The Snooze Button: Baby & Toddler Sleep, Simplified · Brittany Sheehan Sleep

How To Make Your Baby Sleep On A Plane

February 19, 2025·20 min·1 clip

Brittany explains why a broken grocery bag led her to cry hysterically and buy KFC, revealing how small stresses build up for babies on flights.

This episode offers practical advice for parents hoping their baby will sleep during air travel. Host Brittany Sheehan, a pediatric sleep consultant, addresses a listener-submitted topic based on her professional experience. She immediately clarifies that no parent can force a baby to sleep on a plane, but she provides strategies to improve the odds. Brittany emphasizes that a baby who already sleeps well at home on a consistent schedule is far more likely to sleep during travel. She explains that a baby not running a "sleep deficit" will handle disruptions better, using a personal story about a stressful day in New York ending with KFC as an analogy for a compounding effect of irritations. Her first logistical tip is to book the earliest flight possible to minimize delays. For babies under one, she suggests a "last-minute" full feeding right before leaving for the airport to ensure they are content during early travel stages. At the airport, she recommends letting mobile babies move around to expend energy before confinement on the plane. For takeoff and landing, she advises nursing, offering a bottle, or a sippy cup to help with ear pressure. A key insight is her "three-tiered priority approach" for the flight itself: avoiding screaming is the top priority, followed by keeping feeding on track, with sleep as the third priority. She frames sleep on the plane as creating a conducive environment rather than forcing it. Brittany personally advises against bringing a car seat onboard due to the hassle, potential conflict with flight attendants, and the risk the baby might hate it. Instead, she describes a method of using a carrier, turning the baby inward and using a pacifier or gentle patting to signal sleep time. She concludes by stressing the importance of observing how much sleep the baby gets and adjusting the schedule after landing. The tone is conversational, candid, and anecdotal, blending professional advice with personal motherhood experiences. The style is educational and reassuring, directly addressing parental anxieties without promising magic solutions. Parents planning air travel with an infant would find this episode packed with actionable preparation and in-the-moment strategies. Listeners seeking guaranteed, step-by-step sleep hacks might be disappointed by the realistic premise that sleep cannot be forced.

As heard by us

A practical plane-day guide for parents trying to protect a baby feed-and-nap rhythm.

Brittany Sheehan Sleep keeps the advice practical: wake a young baby at the last possible moment, offer a full feed before leaving, and give mobile babies a little room to move around at the airport instead of holding them still the whole time.

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Why you'd press play

For the flight where your baby’s nap time and boarding time collide.

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