10 month old baby to Caribbean

[chloxox08]

Please help!

I really want to put a deposit down for a 2 week resort holiday in the Dominican - baby will be 10 months old then.

I'm just worried about the time difference really? How would you get a baby into the time zone? Would it just be a miserable holiday with the baby unable to adjust?

If anyone's got any experience of this then please share, I'm probably just overthinking but since I'm taking a year out of uni it would be nice to utilise that time off!

We do long haul with our kids from six months. Never had a problem. My kids take usually 3 days to adjust. I work out what time in the UK bedtime would be there, then work nap times backwards and adjust.

Shift bedtime gradually later a few days before you leave by 10 to 20 minutes a night, regardless of when they nap (or wake up from their naps) during the day.
Once you’re there, get strict about the new bedtime/mealtime routine. If you arrive in the morning and they fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon, treat it like another nap. Wake LO up after their usual nap length. Feed dinner even if it’s technically the fourth meal of the day. (Make it something he really likes, so he’ll be tempted to eat a little even if he’s not particularly hungry.) And keep LO up until the time zone’s appointed bedtime.
Make make sure your LO’s room is as dark as possible so the early morning sun doesn’t wake them. If black out curtains aren't available, black garbage bin can do the trick!
Don’t bother adjusting naps too much. Just go with the flow, without fretting over time zone conversion charts in your head. Nighttime is the big significant chunk of sleep that counts. Once they gets used to going to bed earlier, their naps will start lining up more or less on their own (especially since they aren’t affected by the sun’s schedule). I wouldn’t expect them to be nearly as predictable in timing or length as at home, but other than POSSIBLY waking them up 20 minutes earlier from his afternoon nap, messing with the day sleep will cause more misery than good.
Don’t overwhelm them with lots of “new” things in an already new environment. Take familiar books and cot blankets, and perhaps even the same bath soap you use at home.

I’ve done Trinidad and Tobago with a 6 month year old one Feb with eldest DD (who is now 25 so a long time ago!). It wasn’t a great experience if I’m honest - the plane journey was a bit fraught both ways with lots of crying (& me assuming everyone on the plane must hate us!). Once we got there, the biggest issue was trying to keep DD out of the sweltering heat and keep her cool. She took awhile to adjust to the time difference and trying to keep a tired, hot and quite angry little baby happy wasn’t the most relaxing of experiences.

After that, neither of my DD’s was taken somewhere longhaul & hot until they were a bit older. However, quite obviously some people do make it work better than I did and the tip above about slowly adjusting bed time sounds very sound. Don’t let me put you off but go prepared for some potential ups and downs!

We didn’t do long haul until ours were 5 years old. They happily flew and enjoyed their holidays.

With a baby I think the DR isn’t great really. I would go somewhere temperate with less heat. We did short haul to Mallorca, France and Italy when ours were younger, in May.