How we flew from London to Singapore with our 6-month-old and actually slept

Taking a long-haul flight as an adult is already hard. Doing it with a six-month-old sounds like chaos.

Charlotte has been on a consistent 7pm–7am schedule since she was two months old. My partner wrote about how we got there — I've linked it below. But this is about what happened when we decided to take her to Singapore for three weeks. Eight hours ahead of London.

Every blog and forum said the same thing: it'll be rough for a few days, babies adjust, just accept it. I didn't love that answer. I wanted a plan.

Adjust before you go

Instead of landing and dealing with jet lag on arrival, we shifted Charlotte's schedule at home before flying. The goal wasn't perfection. It was damage control.

Charlotte normally slept 7pm–7am. We moved her bedtime earlier by 30–45 minutes each day, keeping everything else exactly the same. Same feeds, same naps, same routine, just slightly earlier. After six days she was sleeping 4pm–4am, which landed us at roughly midnight to midday Singapore time. Manageable.

Surprisingly, this was the easy part.

The flight

Charlotte fell asleep around 3pm, which was perfect timing. The cabin lights went off shortly after.

Next to us was another family with a baby the same age. Their baby cried on and off for hours. It made one thing very clear: keeping Charlotte asleep mattered more than us sleeping. Baby ear muffs, a blackout cover over the bassinet, and gently holding her hand when she stirred. We didn't sleep much. Charlotte slept for most of the flight.

Landing in Singapore

She'd already slept seven or eight hours on the plane so we started the day immediately. Two rules: feed every three hours, no naps longer than 30 minutes. By 10pm Singapore time she was tired. By 10:30 she was asleep. She woke twice in the night, more teething than jet lag, and we handled it calmly. No feeds, no new habits.

She woke at 7am the next morning. The day after, 8am. We were adjusted.

Flying home

Flying west is harder. It's much easier to keep a baby awake than convince them to sleep longer. We spent a few days pushing bedtime later before we flew back. Evening walks in the carrier facing outward were the thing that helped most. Charlotte could rest without fully sleeping, stay curious, avoid getting overtired.

By departure day her schedule had shifted to 11pm–10am.

Back in London

We landed around 6pm, which woke her naturally. We treated it like a normal evening: play, feed, bath, bed. She went down at 9pm. Woke at 3am. Not ideal, but a solid starting point.

Same rules as before. Feed every three hours, cap naps at 30 minutes, push bedtime later by about 30 minutes each day. Within ten days she was back to her normal rhythm. We even shifted her to 8pm–8am, which gave us a quiet morning to read in bed before the day started.

Every baby is different. There wasn't much written about this when I was looking for it, so I wanted to document what actually worked for us. The short version: adjust before you travel, keep the routine and shift the clock, protect night sleep on the plane, and aim for manageable rather than perfect.

Jet lag didn't disappear. It just never took over the trip.