One of my focuses is on travel and jet lag so I spent considerable time planning our trip to New York with my three sons. They are aged 5, 3 and 10 months and we had booked an 8pm flight from London which arrived at 4am London time (11pm local time). I wanted to minimise jet lag whilst making the flight as comfortable as possible for everyone.

We had a long day at home before the trip and after a one hour delay, everyone (including my husband!) was very tired and tetchy. On the plane, the two older boys were happy playing and the baby was keeping me busy! Soon after take off the children all fell asleep (it was already about 9pm for them and past their bedtime). I had remarks from the people around us that we were so lucky to have 3 sleeping children (I had originally noticed their long faces seeing a family arriving on board with three children under 5!). Well…they were not aware that I was planning to WAKE them all up shortly. My husband and I ate our dinner and managed to watch most of a movie, the cabin lights were out and everyone was relaxed (meanwhile it was still only 6pm USA time).

At this point I decided to try and wake everyone up, my husband was unamused and the kids were in a deep sleep, but I knew that the only way they would go to bed when we arrived was if they didn’t sleep too much on the flight. Anyway, I managed to rouse all the children, despite the looks I was getting from the people around me and the cabin crew! We had a good rest of the flight, I encouraged the children to eat so their tummies got used to the new time. When we arrived in the hotel at midnight local time, the kids all went straight to bed and slept until 8am the next morning. The flight was hard and when another passenger put her blanket over her head, I knew people around us were not amused!!!!

The hard work on the flight was worth it; we all had a FANTASTIC trip with none of the early wake ups that most people are faced with on trips across the Atlantic.

Happy flying! Emilie