Every article on baby jet lag gives the same rule: allow one day per hour of time difference. Denver to Amsterdam is eight hours, so eight days. We flew there and back in October with Cedric, ten months old and cutting two teeth, and logged every sleep in Ceddie along the way.

Going east took six days. Coming home took four. The hard nights were not the ones we expected. Here’s what the log says, and how Ceddie helped.

Going east: Denver to Amsterdam

We left Denver on Tuesday, October 6, with a layover in Newark and an overnight flight. Cedric napped 95 minutes on the first flight, went down on the second at 8:15 PM New York time and slept four hours and 35 minutes. That was his night.

When we landed on Wednesday morning, Ceddie asked whether Cedric was with us and which time zone he was in:

Looks like you’re in Amsterdam (CEST, UTC+2): 8 hours ahead of Denver (MDT, UTC−6). Is Cedric with you?
A card on Ceddie’s Today screen

We confirmed Amsterdam, logged his wake-up, and the day’s schedule was on the screen, in local time: wake 7:00 AM, naps around 9:15 AM and 3:00 PM, bedtime 6:51 PM. The headline read “Day 1 of adjusting to Amsterdam” and the note said:

Travel and teething made for a short night under five hours, but two full naps today offer a solid recovery base.

That schedule was on Amsterdam time from the first morning. It didn’t start from Denver time and move him over in steps across the week. We followed it, more or less: a 75-minute car nap in the morning, a proper one in the afternoon, bed at 7:21 PM.

That was the easy part. Here’s the whole week on the Amsterdam clock:

Day Date Woke (CEST) Naps Bed (CEST) The night after
1 Wed Oct 7 7:00 AM 75 min (car) and 107 min 7:21 PM 12 h 54 m, one 36-minute wake
2 Thu Oct 8 8:15 AM four short ones, 2 h total 7:30 PM 14 h in bed, but a 3-hour wake in the middle
3 Fri Oct 9 9:30 AM one, 78 min 6:17 PM five wakes, 4 h 40 m awake
4 Sat Oct 10 7:57 AM 108 and 54 min 8:44 PM three wakes, 43 min awake
5 Sun Oct 11 7:11 AM 63 and 59 min 7:03 PM three wakes, 4 h awake, teething
6 Mon Oct 12 8:12 AM four short ones, travel day 7:29 PM one 52-minute wake
7 Tue Oct 13 7:32 AM 34, 32 and 39 min 7:50 PM slept through
8 Wed Oct 14 7:48 AM 79 and 74 min 7:56 PM

The first night was great: nearly thirteen hours, one short wake. I think he was simply so tired that he slept, and it gave us a false sense of confidence. The nights that followed were awful. Night 2 had a three-hour wake in the middle, night 3 had five wakes and over four and a half hours awake, and by night 5 he was teething on top of it. He wasn’t crying through those hours. He was wide awake, cooing, ready to play. Very cute at 3 AM, and exhausting. We kept the room dark and sat with him until he was ready to go back down. If nothing else, it teaches you that you can’t force a baby to sleep. On the morning of day 4 the note was blunt:

Cedric had a heavily broken night with five wakes and over four hours awake during travel adjustment.

Some of that was on us. We slept in five different places in three weeks, and we were often out and about hoping he’d take a stroller nap. Sometimes he did. Mostly he didn’t, which is why the nap column has so many short ones. I’m fairly sure that if we’d stayed in one place and offered two naps a day in the same bed, he’d have napped better and adjusted faster. Instead we stacked jet lag on top of moving around on top of teething.

One thing Ceddie did in that stretch that we wouldn’t have done on our own: on day 3, after the three-hour wake and a late 9:30 AM start, it put bedtime at 6:17 PM instead of holding the usual 7:00 PM.

On the morning of day 6 the plane icon left the top bar. Ceddie had seen two days in a row with a normal wake-up and a normal bedtime on the Amsterdam clock, and marked Cedric as adjusted. Two days earlier than the rule says. Night 7 he slept through.

Coming home: Frankfurt to Denver

We flew home on Friday, October 23, after a short hotel night in Frankfurt. The flight was rough. Cedric slept two and a half hours early on, then wouldn’t go back down and grew more miserable by the hour. We dealt with a fussy baby for the last several hours. We landed in the afternoon, confirmed Denver time in the app at 2:43 PM, and the schedule for the rest of the day appeared: a short car nap, then bed at 6:10 PM. He slept half an hour on the drive home and went down at 6:07 PM. On his body clock that was two in the morning.

Cedric weathered a major time zone change today, balancing a disrupted night of travel with 183 minutes of daytime rest.

Going west is supposed to be the easy direction, and this time it felt much easier than Amsterdam had. Part of that is the direction. Most of it, I think, was being home: no more travel, his own crib, a dark quiet room, the same bed for every nap. We’d worried that daycare on Monday would throw a wrench in it. It cost him daytime sleep (one twenty-minute nap all day) but it didn’t touch his nights, and that was the part we cared about. One early morning was the price. The Denver clock:

Day Date Woke (MDT) Naps Bed (MDT) The night after
1 Fri Oct 23 (landed) 154 min on the plane, 30 in the car 6:07 PM five wakes, 69 min awake, up at 5:05 AM
2 Sat Oct 24 5:05 AM 122 and 62 min 6:44 PM two wakes, 54 min awake
3 Sun Oct 25 7:08 AM one, 93 min 6:12 PM two wakes, 3 h 18 m awake
4 Mon Oct 26 8:29 AM one, 20 min (daycare) 6:30 PM two wakes, 43 min awake
5 Tue Oct 27 7:10 AM 102 and 20 min 7:52 PM two wakes, 62 min awake
6 Wed Oct 28 7:32 AM 32 and 35 min 7:20 PM

The 5:05 AM wake on day 2 was the body clock showing through: 5:05 AM in Denver is 1:05 PM in Amsterdam, and he’d had eleven hours. Ceddie’s morning note took it in stride and added a bridge nap so bedtime wouldn’t collapse into the late afternoon:

Cedric logged nearly eleven hours of night sleep despite five wakings, and an early morning wake means an extra bridge catnap keeps bedtime on track.

Night 3 was the worst by a distance: over three hours awake across two wakes, against an hour or less on every other night. The next morning, day 4, Ceddie called him adjusted: two days in a row of normal wake-ups and bedtimes on the Denver clock. Four days for eight hours.

Adjusted to Denver timeCedric’s wake-ups and bedtimes settled into the local day on day 4. His schedule carries on as usual from here.
A card on Ceddie’s Today screen

Nine days after we got home, the clocks went back an hour. What Ceddie does on a clock change is in our post from the week before.

What Ceddie did underneath

We’re not sleep experts. A few things the app took off our plate:

  • It asked once, then stayed in one clock. On landing, one question: is Cedric with you, and where? After that, every time on the screen was in the new zone. A small plane icon in the top bar said which zone, so we never had to wonder whether a nap time was Denver or Amsterdam.
  • It planned from his last sleep, not from the old clock. Day 1’s schedule started from the four-hour plane night and built a normal local day on top of it. The note said which day of the adjustment it was and what to expect the next day.
  • It told us when he’d adjusted. Adjusted means two days in a row with a normal wake-up and a normal bedtime on the local clock, or one day per hour if that comes first. Going east that was day 6. Coming home, day 4. We didn’t have to guess.
  • It kept history straight. The sleeps we logged in Amsterdam still show Amsterdam times in the log, with a small tag, and the schedule in Denver never counted a Denver 1:00 PM as an Amsterdam one.
  • It works without a connection. In airplane mode Ceddie still runs the sleep timer, so a nap on the plane is logged like any other. The schedule catches up when you land.

What we’d tell another family

  • Confirm the new zone as soon as you land and log sleeps as they happen. Everything else follows from that.
  • Go straight to local time on day 1, even when the schedule looks aggressive. The short flight night is what makes it possible.
  • Don’t trust the first night. After a long flight it’s usually long and quiet, because the baby is exhausted. The debt comes due on nights 2 to 5.
  • Stay in one place for the first few days if you can, and offer naps in the same bed. Stroller naps are a gamble, and every short one gets paid for at night.
  • Use the driving to your advantage. Some of the best naps of the trip were in the car seat. Just be careful with a late drive: he’ll sleep, and bedtime moves back by hours.
  • Travel-day naps will be scraps. Fine. The next night fixes it.
  • Going west is easier on the nights and harder on the mornings. Expect an early wake-up or two and don’t fight them.
  • Rest when you can, because the nights will be heavy. Sleep when the baby sleeps, and take shifts for the night wakes so one of you is always getting a stretch.

If you’re flying with a baby and want the arithmetic done for you, try Ceddie. Schedules start at three months.