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Anyone got experience with jetlag?

3 replies

User24689 · 18/06/2017 18:03

Hi all. Returned from UK to Australia on Friday night. DD is 22 months old and generally sleeps through from 7-7 with a 1-2 hr nap around midday.
Arrival to UK was fine, she just woke up at 4.30am for the first 3 days and napped a bit earlier/ longer as a result.

We arrived home on Friday night and put her to bed late at around 10pm. She woke up again at 1.30 and I was up with her until 3. She was wide awake the whole time. Next night, she woke at midnight. I was again up with her until 3. Tonight she woke at 11. It is now 1am and I have just put her back to bed. She is crying currently and I'm sitting here feeling awful and not really knowing what to do or whether I'm doing the right thing.

I've been keeping all the lights dim and letting her watch TV quietly but not letting her get any noisy toys out or run around etc. I've then been doing the bedtime routing again before putting her back to bed, so milk and story. I've been waking her at 8.30 each morning so she doesn't oversleep in the day.

Thing is, I'm knackered. I haven't been catching up on all the missed sleep in the day so not to make my own jetlag worse. I'm at work in the morning and my alarm is set for 6.30. I'm going to have to wake her at 7.30 to get her to nursery.

Am I being cruel putting her back to bed? I have explained clearly to her that everyone is very tired and mummy needs to sleep. I've told her she can play with her animals in her cot quietly.

I'm at a loss as to how to handle this and don't want to ruin her good sleep routine by teaching her that if she wakes in the night she can shout for me and she'll get to stay up watching teletubbies!!

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LillianFullStop · 19/06/2017 23:07

Went through similar jet lag with a 6 month old - it was 3am wake ups for about 4 days then it was 5am for a couple more. By a week she was sleeping til 6.30 which was manageable. Like you I just let her up to have quiet play with lights dim until she could sleep again (normally about an hour). I found it more tiring to keep trying to put her back to sleep than it was to just get her up for a bit.

Didn't let her nap longer than 2.5 hours during the day and kept normal bedtime routine.

It was utterly exhausting but in my experience they will adjust and not long enough to really develop bad sleep habits.

Strange that the return to U.K. is so much easier huh?!

Latinatta · 20/06/2017 23:37

Travelling east is always worse for some reason. Lots of daytime sunshine and plan to be tired for a week!

User24689 · 22/06/2017 15:08

Thank you both! Well last night was night 6 and we still had the same shananigans. Last night we decided not to let her out of her room, so we went in to comfort her then left again. We did this several times (like we used to when she was a baby!) And eventually she went to sleep and stayed there. Tonight she has bleated once and gone back to sleep again... Tentatively hopeful!

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