Time Zone Travel with 6-month old
 

I had posted a discussion about finding childcare in Hawaii for a trip we have planned. I ended up finding a great situation for us to get a babysitter for a few days - someone i knew well in college who actually lives there.

My wife was reading about time zone adjustment for babies. How hard will it be on him being 6 mos. old and having a 5-6 hour time difference? He will still be nursing at that time hopefully.

In my experience, most 6-month-olds don't have much of a sense of time yet anyway, especially if they're nursing and not yet sleeping through the night. Expect a day or two of jumbled sleeping habits and then a settled pattern.

During your travels his sleep patterns will likely get disrupted enough that by the time you arrive it will all be new - he may sleep or be awake onplane at times not usual for hi. When we traveled with young kids across time zones, they had a much easier time adjusting to time differences than we did.

Once we were so silly as to try to morph our first's sleep patterns by a half hour each day for a week before we left - all that accomplished was to make everyone really cranky.

ttt

I agree that his "sleep patterns" really aren't defined by the time zone but by nursing/eating (empty belly/full belly).

I nursed both my kids and they both started flying @ 3 months old. Time zones didn't affect them until they were a year old. We took 8 yr old son to Kauai (from the East coast) when he was 15 months old - we saw every sunrise, but never a sunset! LOL! I don't think the time zone switches affect them until they're toddlers and they're entering "normal" sleep cycles.

I think you'll be in fine shape. Best of luck!

Thanks for the input. We kind of figured that we would be more messed up by the time difference than he would be. We're looking forward to it.