Jet lag and one year old

[Mummyfizzy]

We're taking our 13mo DD to a family wedding in NZ. We'll only be there 2 weeks. We took her when she was 11 weeks old and it was exhausting but her sleep was all over the place anyway then. Now she generally sleeps 11-12 hours at night with 1 or 2 brief wake ups. I'm really concerned about her being affected by jet lag. Does anyone have any advice on how to minimise it? Get DD into a good sleep pattern quickly? Really worried about not sleeping for the whole two weeks we're there and then the weeks after we get home. She's still bf and though more than happy to go to anyone else in the day, if she's tired or wakes in the night it's me or hysterics.

Dont' ask here, according to many MNers Jetlag is entirely imaginary and you should all be over it within 36 hours!!

Sadly, am only 10% joking.
The rule of thumb is to expect 1 day to adjust per 1 hour of timezone change.
Lots of daylight & exercise in daylight hours helps, they are very primed by daylight at that age. And as much darkness as you can when they are supposed to be asleep. Some people try to get them adjusted to the new hours starting before you leave, too. Worth a try, to start transitioning before you go.

My experience is that the more I can sleep on the plane the faster I seem to get on correct time when I arrive (less exhausted?).

No tips really, but from experience it's usually 3/4 nights before they get back into the right time zone, so we had 3am wake up, then 4am then 5/6

It was never too bad, just a pain when you are in someone else's house
We had a DVD player to keep him occupied til the rest of the household woke op, but yours might be a bit young?