Camping with 10 month old - would it be mental if I bought loads of blackout material and lined the tent?!

[bohemianbint]

took the plunge and went on 1st camping trip with the nipper this weekend which was really good despite the rain. However, DS usually will only sleep in his room in the dark and lost out on loads of sleep over the weekend because of this. He wasn't too ratty but I just felt so sorry for him watching him desperately fighting the sleep.

Do you think rigging up some kind of blackout thingy in his compartment would be worth trying? Or a bit of an expensive faff? Was going to try to sew something like a lining together that I can clip into the sides of his room that he won't be able to reach from his travel cot...

Can you not put him in a travel cot and drape dark (but ventialted) material over that?

I do remember trying to get DS to sleep wearing sunglasses....

When are you next going? Because you've managed to go at absolutely the worst weekend of the whole year, so it is bound to be better next time.
We went a couple of weeks ago and it was hell, but last year in July we had no probs (dd 13 months then, 2 this time).

I think you'll be wasting your time. We had some grim evenings camping with baby and toddler not sleeping for hours (and then being ratty the next day). Campsites are often lively and a bit noisy (especially in good weather on summer evenings) so even if you black out there might be noise to distract him.

I think the only answer is keep them up late, and accept they'll be ratty and maybe make time for a longer nap the next day.

PMSL at the sunglasses idea... I thought about draping material over the cot but he'll probably just yank it off (he's just learnt how to stand up and spends half the night swinging around the cot like sommat out of Jungle Book. Oh, I dunno, he just will not sleep anywhere unless he's dark and he's alone, unless he's literally gone about 12 hours without. Which isn't great. P'raps I should just stop stressing about it!

Yes.

yes

just walk him round in pram till he falls asleep. or just let him stay up.

I wold go for a blackout canopy in his pod- all you'd have to do is make a tent shape from the centre with an end of the amterial each side iyswim. The whole tent no though.

One warning: It can get very hot in dark tents (our last tent was dark and the palstic glasses shattered last year ) so if you can figure out how to make it removable do.

Can't you drape an enormous bit of black material, or tarpaulin or something over the tent?

We took our (then) 10-month old camping last year and did find him somewhat unsettled regarding both sleeping and eating. Even this year (last week and almost 20 months old) he was still tricky to get to sleep - trying, bless him, but struggling - so after an hour or so of fruitless effort on night 1 we took a drive and he was asleep within 10 minutes. We then transferred him to his bed still sleeping - a trick only dh can manage, I always have to get a boob out for 10 minutes.* Stuck with this tactic for rest of the break and found it worked well and left us with a couple of hours of evening to enjoy.

Of course, they're all different and if blackout works at home, yep, I would def try it.

*Not because I'm an exhibitionist of course

Just trying to work out...

Is the boob a reward for dh and the trick only he can manage ?

Well, yes of course, what else?

I hear some other people than me, obviously, have been known to use phenergan when camping, though wouldn't know for a 10 month old

pmsl at this

Woof