Visiting Relatives in Their Home
Sometimes family vacations involve traveling to visit relatives and stay at their house. Under these circumstances, you and your baby are going to have to live by the schedules of your relatives, and there will be other changes for your baby to get used to as well.
Handling New Noise
You can hardly ask your hosts to be quiet all evening. You aren't quiet all evening in your house. But the sounds in the host's home may be louder or simply different. Perhaps you:
Visit relatives whose living room is nearer to the baby's room, and the sound of voices and of the TV or stereo carries more loudly to her room.
Visit a home where one family member is hard of hearing and keeps the TV, radio, or stereo extra loud.
Visit a home where there's a noisy young child, and your baby is not used to having an active three-year-old screeching around the house.
Experience much more street noise in the home you're visiting than your baby is used to in your own house.
Visit relatives who live in an apartment and have noisy neighbors.
You have little control over these things. But if you're prepared, you can bring or find a device that will create a white sound to help block out some of the noise.
Scheduling Different Meal Times
Let's say you're used to feeding your baby her cereal or pureed carrots at the dinner table, with the two of you, at 6:30 P.M. every evening and then putting her to bed at 7:30 P.M. Suddenly you're at your sister's house, where dinner isn't served until 7:00 P.M. What are your options? You can:
Feed your baby ahead of the family dinner and get her to bed on time.
Feed her at 7:00 P.M. with everyone else and then put her right to bed on a full stomach.
Feed her at 7:00 P.M. with the others and not put her to bed until 8:00 or 8:30 P.M.
Ask your sister whether she can change her family's dinner hour for the duration of your visit to accommodate your baby's schedule.
Obviously, the best solution is the one that disrupts your baby's schedule as little as possible — which would be the first option. Failing that, other solutions would depend on how comfortable you are asking your sister for favors, how flexible your sister is, and how feasible the schedule change is for the others in her family.
Fact
You may find that the changes you institute in your baby's schedule while on vacation work better for you even at home. But if not, get him back on track on his regular schedule as soon as you return home.
Scheduling Different Naptimes
But what if your brother-in-law, being a jovial and genial host, insists on taking you out to dinner several of the days you're there? What if your host is not used to cooking for large groups and is daunted by the prospect of cooking for so many people and insists that you're all going to eat out while you're there visiting? What if there are no reliable babysitters available or you don't have the money in the budget for hiring a sitter?
Now not only are you dealing with a family dinner hour that might be later than what you're accustomed to, but you're also dealing with eating in a restaurant, which is never as quick as eating at home. Nor can you get up and put the baby to bed in the middle of your dinner, as you would be able to do at home. What to do?
You're going to have to put the baby to bed late. You're certainly within your rights to politely request that you eat as early as is comfortable for your hosts to avoid getting your baby any further off schedule than is necessary. But accept the fact that there's going to be some schedule shifting. You're going to find yourself still sitting at the dinner table in the restaurant at ten minutes of eight, holding a fussy, sleepy baby or one who has gone to sleep on your shoulder, whose bedtime was almost two hours ago.
Special Problems for Cosleepers
If your family members are cosleepers and the mattress on the guest bed where you're vacationing is soft, you have yet another problem. A soft mattress is a hazard for your baby. Yet you can hardly demand that your hosts buy a new mattress for their bed. In a hotel, you can request the room with the firmest mattress that's available, but even that is no guarantee. If you can bring with you a portable crib that has a good, firm mattress, it would be worth the extra hassle to be sure your baby has a safe mattress to sleep on. And, though your baby will not be spending the night in bed with you, it's certainly the better of the two options. Perhaps you can put him to sleep on the hotel bed with you, then transfer him to the crib after he is soundly asleep.
Another potential problem for cosleepers is that the family members you're visiting may not approve. By exposing your sleeping arrangement to them, you are letting yourself in for a lot of negative commentary. There's no easy solution. Be prepared to meet their objections with persuasive arguments of your own, or prepare them in advance by telling them that the baby sleeps in with you and that you don't need a portable crib, thank you very much.
Alert!
Naps in the car do not affect a young infant who has not yet consolidated her sleep. The warning about disrupting sleep patterns only applies to older babies who sleep for long stretches at once.
