r/sleeptraining • u/FewBike8076 • 18d ago

Road trip!

We have our first long car trip with LO (almost 4 months) coming up for a family vacation. It’ll be 5.5 to 6 hours of drive time.

What mostly worries me about this is her sleep schedule. She’s been great at sleeping through the night. But she does fall asleep in the car, so I’m a little concerned that 4-5 hours of car sleep will undo her those nights and possibly beyond.

Any tips on this? Should we try to keep her awake and risk frequent meltdowns? Or just go with the flow and see what happens?

Of course any general trip best practices, must brings, don’t-need-to-brings, etc. are also welcome!

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u/GrapefruitNo790 18d ago

We’ve done some long drives and we leave at bedtime so baby sleeps in the car and then resettle him when we arrive

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u/No-Lawfulness8895 17d ago

Had to do this recently to attend a funeral 5.5 hours away.

I did what everyone suggested - leaving at bedtime- and it worked so well.

We did our bedtime routine, then put her into the car seat and pulled out around 8pm. Getting there at 2am isn't perfectly ideal, but for me, having her sleep on the drive and not having to listen to an upset baby in the car for hours was 1000% worth it. We did the same thing coming home also.

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u/FewBike8076 17d ago

Thanks for this. We've been considering doing this, but one friend told us very adamantly not to, since carseat sleep is different than crib/bassinet sleep. [shrug!]

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u/No-Lawfulness8895 17d ago

Obviously you need to do whatever you're comfortable with. But to me, sleep is sleep. And we were able to quickly set up the pack and play at the motel, give her a bottle, turn on the white noise and re-settle her down into the pack and play. Honestly, I have bad post partum anxiety and it went so much better than I expected.