As parents, we have all started with our children as babies. When you are preparing to start travelling with a baby, and you want to be as organised as possible. Even if you’ve travelled before, doing this with a baby is a different experience, and the following tips should help you travel smoothly and stress-free.
Tips for Travelling with a Baby
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Bring Useful Items
When travelling with a baby it’s important that you pack the essentials. For example, bring a bassinet or carry bed that you can use on the plane as you travel and as a makeshift crib when you are staying in a hotel room. Airlines have limited fold down baby beds, so they may already be booked in advance.
You should also make sure you pack a baby changing pad in your hand-luggage because placing your baby on a cold and uncleaned surface is not a good idea.
Be sure to bring clothes for the weather, food, and water. If you are going to be renting a vehicle, consider bringing a portable car seat as well. There is nothing worse than a vacation that turns into troubled times, and advance preparation can assist in avoiding this occurring.
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Be Smart About Your Travel
You are going to have to be smart as you a parent when travelling with a baby. For example, if you can, you should book a room with an extra room where your baby can sleep and won’t be disturbed by the TV in your room. It might also be a very good idea to make sure you keep your baby hydrated during the flight because it is abnormally dry inside the plane, and that can be unhealthy.
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Also, if a partner is coming along for the plane ride, have him or her board the plane early so that the bassinet can be hooked up and all carry-on items can be secured. You don’t want to stand in a crowded plane waiting for all this to be completed.
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Plan on Multiple Stops
Long trips aren’t great for babies. Changes in temperature and weather can add added stress to both baby and you. It can get uncomfortable for them, and an uncomfortable baby can get increasingly fussy, which is not going to be fun for you. If you can, try not to book trips longer than a few hours, but if you must do so, then make sure the flight has a stop.
Plan for this stop to be a few hours so that you can give yourself and baby a break from the plane ride or road trip if that is how you will travel. Ideally, your baby can take a relaxing nap before boarding the plane once again.
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Bring Good Distractions
The last thing you want is your baby to have a crying fit in the middle of your flight. This is the reason you need to make sure you bring along distractions, like books that your baby likes, toys, some new toys to surprise your baby, and of course, fully charged electronics that can delight your baby as well.
Airlines will often supply babies and small children with complimentary books and toys to keep them occupied, so do ask if they have any when you board your flight.
Ideally, you want to be travelling with a baby when they can take a nap, but this isn’t always possible, and planes are turbulent, so your baby might still wake up either way. You’ve got to do your best to ignore inconsiderate passengers who don’t understand you’re trying to keep your baby under control.
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Give Yourself Enough Time
Give yourself enough time because babies are unpredictable. You don’t want to stress about flight times or appointments or anything like that. 30 minutes should be more than enough, but if you feel like you need even more time, make sure you give yourself that time.
You might think that changing a baby won’t take that long, but you could have a nappy/diaper mishap, and now you have to worry about cleaning your baby a little more thoroughly.
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Hopefully, these tips help you as you prepare for travelling with a baby. Make sure you make each trip a learning experience and write down your notes so that you can prepare better next time.
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Questions
What is our favourite tip for new parents travelling with their baby for the first time?
Have you ever had something occur that helped to make your trip go smoothly with your baby that you remember?
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A couple of things that helped us when our kids were little were having spare onesies and blankets and over-planning on the amount of diapers/wipes/food we thought we would need. It meant more to pack, but we rarely ran out of what we needed.
Great idea – especially about the onesies 🙂
Our biggest tip is to not stress about your baby crying. Your baby can pick up on your mood… so it’s best not to worry about other people on the flight and just focus on your baby!
Always having extra snacks has helped us. Plus I put together a little pack with a magazine, new crayons, stickers and a small toy like a Lego minifigure. Then they can open each thing throughout the flight and don’t get as bored.
Having flown from US to India, and domestically within the US, we realized that different countries and airports have different rules when it comes to traveling with babies. Even for things like strollers and baby carriers. For example, at Vegas airport they allowed us, mom and baby, to go through the metal detector with the stroller (it was SO convenient), while at Doha airport, I had to unstrap my baby out of the baby carrier (usually allowed in US) and carry her through the metal detector. So I think being prepared for any situation, and knowing the rules at different airports is so helpful.
Yours is literally the only blog that I found which encourages multiple stops even on flights! I am considering flying to the USA all the way from India once this lockdown is lifted and I was considering a flight with a stopover somewhere in Europe. All other sites that suggested not choosing a flight with a layover because it only adds to the travel time and that got me really worried!
Thank you for this post!
Blogs are often written by folks that have not travelled a lot with little ones. By stopping multiple times it is way easier on you and them and they reset their body clocks a lot easier too
The biggest thing we learned (the hard way) is, you’d rather wake baby up really early for a flight than arrive at your destination really late. They adjust so much easier to an early morning!
We’ve done many international flights with our baby and the best advice I could give is to try to pick flight times that match with their sleep and nap times. The overnight cross Atlantic flights were a breeze if they just sleep through it. The airplane acts like a white noise and our baby basically sleep through all flights. Of course, it can back fire sometimes on shorter connections when they get over tired, but that has been rare.