Travel Toddler Sleeping Arrangement

One of the biggest factors of traveling with a toddler is where to sleep and how to factor in nap times for our child. In this post, we talk about the pros and cons of different toddler travel sleeping arrangements and how we make sure that we don’t lose our minds while traveling with our toddler. 

Looking for more tips on traveling with a toddler or expecting a baby while trying to live a traveling life? Here are some posts we did: 

• Weekend in Gainesville Florida with a toddler
• Daytona Beach Weekend Getaway (with a toddler)
• Things to do in Helen Georgia
• How to Travel with a Baby
• Baby Stuff For Cheap (or Free)

Toddler Travel Sleeping Arrangements: Should We Book A Hotel? 

Hands down, one of our favorite places to stay in when we travel are hotels. We can travel hack and score a room for free using our hotel points, and don’t have to worry about paying in cash. By using this strategy, we can enjoy weekends exploring a new city without spending too much money. 

When our son was an infant, we would book a room with 2 beds. We would then put him in his little travel bassinet, which would go on top of the second bed and he would sleep longer than he would at home. Not sure if it was the car ride that made him sleepier than usual or the softness of a combination of the memory foam topper, the bed mattress and the travel carrier, but sleeping 6 hours straight through the night for a 2 month old was pretty good. 

Now that our son is a toddler (31 months as I type this) and is too big for the pack and play that hotels provide or the travel bassinet we had, we tend to book a king bed. We would just put him down in the middle of the bed and he would sleep between me and the husband. 

Our son is still a bit too small to sleep on a bed of his own in hotels with the exception of Hyatt Place’s sofa beds. If we’re staying at a Hyatt place, we tend to put him on the sofa bed by himself and put loads of pillows around him so he won’t fall off. Then he can sleep privately in his own little space and we get our own spaces in the bed.

Downsides of sleeping in a hotel with a toddler

Most hotel rooms don’t have microwaves or small kitchens, so if you have a picky eater, it makes it even more challenging on what to feed your child. We usually pack a cooler whenever we travel and try to make sure our hotel has at least a mini fridge to put our cold items in, like milk and homemade fruit and vegetable mixes that our child likes eating. Alternatively, we also ask the front desk if there is a communal microwave that we can use during the stay. 

Alternatively, there are hotel chains that have rooms with kitchenettes. Our favorite hotel, the Hyatt House, has a kitchen and small dining area that we can use at our leisure. There’s also plenty of space at this type of hotel, so we can opt to have the toddler run around a bit in the room. Towneplaces Suites is also a viable contender for rooms with kitchenettes, as well as some Residence Inn by Marriott rooms. 

Staying in Hotels is a Luxury

To be honest, staying in hotels whenever one travels is a bit of a luxury and not everyone travel hacks to get hotel nights for free, or at least less than $100 a night. If you get a chance and you have friends and family willing to host you in the city you are visiting, why not take them up on their offer to stay with them? This will help save you so much money and not even wonder about where you’re going to sleep for the night. 

AirBnBs are also a good choice for traveling. However, AirBnB costs have skyrocketed and are at par with staying in hotels sometimes, not to mention the cleaning fees and other headaches some hosts may do to guests. The good side of AirBnBs is you are usually in a house or an apartment where you have a full kitchen and can even do laundry if your host offers that perk. 

How do I put a toddler down to bed if he has too much energy

If the toddler needs additional energy to burn off, we usually let him run around the lobby, and if the weather permits, we take him to the pool (if the hotel has a heated pool). If not, we google the nearest park or playground in the city we are visiting, or a mall with a Target or a store where he can also spend time walking around the aisles and playing. 

Having the kid burn off energy before going to sleep is better than watching shows on a TV or other mobile device for hours on end as you try to get them quiet. Not only do they fall asleep and get tired faster if they’re out burning energy, then you can go back to the hotel, the child can decompress and watch a few shows before dozing off. 

What do I do when the toddler does not sleep through the night at a hotel? 

It happened when we were staying at a resort in Orlando. At an ungodly hour, our toddler woke up and started screaming his head off. We tried to reassure him that mom and dad are there and that we’re on a trip but he was so dazed and he did not know where he was that nothing could comfort him. He finally stopped crying after what felt like an hour of screaming and crying at the top of his lungs and me carrying him around the room. 

And you know what? That type of night is perfectly normal and fine. If the child wakes up in the middle of the night and starts screaming and crying, then there’s nothing you can do. Instead of thinking about the other rooms, think about how to calm your child first.  

Travel Toddler Sleeping Arrangements: Do I bring his own pillow and blankets? 

When we were first starting to travel with our toddler, we brought so much crap from home. His blanket, a comforter, some toys, and his own pillow. We bring two suitcases even for a quick weekend trip. For the record, my husband and I can travel with just two backpacks each that have clothes and our computers to save on low cost carrier airfares, so bringing 2 suitcases on a weekend trip is overkill for us. 

After a while, bringing everything was so annoying and tedious that we decided to cut down and only bring some essentials like his favorite pillow, which also serves as a toy and distraction in the car. We can now travel with 2 bags on weekend trips (one for clothes, and the other bag for pillows, toys, and food), and it has made our life so much better traveling with less stuff than before.  

Do you get a good night’s sleep while traveling with a toddler?

It honestly depends. Like every single day with a kid, it’s almost the same every day but with a few variables tossed in. Most of the time, our 30 month old sleeps through the night, but if he sleeps between us, he can kick or hit us inadvertently and we can wake up and not fall back asleep as quickly. 

I usually don’t get a good night’s sleep when we travel with our kid because of many variables, but my husband sleeps through the night most of the time. It’s usually because I tend to be more paranoid when we’re traveling and wake up to every slight sound and movement, even if I sleep through the night at home. 

What are your toddler sleeping arrangements at home?  

First off, let me say that every child is different, and every parenting style is different. This is just an example of our personal preferences when we travel. At home, our child does not sleep on our bed. He sleeps in his crib slash toddler bed, but in the same room as ours. It’s only recently that our toddler does not wake up in the middle of the night, asking to be comforted, so it made so much more sense at the time for him to be sleeping in the same room as ours. 

While we have a separate room for him, we transformed that into his dad’s office (hello WFH), and honestly, we don’t mind having him stay in the same room as us as long as he has his own space and bed. 

He sleeps through the night most of the time, and it is easy for us to get up and do other things without waking him up, even if we are sharing the same bedroom.

What are your sleeping arrangements and preferences when traveling with a toddler? 

Please feel free to let us know in the comments below, we have not traveled much with our toddler, but would love to hear tips!