What 8 Weeks in London Reminded Me About Children's Sleep
This summer, our family did something that felt both exciting and a little intimidating.
My husband had the opportunity to work in London for the summer, so we packed up our almost 4-year-old, our 6-month-old, and somehow fit everything we needed into six checked bags (including two travel cribs!).
For eight weeks, London became home.
As someone who spends every day talking about sleep, I couldn't help but smile at all of the things that could have worried me (and, if I'm being honest, occasionally did).
A 10.5-hour flight.
An eight-hour time difference.
Completely new bedrooms.
Pack 'n Plays instead of full-size cribs.
SlumberPods instead of blackout nurseries.
Sunset close to 10:00 p.m.
Sunrise around 4:45 a.m.
If you've spent any time on parenting Instagram, that's basically a checklist of everything you're told not to do.
And I was genuinely curious. I mean, I knew my kids would sleep "perfectly." I don't even know what that means. I was curious what would actually matter.
What would turn out to be challenging? What was I worrying about that didn't really deserve the attention?
As it turns out, not surprisingly I suppose, many of the things I thought and worried about beforehand ended up being much smaller than I imagined.
We packed surprisingly light. Six checked bags for eight weeks as a family of 4 felt like a small miracle.
We brought the things that made bedtime feel familiar: travel cribs, two SlumberPods, two Nanits, the same crib sheets they slept on during previous vacations, a couple of favorite stuffed animals, and a handful of books my son loves.
Looking back, there definitely wasn't one magical item for them. (but as parents, we would probably equate the nanits and slumberpods to magic)
For the kids, it was the combination of familiar things that mattered.
Bath.
Pajamas.
Books.
Songs (and for my son...lots and lots of songs).
The same goodnight hugs.
The same bedtime phrases.
By the third or fourth night, I remember thinking,
"This feels surprisingly normal."
I've thought about that a lot. People often ask me what they should buy before traveling.
A SlumberPod?
A travel sound machine?
Blackout curtains?
These things can absolutely help. But I think the timing of when you introduce them matters the most.
My kids have slept in SlumberPods since they were babies. We use them on vacation. We've used them for naps at friends' houses. We've set them up in hotel rooms and unfamiliar bedrooms. So when we put a SlumberPod over a Pack 'n Play in London, that part of the experience wasn't new to them at all.
Same with white noise. We didn't save our travel sound machine for travel. We've used it for stroller naps and naps away from their bedrooms. It's another sound they've heard while falling asleep many, many times.
Even the crib sheets we packed had been used on previous trips.
I think that's one of the most useful things I've taken away from traveling with my own kids: you really don't prepare for travel the week before you leave.
We've been preparing for it since they were born.
When we've had an opportunity for them to sleep somewhere other than their bedrooms, we've taken it. They've napped in strollers. They've slept at grandparents' houses and friends' houses. They've slept in travel cribs. We've used the portable versions of the things we use at home.
And through all of it, we've kept the basic structure of sleep pretty boring and predictable.
Bath, pajamas, books, songs, bed.
So London was new but the cues around sleep really weren't.
I think there's a lot of freedom in that. You don't have to recreate your child's nursery every time you leave home. A few things can go a long way when your child has already learned what those things mean.
Make it stand out
As for the actual travel and eight weeks away, there were definitely some things that went really well and others we had to work through.
Our flight left San Francisco around 1:00 p.m., which worked out pretty well for us. My son usually naps around 1:30, so he eventually took a very late "nap" on the plane that happened to line up fairly well with nighttime in London.
When we landed the next morning, we got outside.
A lot.
Thankfully, London was in the middle of a heatwave, so finding daylight wasn't exactly difficult - in fact it was impossible to avoid. We walked, explored, stayed active and spent as much of that first day outside as we could.
Our son was tired. We let him take a slightly longer nap that afternoon and then got right back to his usual schedule.
There were some middle-of-the-night wake-ups during those first few days. Sometimes he wanted one of us to come in and sit with him for a few minutes. I think he mostly wanted reassurance that we were still there.
We'd go in, keep it pretty uneventful, remind him that it was still nighttime and that he could rest even if he wasn't sleepy.
After a few nights, I started hearing him talking to his stuffed animals through the monitor instead of calling for us. He'd make up songs, talk to them for a while and eventually fall back asleep.
I loved that. He carried what he knew from home that being awake for a little while in his crib in the middle of the night was okay.
Bedtime was probably the bigger challenge over the eight weeks.
And his argument was pretty solid. The sun was still out. People were walking around outside. Kids were playing. We'd spent the day doing fun things in a new city and he wanted to keep going.
He definitely pushed bedtime more in London than he typically does in San Francisco.
So we acknowledged it.
"I know. It is weird to go to bed when the sun is still out."
"I know. You wish you could stay up and keep playing."
And bedtime still happened.
We kept our tone neutral and the routine stayed basically the same. We weren't coming up with a new response every night or adding five more books because he was having a hard time. He knew what came next because it was what had always come next.
There were nights when we chose to stay out later too. We were living in London for eight weeks. We wanted to enjoy it.
We had dinners with friends. We walked through Hyde Park in the evening. We explored neighborhoods. Occasionally bedtime was later.
Then the next day was just the next day. We went back to the schedule.
I think that's an important distinction when I talk about consistency. Consistency doesn't mean your child goes to bed at exactly the same minute every night or that you organize your entire life around sleep.
For us, it means there is a pretty clear baseline. Our kids know their routines. They know roughly when sleep happens. They know how we respond at bedtime. So there's room for an evening that looks different without needing to reinvent everything afterward.
After eight weeks, I probably came away believing even more strongly in something very unexciting: practice the boring stuff at home.
Use the travel crib before the big trip.
Let your baby nap somewhere other than the nursery occasionally.
Use the portable white noise machine during a stroller nap.
If you know you'll use a SlumberPod when you travel, let it become familiar before you're dealing with jet lag in another country.
Have a bedtime routine you can do almost anywhere without bringing half your house with you.
And then keep doing it.
That's really what helped us in London.
We still dealt with jet lag. My son still woke up at night. He still protested bedtime. The 4:45 a.m. sunrise was very real.
But none of those things felt like we needed to start over.
We had something familiar to fall back on.
And that left a lot more room for the part of the trip I really wanted to focus on: living in London with our kids for a summer.
Double-decker buses. The Tube. New playgrounds. Long mornings in Hyde Park. Late dinners. A completely different city becoming normal surprisingly quickly.
Eight weeks later, I think they both became a little more comfortable sleeping somewhere new.
We had something familiar to fall back on.
And that left a lot more room for the part of the trip I really wanted to focus on: living in London with our kids for a summer.
Double-decker buses. The Tube. New playgrounds. Long mornings in Hyde Park. Late dinners. A completely different city becoming normal surprisingly quickly.
Eight weeks later, I think they both became a little more comfortable sleeping somewhere new.
And I probably became a little more confident letting them.
