134. Sleep While Traveling With A Baby With Guest Eva Klein

We like to travel with our kids (even our babies) because one, it's fun and two, we don't really have a babysitter to leave them home with. If you're nervous about traveling with your little one because you think you won't get any sleep, then you won't want to miss today's guest episode with Eva Klein from My Sleeping Baby.

Eva's free sleep masterclass called "How to get your little one consistently sleeping 11-12 hours at night so you can feel like a functioning human".
Say "hi" to Eva on Insta: ​​@mysleepingbaby
Visit Eva's website here

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Read the full transcript here:

Welcome to the Breezy Babies podcast, where we talk about all things boobs, babies and breastfeeding. This is episode 134, sleep While Traveling with a Baby. I'm Bree the IBCLC and I made Breezy Babies with you in mind to help ease your transition into parenthood. Becoming a parent changes your life in every way imaginable. Bumps in the road are going to come up as you move into your new role, but my goal is to help smooth out those bumps and help you become the most confident parent you can be. With good education and support, I know you can meet your breastfeeding and parenting goals. Let's do this together. Hello, how are you? Welcome to 2023. I am back in the office after a great couple of weeks off. I didn't totally take off the last two weeks over Christmas and New Year's, but I didn't do a lot of work. Luckily, I had a lot of podcasts recorded before taking off that time. I still was doing consultations both in person and telehealth, but I didn't really do a whole lot more than that. I spent time with my family and just enjoyed a little bit of a break. I hope that your New Year is going just great as well. I'm so excited to talk to you today about Sleep while traveling with Kids. We have traveled with our kids their whole lives. If you don't remember, we have four kids at the time of this recording. They are eleven, nine, seven, and then our baby is one. So we have preaching all the way down to little tiny baby. We have taken them to Disneyland when they were very, very young. We have gone to San Diego with our kids. Caribbean cruises, even cancun. My husband and I have done a small handful of trips with just the two of us, but the majority of our trips have been as a family. Now, you might be wondering, why is that? Why would you do that to yourself? Well, the biggest reason is that we don't really have many options for leaving our kids at home. We don't have any obvious babysitters like a family member that's just happy to watch our kids at any given time. Now, I know what you're thinking, well, who does have that? Who does have a family member or friend who can just be willing to watch your kids anytime, anywhere? Well, we know a lucky few that do have that. I know a couple of them personally. We have some close friends who can book out a two week vacation and have all three of their kids cover to stay with family. No problemo. We, on the other hand, don't really have that luxury. In fact, we've been planning a couple's vacation to celebrate all the guys in our friend group turning 40 as of this recording. I still have no idea who is going to be watching our kids or Gamma Matt. But I am determined to make it happen. We'll figure something out, right? Anyway, so that's the biggest reason that we love to take our kids on vacation. It's such a headache to find sitters that, honestly, a lot of time, it's just easier to take them. Reason number two is that my parents have been very generous to let us travel with them, and they always want our kids to come as well. Without them, honestly, we couldn't have afforded a chunk of the vacations that we've been on, to tell you the truth. And last but not least, we do like traveling with our kids. Yes, it is hard. Yes, it's a lot of work, but we have made so many fun family memories that I just live for. And can I just start by saying that traveling with kids is a trip, not a vacation. But nonetheless, we do still like to take our kids. So because of those three things, we do travel with our kids, even our young kids often. One other reason is that my husband used to travel to San Diego often when our two girls were very young. At the time where he traveled a lot to San Diego. I was working as a registered nurse on the postpartum unit, and I could usually swing, stacking all my shifts in a row so that I could travel with my husband to San Diego on his work trip. All I had to do was pay for my plane ticket and the rest hotel, food, that was all taken care of. During the day, I just hung out at the hotel, I ate the hot breakfast. Then I would go on a walk with my two girls. They were pretty young at the time. We'd find a local park, just pretend to be local, hang out, walk back. I would put the baby down for a nap and then just hang out till my husband was done with his class. Then we'd usually go out for the night, eat someplace local, or do a fun activity. We just thought it was fun to be somewhere else, especially with beautifully perfect weather. That's in San Diego if you live there. I am very jealous of your weather, especially right now in the winter when here in Utah we have lots of snow. But I just figured I would rather go with him instead of being home alone while he was gone. And we were able to make that trip happen a few times. He doesn't travel anymore. He hasn't for years, honestly. At least he hasn't traveled for work, especially not through COVID. That really died off once COVID started. But we really love those memories of us in San Diego with our young baby and young babies a couple of times that we've gone. Anyway, all that to say is that, yes, we do like to travel with kids. I mean, we do have four kids, so if we didn't travel with them, then we wouldn't really travel much at all. Let's be honest, it's really hard to find someone willing to take four kids. I personally have loads of tips and tricks on traveling with babies and all the things breastfeeding related, especially, you know, I would have that. But I will be the first to admit that I am not a sleep trainer. So if you have questions about sleep while traveling with a baby, then it's your lucky day, because I have an expert speaker for you. But before I introduce her to you, I want to let you know that today's podcast is brought to you by Amara, a baby food company that does things differently. Amara is what I stock up in my kitchen for when I need grab and go quick meals for my 13 month old Amara's. Baby food is organic. It looks, smells, and tastes homemade. Plus, one cool thing is that you can rehydrate the water, the powder with water, or your breast milk. I love that option. If you could take a peek into my pantry right now, you'd see packets of black bean and sweet corn. Also oats and berries. Mila loves them, but her absolute favorite are the mango carrot smoothie melts. I like to throw them in my diaper bag for on the go snack. They don't have any added sugar, just good, clean ingredients. And you better believe that for our upcoming trip, we do have one upcoming where we're taking our kids. You better believe I'm going to be taking some Amara on our trip, not only for snacks, but also for quick meals that I can rehydrate on the go. If you and your little one would like some Amara in your life, then before you order, let me share a discount code with you. Go to Amaraorganicfoods.com and use my affiliate discount code. Breezy 20 for 20% off. That's Breezy 20 for 20% off. All right, let's get back to sleep. While traveling with kids, you may remember that last week I did an episode on Disneyland. We slept on the go while we were on that trip. And for our upcoming trip that we have, we're not going to Disneyland. We're doing a little bit of a different trip this time. I don't know if we're going to do the same with always sleeping on the go. We're going to have a little bit different sleeping arrangements. And anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about it after we get back and how it went. I'm sure it's going to be a very different trip than our Disneyland vacation, but I am so excited for you to hear from my guest today as I listen to her recording. I was taking some notes myself as we're preparing for our upcoming trip. So let me introduce my podcast guest for you today. Her name is Eva Klein. She's from my sleeping baby. Eva is a certified infant and child sleep consultant again, she's the founder of My Sleeping Baby and the sleep Bible program. Her main goal is to help her clients establish healthy sleep habits for their children, which I love. I cannot tell you PS how many clients I meet with for lactation related things. And almost always baby sleep comes up in our consultations. So back to Eva. After experiencing she goes on to say after experiencing the debilitating effects of chronic sleep deprivation from her middle child, eva was inspired to help her families to help families overcome their sleep challenges. Eva has completed her sleep consulting certification and she's also a member of the association of Professional Sleep Consultants. She also completed the 2016 Infant Mental Health Community Training through the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Eva has her Bachelor of Arts from York University and her law degree from the University of Western Ontario. Eva is a proud wife and mom of two girls and a boy, which she adds in parentheses, who are all great sleepers, of course. Right? Of course. A sleep trainer is going to have great sleepers and she lives with her family in Toronto. She provides individual sleep consultations, facilitates group seminars, and runs an online sleep program. Are you so excited to hear from Eva? She truly is an expert in this field. She is going to share her top three tips for sleeping while traveling with kids, and I'm going to go ahead and turn the time over to her now. Hi everyone. My name is Eva Klein, and I am the owner and founder of my Sleeping Baby and the sleep I will program And I am so happy to be here today to talk to you all about my top three sleep tips for traveling with your little ones. Thankfully, many people are back to traveling and visiting family and going and seeing the world. But of course, this can add a bit of a struggle in the sleep department when you've got babies and toddlers and preschoolers. So I want to talk through my biggest pieces of advice for you so that you can hopefully keep your little one sleep intact and then get them back on the right foot when you are back at home. I would say most important, not necessarily the most important, I would say, but my first tip that I would give you with regards to sleep and travel is to try and recreate your little ones sleep environment as much as you can in terms of what they are used to at home. So bring your white noise machine with bring your little ones special lovey or binky if they have if they sleep in a sleep sack, bring the sleep sack. If you listen to a lullaby as part of your bedtime routine or maybe you read your little one special story. Bring that with you so that this way it adds a certain level of familiarity to your little one sleep environment, which is going to be inherently calming and soothing to them, right? Remember that this is a brand new sleep space. They've never slept in this place before or at least haven't been here in a very long time and what's unfamiliar might be a little bit scary to them. So adding those pieces of familiarity from home is really going to help with getting them to adjust to their new sleep space. And then on that note, when it comes to getting your little ones adjusting to this new space, I would definitely encourage you to incorporate some play time with them while they are in this new space. Maybe while they're in their pack and play or travel crib or bed or wherever they're going to be sleeping because that's going to also really allow them to warm up to this new space and become that much more comfortable being in there when it is time to go to sleep. So that is tip number one. Do your best to recreate your little one's sleep environment as much as you possibly can. Bring all the gear that they are used to sleep with, sleeping with so that this space is as familiar to them as possible. Okay? Tip number two. Do your very best to stick to your little one's sleep schedule as much as you can. Now I totally get that. If you have an eight month old baby that's usually taking two naps a day in the crib at home and you're on vacation, you're probably not going to want to have to head back to your hotel or your airbnb or wherever you're staying two to three times a day for your little one to be napping. Because it sort of defeats the purpose of going on a vacation. I get that. So maybe that means that rather than your little one taking both of these naps in the crib, maybe it means that they take the first nap of the day in the crib in the morning and then the afternoon nap. Maybe they'll take on the go in the stroller, in a baby carrier in the car. I know that we don't usually want naps on the go to be a normal regular day to day thing because the quality of sleep that they get usually isn't as good. Oftentimes you might even be looking at shorter naps if they're on the go versus in the crib. But if you're on vacation and you're traveling this is obviously an exception. This is not the day to day rule and I would much rather your little one get in that nap on the go versus not get that nap at all. So do your best to make sure that your little one is sleeping more or less when they need to be sleeping and then just feel free to substitute a crib nap for a nap on the go instead. And then the same thing goes for bedtime. Like if you know that your little one is usually tired by let's say 738 o'clock, maybe it means if you can, you can get a babysitter so that your little one is able to go to sleep on time. If that's not practical just because of the type of vacation that you're on, it might be a matter of maybe offering that two nap baby a third nap, which they don't usually take, but then, at least this way, it allows you to go out for dinner and not have a really crabby, unhappy baby in the process, right? You can actually enjoy your meal with your family. So maybe adding in that extra nap or allowing your baby to sleep in the stroller while you're out, which, again, might not be something that you do on a regular basis, but it could very well just end up being a way for you to be able to figure out how to all make how to make this work. But at the same time, I will just also mention that there are some babies that do just fine going to bed a little bit later than usual as long as it's not a regular thing day in and day out over a longer period of time. So you might not need to make any of these adjustments and they'll be just fine at that restaurant. But overall I would say to do the best you can to keep their schedule down pat within reason. And then the third and final tip that I would give you and I think that this is actually the most important piece of advice when it comes to sleep and travel and that is that when you get back home, get them back on track, back to their regular former sleep routine as quickly as possible. Because, let's face it, depending on the type of trip that you're going on, maybe you are flying and you're spending the entire day at the airport. Or maybe you're also dealing with a time change. Or maybe none of this was the case, but your little one just did not sleep well when you were away on vacation. And you may have introduced some new sleep habits that you don't want in the long run. Maybe your little one was falling asleep by themselves in the crib but then when you were on vacation they were sleeping in your bed. Now, if that's not something that you want in the long run, then what I would definitely recommend is get them out of your bed, back into their crib as quickly as possible because new habits form in a matter of days and it doesn't take long for a baby to get used to something very, very quickly. So what you want to be asking yourself is any of these habits that you created while you were away, do you want these to stick around for the grand scheme of things? If the answer is no, then you're going to want to get them back onto their schedule, back onto their routine. You might need to do a little bit of resleep training again in the name of eliminating those unwanted habits that may have been acquired while you were out and about enjoying your trip. So as long as you nip it in the bud, it really shouldn't take longer than a few days to get your little one back on track. And then you should go back to having the wickedly awesome sleeper that you had before. So to summarize my top three pieces of advice for maintaining your little one sleep when traveling. Piece of advice number one is recreate your little one sleep environment from home. Bring all the gear with you. Bring your wind down routine with you. Bring as much that you possibly can with you to add familiarity to this new space. Number two, do your best to keep your little one on schedule as much as you can without it, of course, ruining your vacation in the process. And then number three, get that baby, that toddler, that preschooler back on track when it comes to the habits that they had before you went on vacation. If you don't want those new habits sticking around for the grand scheme of things, that's about it. Thanks so much, everyone, for listening. I really appreciate your time and I hope you all have a wonderful day and that you enjoy your vacation, whatever that might look like. There you have it. Isn't Eva so great? I love how she summarized those top three tips for you at the very end there. She, like I said, taught me a lot. And I took a lot of notes for her upcoming trip myself. And I hope that you enjoyed this podcast episode just as much as I did. If you want to say hi to Eva, go on over to at, my Sleeping baby on Instagram. You can say hello to her. If you would like her free Sleep Master class, I will have the link in the show notes. That Sleep Master class is called how to Get Your Little One Sleeping consistently sleeping eleven to 12 hours at night so you can feel like a functioning human. That will all be in the show notes. And thank you so much to Eva for coming on and sharing a little bit of her expertise. Happy traveling to you all. I can't wait to come back and talk to you again next week. Have a good one. And of course, I'm going to leave you with you are strong, you are smart, you are beautiful, you're a good friend to all. Bye.