Maternity 33

week 9: baby travel and jet lag

Those of us who must travel for work, leisure, or to visit relatives enter a new dimension when we have children: airplanes and jet lag WITH children. If you found travel to be rough before you had kids, you are going to need to re-frame your thoughts on this topic, or you will end up house-bound, for fear that you can’t survive without your routine or your gear.

I go to France twice a year (16 hours door to door, 9 hour time difference) and Florida at least once a year (12 hours door to door, 6 hour time difference), and I’m something of a travel expert. In my old life, I used to pack 5 days before I took off and follow a strict jet lag diet before, during and right after air travel to avoid crankiness and illness. Today, these skills have been transformed to accommodate three other people and to keep alive our desire to leave our house! Here are a few tips on how to get through the first years of family travel.

On the plane:
1. Low expectations: I don’t have any advice on how to make travel pleasurable. The facts are grim. So you might as well face them. Expect long lines; expect the security folks not to help and to ask you to take your child’s shoes off, when you can barely keep your child in place. Expect the plane to be crowded. Expect your neighbors to huff and puff and make underhanded comments about how undisciplined your children are. Expect their ears to hurt. Expect them to sleep less than at home. Don’t bring a book; don’t bring your fancy noise canceling headphones; don’t expect to watch a movie. Pack your own lunch (which you should do anyways) so that you can eat when your child does, and not wait for the trays. Say no to the tray (it will end up on your lap anyways).
If you expect the worst, you’ll be agreeably surprised. You may even find pleasure in the fact that you get to stare in your child’s big bright eyes for 12 straight hours, uninterrupted: no cell phones, no dishes, no bedtime routine, no boss. Just you and your child (ren).

2. Know your (few) rights: Here are three things you should know to help you have a slightly better time:

• you are allowed to carry your baby (in a baby carrier) through security. If they ask you to unstrap your baby, you can challenge it and ask for a supervisor.

• children under two are FREE (you have to pay airport taxes for international travel), but they have a luggage allowance. You are allowed an extra carry on and extra weight in your checked luggage. Ask them the specifics at your time of reservation.
• you are allowed to bring your stroller through security and to the boarding gate. In the U.S. they will check it at the gate and return it at the gate when you land. In France, they will only let you take a very light stroller, and if you check it at the gate, you’ll have to go to over-sized luggage to find it. This is a real pain, so you should carry your  baby/toddler in a carrier, and leave the stroller at home.

When you arrive: to combat jet lag, you have to be ruthless in the first three days. Recall that the third day is the hardest so don’t give in. Here are the rules to follow.

1. immediate exposure to daylight: as soon as you are comfortably settled, run outside for an hour of fun and games. This helps re-set your body’s clock.

1. 2. no unusually long naps: if your children did not sleep in the plane, they will want to snooze upon arrival. A 2 hour, maybe 3 hour nap is OK, but absolutely no longer. If your child sleeps, make sure to then bring them out again (if you have not already done so) before bedtime.
2. 3. no food in the middle of the night: with babies, I don’t feed after midnight on the first night, and after 11pm during the first week. With toddlers, I’ll give him a snack on his first night and explain that the sun is asleep, so is everyone else in the house and he has to will himself back to sleep. If you feed your child in the night it will make it almost impossible to fight jet lag and they will end up sleeping all day. Hunger is the best way to get them out of bed.
3. wake up early in the morning: don’t let your children sleep too late in the first days and progressively bring it back to a normal waking time.

When in rome: the joy of travel is to shake up your preconceptions and refresh your mind and imagination. Don’t carry all your habits and schedules with you. In France in the spring and summer, days are long, and the sun sets much later than in California. Our friends and family dine later, and in the summer, children play late into the evening. So I adjust our family’s bedtimes and routines, to be in sync with people around us.