There were so many topics I had thought to write about, but was too jetlagged to write a couple of weeks ago. And now of course, I’m slowly remembering what those topics were, including this one.

There is about a 15 hour time difference between California and China. I just remember to add 3 to the current time and flip the AM/PM – this usually works.

So adjusting jetlag in China: 

Our baby is a night owl and can go until 11 or even midnight US/Pacific time. So that translates to about 2 or 3 pm in China. When we went back to China when she was 7 months, she really adjusted by only 1 hour a day. However, now that she was bigger (16 months), it was easier to push her an extra 1.5 to 2 hours a day. No matter what, the first day we arrive, we let her do whatever she needs to do. Everybody’s clock is just as messed as her clock. The most important thing is to sleep when she sleeps!

Then we start pushing back her sleep time. The first night she slept around 2-3pm and woke up around 10-11pm. Then we would try to go for a walk, take her out, eat our “breakfast”. And in a couple of hours – she’ll need her “morning nap” at around 2-3am. We slowly push that sleep time from 2-3pm to 4-5 pm to 5-6pm, and so on. Until eventually she’s sleeping at 10-11pm every night. It was actually pretty easy, except for the part about finding things to do with her in the middle of the night. We found places to eat noodles and soy milk, and we even visited TianAnMen once for the raising of the flag. The good thing about China is that it’s still pretty hot, comfortable, but hot to us at night that the baby always needed her nap soon.  So we napped when she napped and just went by her clock.

Adjusting jetlag in US:

This is actually harder. Coming back is always harder, but partly it’s also because it’s coming back from vacation. I had calculated all the timing ahead of time to no use. Because like I said, the first day we let the baby do whatever she wants and the very first day she didn’t sleep by what I had expected. Part of it is because we had about a 2 hour drive from the airport back to our home.  So thank goodness our airplane had been delayed a couple of hours and the drive occurred around 4-6pm. She woke up by the time we got home, but went back to sleep around 8-9pm. Woke up I believe around 2 or 3 am for a couple of hours and then went back to sleep.

It was very weird, because instead of doing a long “night sleep” and short “day nap”, she was doing 3 sleeps a day at about equal lengths (4 hours each). It was hard to figure which two was technically the night sleep. Eventually it worked out the same as to when we were in China. It was better than I thought. Because by my calculations, she technically would have needed her “night sleep” starting at like 9 or 10 in the morning. However, she was able to start at around 2-3pm. I had wondered to try to move her schedule up or back an hour like China. But with her behavior pattern, it was also easier to just move her schedule back. It took about 1-2 weeks. It’s easier that I had nothing else going on and that was my sole job, helping her adjust jetlag.

I’m pretty sure it was easier on my own body too to adjust it only by an hour a day. By the time we were adjusted, everybody else was still fighting it hard at dinner time. They had to adjust right away because of work.

A problem that came out of this was that while adjusting I would let her watch TV in the middle of the night. Especially in our neighborhood, there is really nothing else you can do in the middle of the night. And it’s cold, you can’t really take your baby for a walk.

So after she was adjusted, there were some times where she would walk up in the middle of the night, expecting to be allowed to watch TV. But that went away after a couple of days of being firm. We would hold her and sing to her, but no matter what, would not let her leave the bed room.

We might go back to China in a couple more months when she’s about 19 months. I’ll see how she does then, it might be a bit harder because she’s already moved onto 1 day nap from 2. And it’s only 1.5 hours. This time someone else will have to adjust with her as well because I’m adjusting with the newborn. We’ll see!