June 3, 2025
Travel Sleep Tips with Erin Junker: Podcast Episode #293
Kristin Revere and Erin Junker, CEO of the Happy Sleep Company, discuss everything from hotel stays to schedules on the latest episode of Ask the Doulas Podcast.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat with Erin Junker. Erin is a pediatric sleep consultant and owner of The Happy Sleep Company. Erin holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Carlton University and a master’s degree from the University of Ottawa with a focus on communications and health. For almost a decade, she worked on and then led a communications team that helped Canada’s federal health regulator, communicating to the public on issues from safe infant sleep practices to consumer product safety.
After the birth of her daughter Mila, her career focus shifted, and with a healthy understanding of the importance of sleep for young families, Erin trained as a pediatric sleep consultant and then founded The Happy Sleep Company.
Welcome, Erin!
Thank you so much for having me on today!
I am excited to chat about travel as it relates to infant sleep.
Absolutely! It’s the time of year when a lot of people are traveling, trying to get away from cold weather if you live in a cold climate, and we’re also approaching the summers, which is a nice time to be thinking about long weekends and cottage weeks and time away from home. But it can be a little bit scary if you haven’t traveled with your little one yet and you’re wondering how that’s all going to go.
Exactly. So let’s get into time zone changes.
This is probably one of the biggest questions we get around travel is what do I do about a time zone change and my baby’s schedule. Do I try to keep my baby on my at-home schedule? And my answer to this is there’s two things. One is, you could. You could try to just keep your baby on your at-home schedule. However, if you’re going through a bigger time zone change, you probably want to just jump in.
Last week on Instagram, someone DM’d me and asked me this question. They said, I’m going somewhere that’s just an hour time difference. What do you suggest? And I said if you’re only going for a few days or a week and it’s only an hour, it might actually be more helpful to you to just try to keep your baby on your at-home schedule because it won’t be that difficult to do. You will still pretty much be in line with the rest of the world around you. Or you’ll be in line with the host that you might be staying at, with their schedule. Or activities that are going on on your vacation that are being planned. It’s only an hour. You’ll still be able to attend those things, and then you won’t have to worry about any kind of schedule shifting when you get back home.
So maybe if you’re going somewhere and it’s only an hour difference, then you go ahead and try to keep your baby on their normal at-home schedule. But if you’re going somewhere that’s three, four, five, six hours difference in timing, it’s really not going to make sense to try to stay on your at-home schedule because you’re going to miss out on anything. When you baby is sleeping, everyone else will be awake, and the activities that you want to do won’t be possible. Visiting friends or family will be very difficult. It’s really going to be more worth your vacation time if you try to make that switch. It will just work out better for everyone. But it can be a bit tough. And in that situation, I normally tell parents to just jump right in, kind of the way you would as an adult. If you get to your destination and at home, it’s when you would normally go to bed, but at your destination, it’s not even close to bedtime yet, you’re not going to go to bed. You’re going to stay up and visit with people. You’re going to wait until a time on the clock when it feels like a more normal bedtime to you, and you’re going to push through and get to that.
So as an example, I’ll say I live sort of central east coast of Canada, and I will often have families who live near me ask about traveling to the west coast, which is a three-hour time difference from where I am. They’ll say, what do I do when I land and it is, say, 7:00 at home when my baby would normally be going to bed for the night, but it’s only 4:00 in the afternoon in Vancouver. What do I do?
And I’ll say, you’re not going to put your baby to bed for the night because it’s only 4:00 in the afternoon, even though to their body, it feels like 7:00. You’re going to run into some really tricky timing if you try to put your baby to bed for the night at 4:00 in the afternoon, the time on the clock in Vancouver. Instead, I would maybe give your baby a little bit of a nap at that time but wake them up. Don’t let their body think this is their nighttime sleep. Let them sleep for an hour or so when you arrive. Wake them up, big full wake window of what they would normally have for a wake time, and then put them down for the night at a time where on the clock in Vancouver, it looks more like a normal bed time. This is how you jump in and you start to get adjusted a lot more quickly.
Love it. So you mentioned again with time zones and travel, but that location is also very important for sleep. So if a family is staying in a hotel, what are your tips?
I always joke that if somebody told me, for the rest of your life, you were only allowed to use one word as it relates to successful baby sleep, that word would be consistency. What do we do about our wake windows and our scheduling when we are vacation? Be consistent. Consistency. What do we do about our baby’s feeding schedule when we are outside the house? Consistency. What do we do about our baby’s sleep environment when we are not at home? Consistency is the key.
When you are traveling, I always recommend that whether you are a hotel, a friend’s house, the in-laws, an Airbnb, you try to create a sleep environment that is consistent and familiar as possible to what your baby is used to at home. Of course your baby is going to recognize they’re not in their most familiar, comfortable environment, but the more we can make it feel like they are, the more likely they are to have a better sleep and get settled more easily. So if at home your baby sleeps in a nice, dark, quiet room, make their sleep space at your hotel dark and quiet. There are so many products available to help parents create these great sleep environments, and I absolutely love the idea of it. Take a portable black out curtain with you to put in the window, or use something like the slumber pod that can go over your child’s travel crib to create that really nice, dark sleep environment. Because if we make it nice and dark for sleep, it’s going to be less obvious to your child that they’re in an unfamiliar environment. They’re going to feel a little more comfy and safe the way they would at home in their nice, dark, quiet nursery. Take a sound machine with and put on some white noise. We always want to consider keeping that sound machine about 10 feet away from your baby’s head, keeping it under 50 decibels, not right up next to your baby’s ear and not too loud. But it does help to drown out some of those external sounds. Somebody in the hallway of your hotel making noise at 5:00 in the morning. Parents sleeping in the same room; maybe you don’t sleep in the same room as your baby at home, and now you’re sharing a hotel room and one of you snores or talks in your sleep or gets up to use the bathroom, and that might be disruptive to your baby, who’s in a travel crip just a few feet away. So having a sound machine with white noise or brown noise or a rain setting can really help to drown out some of those sounds.
And then taking along the familiarities of home, as well. If your baby wears a sleep sack for their naps and their nighttime at home, do not forget the sleep sack. It’s a really good cue to your child and sleep time is coming up, so we want to have that cue for them when they’re away in a less familiar environment, as well. If your child is old enough to be sleeping with a lovie or a stuffie, don’t forget the lovie. Take that with you so that they have something that’s familiar to them to sleep with. Creating those familiarities can really help.
And that sounds like that would also apply if you’re staying at a grandparent’s home or with friends or an Airbnb. Very helpful tips.
100%. I actually saw an Instagram reel recently and it warmed my heart so much because it was a new mom talking about how her own mom – so, grandma – had already purchased all of the things to set her daughter and her granddaughter up for success when she was caring for her granddaughter or her daughter was just coming over for a visit and wanted to be able to put her baby down for a nap. So grandma had already purchased a sound machine, black out curtains, and I think a separate crib. Not just a travel crib, but a full size crib. I think it was probably a little bit beautifully selfish as well because she probably realized that the more comfortable I make this for my own child and for my grandchild, the more likely my child is to come over and visit me and bring my grandchild, which is just lovely. But also just as a caring grandma, these things are important to my own child. She has expressed to me that this is what my grandchild’s sleep environment looks like at home, so it’s clear to me that these things are important to her. I’m going to make them easily available at my house.
Love it. So it sounds like trying to keep up with routines as much as possible when traveling is one of your top tips.
It is. It goes back to that word, consistency. If we do a consistent routine at home every day for nap time or bed time, then it’s really helpful to do that on vacation. Some parents express to me that they’re tempted to just skip the routine if they are on vacation and had a busy day. They get back to the hotel a little bit late – should we just skip the routine and put baby right in their crib for the night? I would actually take the time – maybe truncate the routine a little bit, but I would take the time to try to do most of, if not all of, the steps of your child’s bedtime routine because it’s even more important than ever when you’re on vacation, not less important. More important, because those are the cues for your child that sleep time is arriving and when your child recognizes they’re not in their normal, familiar environment, they need those cues more than ever to help them settle and understand that it’s time for sleep. So what I mean by those cues might be, if at home you give your child a bath every night as part of their bedtime routine, which is a great cue for a child that their big, long, nighttime sleep is coming up – don’t have to use soap and bubble bath every night. We don’t want your child’s skin drying out. But just the act of going into the warm water and splashing around for a few minutes – it’s so different than anything else that happens in the day that it really cues to your child that, oh, this is the thing that happens before my big long sleep in my crib. So we do our quick little bath, put on pajamas, put on the sleep sack, which is another great sleep cue. We do our bedtime feed. We read a couple of little stories, and then your baby goes into the crib for the night.
And I actually always have my clients say a little key sleep phrase to their children because it’s just one final cue as their child goes into the crib that sleep time has arrived. In my house, we used to say, “Night, Mila. Love you. Off to sleep with you,” since she was a little baby. And now she’s almost 13 years old and she repeats it back to us still every night as we leave her room. “Night, Mummy. Off to sleep with you. Night, Daddy. Off to sleep with you,” because it’s such a cue that, okay, you love me; I love you. We’re done here; it’s time for sleep.
And I love that she continues that!
It’s pretty sweet. But again, routines are so important when you’re on vacation. And we’ll talk about scheduling shortly, but routines themselves can be really helpful. And even just a little tiny naptime routine of a sleep sack and one little book and then into the crib with their key sleep phrase – continue that when you’re on vacation. It can really help with those naps.
Yeah, and vacation naps can be so challenging, especially if you’re on the go. So what are your tips for trying to stay consistent with naptime, even if you’re in a different household or hotel or a time difference?
Yeah, the first thing is to allow yourself to be flexible and have some realistic expectations going into it because if you plan this beautiful vacation for your family and you’re really excited about it; it’s the first time you’ve been away with your baby. You can see them on the beach playing in the sand, or you’re going to stroll around and see some sights together – but then you get there and you try to have every single nap at the hotel in the crib – you may as well not have gone on vacation at all. As a mom who’s been there, who’s obviously very focused on sleep – we struggled at the beginning with just letting go a little bit on vacation. I really do encourage parents to just let go a little bit on vacation, even if you’re really strict about your child’s sleep schedule at home, which I think is a great idea, because our kids need sleep more than just about anything. It’s still really important to give yourself and your family that time to just be more flexible when you’re having that vacation. Don’t stress that every single nap has to be at home in the crib or at the hotel in the crib.
A lot of parents are worried that their child’s sleep habits will completely unravel if they don’t have every single nap in the crib in the hotel while on vacation, and it’s just not the case. With that said, we want to try to find a balance. I always recommend to families that if their child is on multiple naps per day, which is pretty much every child under the age of one, still needing two plus naps per day – prioritize having the first nap of the day at home in the crib or in the case of a vacation, at the hotel or at the Airbnb in the crib. The first nap of the day for babies is usually the easiest one for them to go down for because they haven’t gotten overtired and cranky and overstimulated yet, and it’s usually the longest one of the day. I always like my parents to prioritize that first nap of the day being in a nice, dark, quiet, familiar-feeling environment. They can really set the tone for the rest of the day. And then if your child has another nap or two in the day, make those ones on the go. Allow the second nap to be in the stroller as you explore the city that you’re vacationing in, or allow the last nap of the day if your child is, say, five months old and still has three naps a day and they have a little cat nap around 4:00 or 5:00 – make that cat nap a nice stroll on the beach in an infant carrier or a wrap to allow yourself that time and to still get your baby the sleep that they need. But don’t assume that every single sleep on vacation needs to be at the hotel.
That makes sense. So how do we handle airline travel when it relates to not only sleep but just keeping babies content?
This one is probably the biggest variable of all, the travel questions, because what time is your flight? You sometimes have options; sometimes you don’t have any option over when your flight is, and it’s not at an ideal time. How long is your flight? Is there a layover? There’s so many variables involved. But when you have some control over the situation, I do suggest that parents try to schedule flights for first thing in the morning because that’s when baby is most well rested, most content, and is likely to do better on the flight in terms of not being so fussy and not having such a tough time. So try to book flights for first thing in the morning. Don’t assume your child is going to sleep on the flight. They might. And once again, parents who have done sleep coaching often express a concern to me that if their child sleeps in their arms on a flight, it’s going to undo the independent sleep habits that they’ve just created at home because they just got their baby sleeping in the crib at home instead of doing all these contact naps that they used to do, and now they’re going to need to contact nap on the plane. It’s okay. It’s one day. It’s once in a while. And that kind of stuff is okay. If your baby is a great sleeper, especially, then a blip in their schedule or a blip in their routine once in a while isn’t going to be the end of the world. But we don’t want to assume they’re going to nap on the flight. But do try. I would bring their favorite comfort object if they have a little blankie or a soft stuffy that they’re old enough to be using. Maybe even take a book on the plane to signal to your baby that it’s time to go to sleep because you normally have them sitting with their lovie and their book while you’re doing their naptime routine at home. Try to get your baby to sleep in your arms. There are some airlines that actually have bassinets that come down, too, in the front row, so you could look into that in advance and see if there’s a little bassinet you could put your baby in for sleeping on the plane, depending on the length of your flight.
And if you have a layover, that can be a really great time to do a nap. I know that my daughter, when she was an infant and when she was a toddler and still napping, she would not sleep on flights, but she would sleep in a carrier on me. I would just power through the flight, even though she was fussy. We just got through that flight, and then if we had a two-hour layover, I would put her in an infant carrier or a wrap. Or even when she was a toddler, I had a toddler carrier, like a soft structure carrier, that I would put her in. And I would just walk around the airport and let her have an hour and a half, two hour nap during our layover. And then we would take the next leg of our flight. So don’t underestimate the value of those layovers. Sometimes we think they’re going to be horrible because we’re trying to entertain an infant or a toddler for two or three hours between flights, but you can actually use that time to get your nap happening if your child will sleep in a stroller or a carrier.
Those are some things to consider with regards to airplane travel and scheduling.
I love it. Any other tips for our listeners, Erin?
I would say the biggest one is to just not stress if your baby doesn’t nap at all on the day of your travel, because it might happen, especially depending on their age. Or they may only have a couple of 20- or 30-minute naps in your arms, or a 30-minute nap in the car between the airport and your destination. It’s okay. It’s one day. Again, I have a lot of parents express so much concern to me leading up to their vacation that they just feel it’s going to be a disaster and the travel day is going to ruin everything. But generally, one day is not going to ruin everything. Your baby is going to bounce back. And if you have some tools in place to get good sleep going during your vacation, like some of the things we’ve talked about today, then your baby is probably going to bounce back from that one off day very quickly. So don’t stress. Enjoy your vacation.
Yes. Great advice. How can we connect with you?
The best place to reach us is our website, Happy Sleep Company, and on Instagram, we’re @thehappysleepcompany, and I’m on there just about every day offering advice. Every week I put up a question box for parents to ask any infant and toddler sleep questions they want, and then I answer those throughout the week on Instagram, so that’s a good place to reach us, as well.
And you support families across the world?
We do. All of our services are offered virtually but face to face on initial consultations. I really encourage families, if they are looking at sleep support, to look at different options. Sleep coaching isn’t for everybody, and not every sleep coaching program is going to look the same as the next, so it’s incredibly important that if you’re looking for sleep support, you find someone that really jives with your individual family, your parenting style, and your needs. So we offer any family a free 20-minute phone consultation just to meet with one of our consultants and talk about what your specific areas of challenge are and what our program looks like and how that might support you and what our initial advice might be. And then when parents do decide to work with us, we work with them for a full two weeks. We have an initial, hour-long, face to face virtual consultation to go through all of the paperwork and the plan, our advice, our recommendations. It’s a chance for them to ask questions and make sure they fully understand all of our advice. And then we follow them individually for two weeks. Every day, they are sending us a sleep tracking log, and every day, we’re reviewing that and giving them advice and feedback and answers to their questions. It’s very one on one and very supportive.
I love it. And you also have a podcast. Tell us about that.
Yeah, our podcast is called Sleep Cues: The Everything Parenting Podcast. It actually used to be called the Everything Baby Sleep Podcast, but last year, we changed the name because I have guests who talk to us about everything from pediatricians talking about reflux in babies to pelvic floor physiotherapists talking about moms and postpartum and the pelvic floor challenges that can come along with that. Postpartum doulas – Kristin, you’ve been on our podcast talking about postpartum challenges and how to properly prepare yourself for the postpartum period. We’ve had a couples therapist on talking about setting boundaries with your in-laws. So it became apparent pretty quickly that while our podcast does focus on baby sleep, we also just talk a lot about parenting and the challenges, the common challenges that most of our listeners are facing and advice for overcoming those. It’s called Sleep Cues. It’s on Apple and Spotify. You can check that out.
I’m a big fan. Well, thank you, and we’ll have to chat again in the future, Erin!
Absolutely! Thanks for having me on!
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