I'm looking to see whether anyone has any additional tips or tricks to encourage a baby to sleep when away from home.
Normally DS (11 months old) will settle himself to sleep at bedtime and sleep through the night until between 5 & 7 am but whenever we go away we seem to engage on a war with sleep.
He'll settle himself to sleep in the travel cot ok but generally wakes within a couple of hours after which it's difficult to get him settled to sleep again. We've tried cuddles and shushes and leaving him a while to see whether he'll settle down but often neither works and I end up taking him to bed where he'll sleep until around 5am and wants to get up for day even though we're all still tired (he seems to start wriggling around 5am and have only just started to get him to sleep beyond this after a rather horrible phase of early wake ups).
He has a couple of toys / comfortors in his cot at home which I take away with me and place in the travel cot. I've also bought an additional mattress which helped a bit as the travel mattresses are so thin so it shouldn't be comfort that's a problem.
I also stick as closely as possible to his normal bedtime routine (wash / bath + milk + books + bedtime noise / music then bed) and bedtimes. I also tend to put something in there which will smell of me or home for reassurance.
This happens whether we're all in the same room or not although sometimes you just have to sleep together as there's no more room.
I don't know what else to do and after a particularly bad bank holiday at both sets of parents we're seriously wondering whether it's worth staying away for the mo!
Thanks