The A to ZZZZs of Safe Baby Sleep When Traveling

By Michelle Rowley, VacaDUN Baby Gear Rentals

Traveling with babies can be a fun, richly rewarding experience for the whole family. Whether it’s a trip flying across the country or a weekend trip driving in the country, “baby on board” can lead to great memories and a needed respite from the daily routine.

But home or away, babies need sleep. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, infants 4-12 months old need 12-16 hours of sleep every 24 hours, and kids 1-2 years need 11-14 hours. New environments – like hotels or rentals homes – can represent challenges to those goals and needs.

Another challenge is the availability of baby equipment on the road that’s appropriate for infant sleeping. Babies should never share a bed — soft mattresses and sleeping with adults run an unacceptable risk of entrapment and suffocation. Nor should a baby ever be placed on a couch or any flat surface not specifically designed and approved for infant sleep.

Whether it’s bringing gear from home – or renting from a baby equipment service like VacaDUN Baby Gear Rentals – parents increasingly have more options for safe baby sleeping. But be diligent and do your homework; the first priority is safety, and be sure the gear you’re bringing or renting has safety standards first on the list.

Sleep can be in a bassinet, crib, travel crib or play yard such as a pack ‘n play that conforms to current United States Consumer Protection Safety Commission safety standards (i.e. slates spacing less than 2 3/8″, firm mattress with a snug fit to the crib, no drop sides).

Keep in mind that according to experts, “bassinets” (small baby beds with low walls) should only be used until about 5 months. Once your baby can sit up, usually around 6 months, he/she needs something with higher walls, such as a Pack ‘n Play or a real crib.

PACK N PLAYS & PORTABLE CRIBS

Pack ‘n plays – also called playards and playpens – are economical, safe choices for travel. There are many options, for example:

• The Lotus Everywhere by Guava is a portable crib with a unique zippered side opening for snuggling with a sleeping baby. This eco-health option uses materials without flame-retardants and has a soft mattress. According to Guava, the Everywhere has a “greengold” standard certification and is free of flame retardant chemicals.

• The Graco Pack ‘n Play is a quality travel crib and playard for infants to toddlers. It’s great for on the go sleeping. Most families will be pleased with the features, functionality and overall quality of the Pack ‘n Play, especially since it comes with a bassinet, play mobile, diaper storage bag and a changing station making it one of the full-featured options available.

CRIBS

If your child is beyond the newborn stage, baby cribs are usually the go-to option. But beware – not all hotel or rental cribs are created equal, and not all have updated safety features or come with the most appropriate options.

For example, it’s important to have a firm crib mattress until your baby reaches the toddler stages. Softer, cushion-like sleep surfaces for infants may lead to suffocation due to the mattress forming to your baby’s body and face. Your baby should sleep on a firm mattress— an important aspect of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) prevention. All babies need to sleep alone in the crib on a firm, fitted mattress with a fitted sheet only. Your baby should never sleep with anything else in the crib.

This means no bedding such as blankets, quilts, or sheets. And, no crib bumpers, pillows, or stuffed animals. If the hotel or rental agency offers these features with the baby crib, be sure to decline or find another alternative provider for your baby equipment.

When your crib is set up, place two fingers in between the mattress and the crib. If you can fit more than two fingers in the space, ask for another crib or mattress, as it increases the risk of the legs, arms, and head getting stuck in the unsafe space. If it passes that test, press on the mattress with your hand. If the mattress holds firm and spring back in place quickly, it’s firm enough.

When you’re all set, place the baby on his or her back to sleep. Avoid sleep positioners that keep your baby in one position while sleeping to reduce the risk of suffocation. Any other position can increase the risk of SIDS.

A great option for a crib rental:

• Dream on Me 2-in-1 – Meets CPSC and American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) safety. Unique hinges allow the crib to fold flat for compact storage or travel. Included is the stationary (non-drop side) rail design, which provides the utmost in product safety. Made of solid pine, this portable crib is one of the most convenient portable cribs on the market.

There’s not a firm age when babies should stop sleeping in baby cribs, but parents should consider switching to a toddler bed once your little one starts climbing or is more than 35-inches tall. According to Andi Metzler, a Certified Child Sleep Consultant based in Ventura, CA it’s appropriate for most children to make the switch sometime between the ages of 2 ½ and 3 ½. In fact, it’s often best to wait until your child is closer to three since many just aren’t ready to make the transition.

Regardless if it’s a pack-n-play or crib, it’s also critical your baby’s sleeping arrangement is close enough so that you can see the baby and easily respond to the need for comforting, and feeding and monitoring. Speaking of monitoring…..

BABY MONITORING

If you are using a baby monitor that plugs into a wall, be careful that the cord from a baby monitor is not close to the crib, as a baby can strangle or choke. Wireless monitors are recommended for those reasons. One monitor recommended by Dr. Craig Canapari, a pediatrician at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, is the VTech Baby Monitor. It’s a simple, affordable monitoring option that doesn’t overly complicate with technology and provides audio and visual monitoring.

WRAPPING IT UP…..

Parents have places to go, people to see, and fun to have. Don’t be tethered to home worrying about how your baby will snooze on the road. The next time you’re booking a room in some faraway place or just going for a weekend road trip, try these strategies to get your baby to sleep anywhere. Safely!

About the Guest Author

Michelle Rowley is a co-founder and chief marketing officer of VacaDUN Baby Gear Rentals of Orange County, CA. She and partner Reggie Bautista founded VacaDUN to provide traveling families with better options for safe, family travel on the road with a wider array of quality, affordable baby equipment. She loves meeting kids and families from all around the world who travel to Southern California and is thrilled to meet people who are nearly as short as she is, albeit temporarily.

Getting Your Partner Involved. Magical Solution?

At the risk of generalizing here, it’s been my experience that there’s usually one parent who handles the bulk of the nighttime responsibilities.

And that parent, in a man/woman relationship, is almost always Mom.

Now, before you go accusing me of sexism of stereotyping, I’d just like to point out that there’s a reason this happens. As a sleep consultant, I don’t get called into situations where both parents are contributing equally, and where baby’s not relying on any external props, and everyone sleeps soundly through the night.

Anyone who calls a sleep consultant in that situation either has money to burn, or has mistaken me for a dream interpreter.

I’m usually contacted by parents who are having issues getting their babies to sleep, and that’s almost always because baby’s got an external sleep prop that they use to get back to sleep when they wake in the night.

And the most common prop I see, by far, is nursing, which pretty much leaves Dad out of the equation.

Now, this is a problem for a couple of reasons. Obviously, if baby’s waking up six times a night and demanding Mom come in to nurse her back to sleep, that’s taxing on mother and baby.

But there’s another person who tends to suffer in this scenario, and that’s Dad. It might be hard to imagine, if you’re currently reading this in the middle of the night with a baby hanging off your breast, listening to your husband snoring contentedly from the other room, but it’s true.

Dads, the vast majority of them anyway, want to be great dads. They want to have an active role in bringing up their kids, and they love it when they feel like they’re succeeding in that role.

But because Mom is the one with the magical breast milk, Dad often feels powerless to help out in the sleep department, which means Mom’s up every time baby cries, and Dad, while sympathetic, can’t do much but go back to sleep.

This can lead to some hostility from a sleep deprived Mom, who feels like she’s doing more than her share, and some defensiveness from Dad, who gets to feeling attacked for something he has no control over.

But here’s the good news for both of you…

If you’ve decided to give sleep training a try, it often goes better if Dad takes the lead.

That’s right! Take a load off, Mom. Dad’s taking point on this one. Because Dad doesn’t nurse, and baby knows it. So when it comes to breaking the association between nursing and falling asleep, baby tends to learn quicker and respond better when Dad comes into the room during the first few nights of baby learning to fall asleep independently.

Here’s the funny thing. Whenever I gave this little tidbit on a couple I’m working with, Mom lets out a big woot-woot and teases Dad about how much fun he’s going to have getting up six times in the night.

But then, night one, as soon as baby starts to cry, Mom shoots out of bed and goes straight into baby’s room. Or even more regularly, Mom stands in the doorway instructing Dad on the right way to settle Baby back down, and corrects him every step of the way.

I have literally sent full-grown women to their rooms in this scenario.

If Dad’s going to get involved, him and Baby have to find their own rhythm, and Mom needs to have little to no part in it. And as much as they always say they’ll have no problem letting their husbands take the wheel, when it comes down to the moment of truth, many women have trouble giving up control.

So remember, Dad might just be the magical solution to your baby’s sleep issues, but you’re going to have to let him take over. Take heart though. Most of my clients see dramatic improvements in their baby’s sleep in just a couple of nights, so you won’t have to control yourself for long.

After that, you and your partner will have the evenings back to yourselves, and your whole family can get back to sleeping through the night.