Road Trip Schedule for Toddler

When my husband and I decided to road trip back East during the summer of 2021 the biggest concern was making a schedule.

A 9 month old whose semi regular schedule would be thrown to the wind was concerning to me. But not concerning enough not to do it.

We knew we needed to stop for bottle feeding and stretch breaks, everything else would just have to play out.

A week before the trip my husband and I sat down during her morning nap and made a general guideline of where we wanted to be to sleep each night. Our journey was taking us from Arizona to New Jersey. A bit over 2,400 miles! We planned to stop for only 4 nights, but didn’t book anything. we wanted to get there, but knew we needed to be flexible in case something came up.

A week later, we were on the road after our daughters first nap. Since she ate before her nap, we stopped after 2 and a half hours to feed her her first bottle on the road. After feeding her and changing her diaper, we folded down the other two seats in the back and laid down her pack and play mattress to let her crawl around and stretch.

And that was the routine. Besides our first stop, every 3.5 to 4.5 hours, we would stop to feed her, change her and let her stretch. Our stops were never longer than 30 minutes and she was okay with that.

As we woke up in New Mexico the second day, we rubbed the sleep from our eyes and began to move around to pack up and go. Yup, you read that right. Pack up. Again. Traveling with a baby means you have stuff. A lot of it. we didn’t bring a lot in to just sleep, but enough where we had to take 2 trips to the car. After she ate, and we ate. We were on the road again. Stopping 3 hours later.

Naps were tricky but successful enough. Some were an hour and a half in length and others were only 20 minutes. At that age, she was typically only napping twice a day for a total of 3 hours. During the 4 days on the road she either napped just under or just over 3 hours so it never messed up her nighttime sleep. We got lucky.

We successfully made it to New Jersey 4 days after we left and her schedule was intact! She didn’t need too much time to adjust to the three hour time difference as the basic exhaustion of being on the road, even for a baby was enough for her body to adjust well to the change.