How to deal with jet lag

[racheeeee]

I am taking my little one to New York to visit my family and have no idea how to deal with jet lag, he will be 16 weeks when we travel. Our flight leaves Manchester at 10 am, and gets into NYC at (1 pm NY Time) 6 pm UK time. Do I try to keep him up until 7.30 NY time, or do I put him to bed at what would be his normal bed time in the UK....he is a good sleeper at home and we follow a good bath, bottle, bed routine every night.

If anyone has done this and has any experience with this, I would appreciate the feedback.

Also, I should say that he is exclusive fed expressed breast milk, and I pump 3 times a day...this should also be a challenge. Any input on expressing while travelling would also be appreciated.

It's easier when they are younger, feed him shortly before or after you are served food (as you would do at home anyway) to try to adjust the time to American time. The important thing is to try to keep him awake until his bedtime (american time use) and wake him up at the time he would wake up normally no matter how tired you both are, he will probably have a rough day but he will be at local time within a day (much better than spending all the trip with a baby waking up ready for the day at 2 am!)

Hi Racheee, I took my DS from Aus to UK when he was 4 mnths old. It took him 5 days to get fully onto UK time (at that time of year it was 11 hours difference, so day was night!), but then he slept through again just as he had before the trip. I had a few days of panicking I had messed up his sleep patterns but it was all fine. I wd agree with Chandra to keep him up for 1st day and then put him to bed at US night time. I didn't do this to start with, I just let ds sleep when he wanted to and I think this dragged out the process a bit. He might be a bit wakeful for first few nights but hopefully yr family will be able to look after him a bit in the day so you can nap! Also feeding during ascent and descent on the plane helps with his lickle ears. Have a gr8 trip

Thanks so much! Thats what I thought I would do, keep him up until 7.30 us time (give or take an hour or two) and you are right, even if its a nightmare, my family can help!