Tips for Sharing a Hotel Room with Your Infant or Toddler

That feeling of settling my littles in for the night and then relaxing on my own terms is so much more pronounced when I am on vacation. At home, those few childless hours (I’m exaggerating a bit here, it’s really just minutes, mere minutes) before I am too exhausted to move are usually spent frantically catching up on all the things I meant to do that day (or the previous day). I’d like to say that I use that time for getting ahead too, but, seriously, kids. Anyway, on vacation those nights are different. There’s no house to tidy up, no dishes waiting in the sink, no quick late-night errands to run. There’s just me and my freedom. On vacation, those few childless moments after the littles are safely tucked into their beds are spent…in the dark, with the curtains drawn, throwing shade at my husband because the sound of his socks on the hotel floor is a threat to the continued sleeping of those little people. This is the downside of sharing a hotel room with an infant or toddler, especially those who are an absolute wreck of a little person if they don’t get some serious sleep (at least now and again). Realizing this issue early on, my husband and I have come to rely on some handy techniques for getting us through the entrapment of early-to-bed littles.

Suites/Connecting Rooms:

Probably the most obvious, and expensive, way to combat this issue is to book a suite. In some hotels, this means footing quite an expense (either in points or in money), but it’s important to weigh if the value of that extra space and alone time at night is worth that expense. My husband and I still have the intentions of staying up later than our children and relaxing a bit in just each other’s company when we’re on vacation, so we do place some value on having a different room to be awake in while our littles slumber (we’re not talking outrageously priced suites though–we have kids to put through college). Additionally, we use the extra living space as an “on deck” area for the little people who have not yet gone to sleep: first the tiny one is put to sleep, then the middle one, and finally the oldest wiggles her way into dreamland. If I had to put them all to sleep at once? I can’t even. A disaster really.

If the suite has a kitchen, it means some meals can be eaten in the room to offset a small fraction of the cost (anything counts). And sometimes kids just need a little cereal rather than a giant breakfast, so it makes it much easier. Also, if we’re on a vacation that will basically be spent outside, it’s a relief to have the added space if it rains and we have to spend some extra time indoors.

Finally, if the resort itself is not so important and it’s just a place to rest some heads at night, then we consider alternate places to stay. When we roadtrip, we often stay at assorted chain suites. I used to be of the mindset that these were designed more for the business traveler who wanted a more “homelike” place outside of a tourist area without the necessity and cost of a million amenities. But that just isn’t the case. These hotels can offer the space necessary for a traveling family without the cost.

Connecting rooms will also do the trick in providing an additional room, but they have some drawbacks. For example, I am a tired person. After I put my littles to bed, I am even more tired. (It’s like I’ve just completed a marathon that I’m destined to run. Every. Single. Day.) In a connecting room, the most inviting place for me to rest my old weary bones is a bed. Now remember how I said I actually intend on spending time with my significant other? That won’t happen because as soon as this lady sits on a bed, it’s over. Over I say. I convince myself I will only sleep a second, but deep down I know the truth. Also, connecting rooms are in that realm of “you can request but we can’t guarantee” (like cribs). That’s just not a chance I’m willing to take. I’d be stuck in the room with the sleeping kids and my husband would be living it up by himself in the other room? I don’t think so. Number one rule of marriage is if I suffer, we suffer together. I’m not going to change that now.

Study the Layout of the Hotel:

One way we get out of being trapped in the room with our sleeping littes is to do the same thing we do at home: shut the door and go somewhere else (within reach of our monitor). For example, my husband and I always request the same hotel room at a resort we go to in VT because we know that we can lock our door and walk down to the outdoor deck and bar while watching our sleeping children on our monitor. While sitting outside this year, we discussed trying a different room during our next visit, so the next day we took the camera to that area of the resort and checked the monitor. Guess what? It worked! So we’re off to a new room during the next visit (it’s the little things that get us through these days).

We look not just for places to relax in the evenings but dinner as well. At a resort we stayed at in Curacao we ate at the same restaurant most nights because I could get up, put my son to sleep, and come back to our table on the beach. He was sleeping literally yards from me with just a patio door between us (which we left unlocked while we locked the front door to the room). The room was not central to the hotel, but it was perfectly situated next to the kiddie pool, the beach, a small hotel bar, and a restaurant. AND it was in a quiet end of the hotel. It was perfect for both naps and night. But we only landed the room because we studied the layout of the hotel and requested the specific building prior to our arrival.

 Request a Balcony:

If we can’t leave the room out of the front door, we try to go out the back. Our general rule is that if we’re in a resort, we try to book the bottom floor with a balcony that we can walk off of. This way, after we put all the littles to bed, we can slip out onto the balcony and relax. One of us can wander over to the hotel bar or the ice cream shop (or in my case, both) and pick up some treats. Then we just sit outside the room and relax. Some times we talk, some times we just sit with our own books and some reading lamps. If the hotel doesn’t have ground floor, walkout balconies, we still use the balcony to our advantage. One of us slips ever so quietly out the front door and gets the goods, and then we spend our evening on our balcony watching the world.

 Work with What You Have:

One rule we have, regardless of whether we have a suite or a balcony, is that we try to create a physical barrier between our littles and ourselves. Even when we have the added space of the suite, my husband and I still go to sleep in the same room as our little people. The last thing I want is to have my child spot me from behind the bars of the hotel crib. There’s no putting themselves back to sleep once they’ve spotted my face trying to hide in the covers. And this desire to be awake spreads faster than a cold in a Kindergarten classroom once a little one spots me. Next thing I know, it’s four in the morning and I’ve got three little people jumping around on my stomach and a husband still fast asleep next to me.

So, we use the furniture in the rooms to create small rooms. If there are two bathrooms, we will put a crib in one of them. If not, we will check out the size of the closets. We will tuck a crib halfway in a closet with open doors surrounding it. We will stick it behind a desk, next to a chair, covered by a stroller, in a nook. You name it. If there is space that is even a teeny tiny bit separated from the rest of the room, that’s where one of the cribs is going to go. This way, in those just predawn hours of slipping in and out of sleep, my two year old is not going to spot me, fully rouse himself out of slumber, and cheerfully yell out “It’s good morning now?”

 Bring the Right Equipment:

Even with all of this, room sharing happens. If we know there’s a chance, we come prepared. First, we make the bathroom comfy. If that’s where we’re going to be, we might as well get all our plugs etc. in there. If not, we stake out our little hiding corner and prep it. Here’s some water, here’s an iPad plug, here’s some headphones, here’s a book, here’s a reading light. Before the kids fall asleep we make sure that all of our necessities are out of our bags and where we can find them. Pjs? Check. Toothbrush? Check. Glasses? Check. Medicine? Check. Once my tiny’s head hits his bed, the game is over. I don’t want to hear a cough, let alone a zipper opening and closing and opening and closing. My “trapped in room” stash includes a Paperwhite Kindle (it doesn’t give off too much light), my iPhone (so I know what time I managed to stay awake until), and a white noise app (on my iPad). White noise is key. I keep it pretty obnoxiously loud until I slide into that bed, hear my husband’s timed breathing, and sense a general lull in the atmosphere. Then, I slowly turn it down (but just a notch because I’m not trying to have a little person wake up because an even littler person coughed).

 Accept It:

It’s vacation. It’s the one time when it really is ok to just say, “I’m going to bed early” and not regret it in the morning. This is especially the case when dealing with a bit of jetlag. When we went to Japan, my husband and I got into our beds as soon as the kids were in theirs. I read on my kindle, he on his phone, and that was it. We spent the entire trip never fully adjusted to the time zone, but that was okay with us. We slept. We caught up on four years of books we had meant to read and four years of sleep we had wished we had. And we didn’t regret it.

Traveling with little people can be a challenge. The logistics can often be painful. These little creatures are creatures of habit, even when traveling, and their routines can seem a burden to our plans. But sometimes these routines are just what we need on a vacation: a reason to slow down and nurture our own selves without guilt and without regret.

Do you have any great tips on how to get through those times when you’ve got to share a hotel room with your infant or toddler? We’d love to hear. Drop us a comment below!

Happy travels!