Without a good night sleep your baby will become a cranky little traveller. You will likely to become a cranky parent too!
At home we are quite strict our son’s sleep routine. The pay off? When travelling – his nap and evening sleep times is almost like clock work! So we get to accurately guess when he will nap.
For example when we visited Germany when Berlin was 11 months old, he naps twice a day. Usually in late morning and again in late afternoon. We always use this time wisely. Mainly to do things he doesn’t necessarily enjoy doing for too long, like visiting museums or enjoy afternoon tea – places that doesn’t suit noisy children.
Nap times is also a good time for you to recharge and be in the moment as a couple. When you travel with a child, you tend to focus all your energy to their needs. Often we forget about our own needs. So that nap time is an absolute golden moment!
Here are our 3 Baby Sleeping Tips while Family Travelling:
1. Good sleep habit
Preparation for this start well before your first trip. One thing we always do from the early weeks is to put Berlin to bed and wake him up at the same time. It was rarely successful at the beginning but now Berlin sleeps like clockwork. In the past year he sleeps through from 8-8:30pm and wakes up just before 7am each morning. Knowing his bed time, we don’t schedule activities beyond his bedtime even when travelling
2. Sleep time routine
In leading up to his bedtime we avoid over stimulating him, “In the Night Garden” used to be a good “lead up show” for our son. We don’t give him snacks just before sleeping either. We would switch a few lights off on the way to his room. Put him into his sleeping bag and put him to bed after singing a few short nursery rhymes (we mainly made up the words 
)
3. Familiar sleep setup
Whenever we travel we look for every opportunity to have the same sleep setup no matter how often we switch hotels. In our first few trips there was usually a baby cot setup in the same room, we also brought his musical song projector (which had cows spinning around). We played it 3-4 times and that used to make him really happy before dozing off. He would also wear the same PJs and swaddle/sleeping bag as he would at home. In our recent trips we brought a portable cot, as Berlin prefers to sleep in his own bed rather than cosleep with us. He also listens to background music in first few hours of his nightly sleep, so we downloaded some songs and load it to the iPad.
