Routine on holiday

[elliebelliex]

We're going away to the Lake District in November and DD will be 7 months.
She's not really in any set routine at the moment, she has her naps throughout the day and comes up to bed with us around 10:30 but when she's 7 months I'm assuming she will have a bed time of around 7:30ish which is around the time we would be out having dinner. I'm worried that when we go out for evening meals her bedtime will be messed up and it will be a struggle to get her back into that routine again.
I was thinking we would have to go for dinner early but then it would be stressful and a rush when we got back to get her into bed.

Am I overthinking this?

Hey,

Congratulations on baby!

You may find you're in a routine before then or you may not. But if you are, I would do two things

1. try not to worry about it too much. You're on holiday and there to enjoy it!
2. I would do a 'bedtime routine' as you may normally do (bottle, change of clothes, book or whatever) and then put them to sleep in the pram. Hopefully baby will sleep there and then you can transfer to bed when you get back!

It may not always work, and I think it really depends on what kind of personality and sleeper your baby is but that's what I would try and do 🥰

When we go on holiday we go out to eat at lunch and then make food/have sandwiches in the evening. The odd occasion we go out for dinner either DD stays up as a one off or we go early. Holidays she has a slightly later bedtime anyway so it’s not such a rush but we can’t go out int he evenings as if she goes to bed too late she really feels it the next day. It’s still fun holidays just look a little different now.

I wouldn’t try to be too rigid with routine on holiday. At that age my DDs bedtime was more like 8:30 anyway and we would just eat out early at around 6 or 6:30pm. Usually only managed one course anyway before she would get antsy so dinners were not long relaxed affairs. Staying in a hotel with a nice restaurant (or picking a restaurant very close to the hotel) worked well as one of us could take her to bed if she had enough. The sleeping in the pram thing could also work depending on your baby but it didn’t usually work for us. Ordering food in is another option.

Wait and see where you're at when you get there. At this stage it will be very difficult to tell how much your baby will depend on their routine.

If they're the type of baby who loves a routine and settles best with it, then I'd either eat dinner at lunchtime and have a nice supper when they're in bed or else go for an early dinner and then have dessert and open a bottle of wine with a movie when they're in bed.

Some babies are fine to stay up late or sleep in the pram in a restaurant - if you have one of those then happy days.

I follow a routine like clockwork (it keeps me sane)

On holiday, it goes out the window. Naps happen when they happen. Bedtime isn't a thing, but extra naps get thrown into the mix because baby is so tired from all the fresh air and novel stimulation.

Is it ideally structured? No. But it's temporary and everyone has a great holiday.

When you get home, you do need to spend a few days reestablishing the routine, but it's not a terrible amount of work and imo definitely worth it.