeper, with a consistent routine) but we didn't have much success.
Not sure what everybody's advice was like, as lots of people's seems to be to "not give in to them" & yet that is not necessarily what works best, babies like all humans do best with empathy & caring when they struggle emotionally, yet for some reason society says if babies cry when we try to get them to do something we need they are manipulating us (yet we are actually the ones manipulating them!!)

The main thing is not to try & do catch up naps in day time even if he is awake half the night, the day sleep has to be no more than the normal day sleep you want in the normal routine.
dc1 July 03, dc2 May 05