How to Manage Naps Over the Festive Season
This time of year can be very challenging when it comes to naps and trying to maintain some sort of structure with your daily routine. Whether you're travelling, hosting, or just navigating a busier-than-usual social calendar, sleep is often the first thing to take a hit.
Tips to Minimise the Disruption to Sleep & Behaviour
Maintain Your Routine
Aim to keep your regular routine for meals, naps, and bedtimes. If your baby's bedtime ritual at home includes a bath, story, and a bottle, ensure you do the same while you're away — or even if you have friends and family over.
Practice with the Portacot Before You Travel
For those going away, practice sleeping in the porta/travel cot approximately one week before you intend to travel. Set up the porta cot in your baby's bedroom and practice sleeping your child in it — this allows them to become comfortable in a familiar environment first. If your child wakes up, put them back in the cot. Each night, try to extend the duration in the porta cot.
Replicate Your Home Sleep Environment
Bring along your cot sheets and favourite blanket. The new environment will then feel and smell like home — babies and toddlers rely heavily on their sense of smell, so familiar bedding makes a huge difference to how settled they feel.
Introduce a Comforter Before the Trip
Consider introducing a comforter before your trip for added comfort in a foreign place. A familiar lovey or soft toy can become a powerful anchor when everything else is unfamiliar.
Keep the Sleep Environment Dark
Maintain a dark sleep environment as this will eliminate early rising and help your baby link sleep cycles. A portable blackout blind or even a couple of dark towels over the window can be a game-changer when sleeping somewhere new.
Squeeze in Naps Where You Can
If your child is still napping, ensure you get naps in wherever possible — whether that's in the pram, the car, or even in the carrier. A cat nap is far better than no nap at all, which will leave you with an overtired child by the end of the day.
What happens on holidays stays on holidays. Sometimes you have to go into survival mode — maybe you co-slept, maybe naps happened in the carrier, maybe bedtime was 9pm instead of 7pm. This doesn't mean you have to continue doing so when you return home.
When you get home, you can immediately re-establish your regular sleep routines — and within a couple of nights your little sleeper will be back on track.