Holidays with family: sharing a room
You are staying with relatives, sharing a room with the baby, and receiving advice you did not ask for. Two separate problems, and both are solvable before you arrive.
3 min read
The practical problem is that a spare room is rarely dark, rarely quiet, and often warm - and you are in it too, which changes your baby’s night as much as the room does.
The other problem is social. Grandparents raised children under different guidance, often successfully, and “we always put you on your front and you were fine” is said with love rather than malice. It still needs a response.
The room
Bring blackout. Portable blinds, or bin bags and tape. Spare rooms almost always have thin curtains.
Bring your own white noise. It also masks a strange house - footsteps, plumbing, a television downstairs.
Position the cot out of your eyeline. You will wake to noises that would have resolved themselves, and so will they if they can see you.
Check the temperature. Spare rooms are frequently overheated or freezing. Take a room thermometer.
Use the travel cot mattress it came with. Thin and firm is correct. Do not add a topper or a folded duvet, whatever anyone suggests.
The advice
For things that do not matter - schedules, dummies, how long you rock them - let it go and change the subject. It is not worth the week.
For safe sleep, hold the line without arguing about the past. Something like: “The advice changed since then, and this is what we have been told to do” usually ends it, and it does not require anyone to have been wrong. Back on the back, empty cot, no propping, no front sleeping. Those are not negotiable and it is worth being briefly awkward about them.
If your baby will be looked after by someone else for a few hours, say the rules out loud rather than assuming. Most people are happy to follow them once they know.
“The advice changed since then” ends most of these conversations without anyone having to be wrong.
What not to move
Keep bedtime, the routine and the sleeping bag exactly as they are. Let naps go where they need to - in the pram, in the car, held by an enthusiastic aunt - and use an earlier bedtime to catch up. Trying to run a perfect schedule in someone else’s house makes everyone miserable and rarely works.
What to agree before you arrive
A short conversation on the phone beforehand saves a great deal of awkwardness in the moment. Where the baby will sleep, that they will be going to bed at their usual time, and that you will be disappearing for half an hour to do it. Framed as logistics rather than rules, it is rarely contentious.
It is also worth deciding between the two of you in advance which things you will hold and which you will let go, because deciding in a room full of relatives is how you end up holding none of them. Safe sleep, bedtime and the routine are usually the three worth keeping. Everything else can be somebody else’s week.
Sharing a room with your baby again
If you are back to room sharing for a week, expect both of you to sleep worse. You will wake for noises that would have resolved themselves, and they will wake for you. That is normal for a few nights and it is not a sign the trip has ruined anything.
Position the cot out of your eyeline, resist responding to every sound, and use your own white noise, which masks a strange house as well as masking you. And do not read the week as evidence about how your baby sleeps - a room-sharing week is its own thing, and it ends when you go home.
When to stop troubleshooting
Speak to a GP if your baby becomes unwell while you are away - and know before you go where the nearest surgery or out-of-hours service is. Sleep that has not recovered a fortnight after coming home is its own problem rather than travel residue.
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