Infant sleeping in the same room....

[Dawna]

I'm concerned about how our 14mo DS will sleep in the same hotel room with me, DH, DD 8 and DD 9. He is normally a very good sleeper but he is used to sleeping alone with no distraction. Anyone have any tips on what to bring or what to do to make the actual hotel stay better when travelling with an infant?

Thanks,
Dawna

 

[jel0511]

IMO it depends on which hotel you're staying at. If its a moderate or a value, I'd be concerned. When we stayed at a value with just DH, myself and our DD (2 at the time) she wouldn't sleep, because she knew we were there. It wasn't horrible, but I wouldn't do it again. At the deluxes, we were able to place the pack-n-play back in the area near the sink and turn off all lights back there. It was like a little quiet room back there and DS was able to fall asleep rather easily without distractions. When we couldn't put his pack-n-play back there because we were at the Poly where that is impossible, he'd sit there and stare at us also. The only way around it is to put the baby in bed and then have "lights out" for everyone.

 

[BevS97]

at the caribbean beach there is a curtain across the sink area, so you could put the pack and play behind the curtain.

to be honest, on vacation we normally just put the baby in bed with us, we tend to all stay out till we are tired and then go to bed together anyway, and if we want to watch tv, then I just put the baby in with us while we are watching tv and if she is tired she will fall asleep, otherwise, she will fall asleep when we switch the lights off

 

[MickeyHereWeCome!]

I was concerned about this as well. My baby is 5 months old, and is used to sleeping well in his own crib with noone with him. I was sure he'd end up in bed with us! I was pleasantly surprised at how well he did. We never had to move him to our bed, and he never cried to get out or be with us!!

I brought along his pacifier and his blanky. I was tempted to bring one of the music soothers that we keep in his crib, but decided to risk not having one. I think the fact that he was exhausted helped a lot. He nodded right off to sleep whenever we put him in the crib.

Oh, we stayed at ASmo, so we didn't have a private area for him. We just dimmed the lights. We also put all the kids to bed at the same time and stayed with them in bed until all were asleep, so there wasn't any movement or t.v. at that time. We waited until the kids had drifted off, and then did whatever we wanted or put the t.v. on a low volume!

Good luck....you're going to have so much fun

 

[CEDmom]

I'd have your DH take your older children somewhere so they're out of the room while you go through your usual bedtime routine with younger child. Maybe you could even bring along your baby monitor so that you could all stay outside but near the room until the rest of you are ready to go to bed.

 

[tricia]

I used to just bring a chair out the door, leave it proped open a bit and let DS have the room to himself for 20 minutes. Bring a book outside, or people watch and enjoy the quiet time.

 

[NotUrsula]

Just a note re: television noise after kids are asleep... use the closed-captioning.

All the TV's have closed captioning available, I know this b/c I am hard-of-hearing and have to have it on all the time if I want to keep up with what's on. If you have a light sleeper in the room, you can turn the volume all the way down and still watch TV with no problem. (You may giggle a bit if you watch something like the news or sports, though. Pre-recorded shows use typed CC, but live broadcasts use voice-recognition technology to generate the captions. The software isn't close to perfect, and it generates some rather goofy phrasing sometimes.)

 

[Dawna]

I will keep your tips in mind for our trip next week. I agree that we may all be so tired by the end of the day that it may be lights out for everyone at the same time!

Dawna

 

[Denine]

Up until this past trip we took our own pack-n-play. For the first trip, I got DD used to it at home by having her take naps in it.
For everyone sleeping in the same room we use a sound machine and have it play all night. I am the one that can't sleep with all the noises she makes in the night. The baby monitor doesn't pick up all the noises, so I don't hear them at home.

 

[deb305]

We went to WDW Jan'03 with DS almost 13 months, DD 4.5yrs. We had no problem with DS going to sleep. He was so exhausted from the parks, that even with 2 in park naps a day, he usually went to sleep right away. We all did.

 

[tjmw2727]

My girls were usually so tired they had no trouble sleeping, we did bring our own sheets for the PnPlay so they would be familiar.

Occasionally for an afternoon nap or if the youngest was fussy at night dh or I would take her for a walk in the stroller with lovies etc and in no time she would be asleep. One night I took her for a long walk around the grounds and she fell asleep immediately, while dh got my oldest settled I grabed a drink at the outside bar and relaxed by myself for a while as dd slept in the stroller.

In fact a couple nights we put the girls in PJ's got them settled in the stroller and did the WS while they slept happily in the stroller. We were limited to the outside entertainment and food/drink but it was wonderful. Girls didn't even wake up during illuminations. Of course since we were staying at the Dolphin it was easy to walk back and forth and we didn't have to get the girls out of the stroller for a bus or car.

TJ