Travelling with a baby - just like (pre-baby) travelling, but on a baby’s timetable!
When our boy was seven months old, we had the opportunity to go to from Australia to Paris for 2 months. We learnt from experience some of the ways to make travelling with a baby more hassle free…
First a word from a few friends of mine. Their response to the idea of travelling with a baby was simply ‘don’t.’ Perhaps this is the best thing to do… but travelling is fun (even with a baby!) and you can see friends and family and feel the same sense of personal growth that you might have felt when you travelled without a baby.
Top five tips for travelling with a baby – 6 to 12 months old:
1. Always remember to breathe. Breathe, keep breathing. Relax, relax and relax…
2. Always consider timing travel to coincide with a sleep… sleeping babies are good travellers.
3. When making your booking, request the seat with a bassinet and always ask for baby food if it is available. If your baby is older than 12 months you should ask at check in time if it is possible to have a spare seat beside you. For older kids car safety seats can be strapped into plane seats (if you purchased the seat) – but I don’t think it is worth the hassle to take one…
4. Plan your accommodation ahead and make sure there is a cot in the room, or travel with your own portable cot.
5. Prepare the baby bag well in advance. This needs to be as small as possible but still contain enough nappies, wipes, food and drink, books, and toys and a small comfort blanket.
6. Prams… it is definitely worth having a pram. The bigger prams like Bugaboo are more difficult to transport but easier to push over the cobble stones when you get there!
An additional consideration for toddlers - 12 – 24 months old:
7. Take more snacks… by 18 months food seems to be the best thing for keeping our boy occupied and content on a trip. Sometimes this did affect whether he’d eat a meal once we arrived somewhere, but this didn’t really matter as he was already well nourished.
Our trip
With the luxury of time on our side, we decided to make our round the world trip in a number of stages. The benefit of this was that we could visit friends and colleagues along the way, we’d not be on a plane more than 10 hours at a time, and we didn’t cross too many time zones so felt less affected by jet lag.
We booked evening flights where possible. At the age of seven months we generally were allocated a bassinet on the plane. Aged seven to twelve months our boy slept through most of these flights. Keeping good sleep habits also helped him adjust to new time zones. Joy!
Note about booking bassinets. We travelled on Qantas, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Air France, Qatar Air and American Airlines. There seems to be no fixed rules about the allocation of bassinets, except perhaps that the younger the baby the more likely you are to get a bassinet – which makes sense. Qantas did not allow pre-booking of bassinets, but Cathay Pacific and Qatar Air did. The thing that seemed to help us obtain a bassinet was to call the airline a day ahead of the flight and request the bassinet.
Almost all airlines provide baby food, and infant seat belts. Most also have at least one bassinet on board. But strangely American Airlines does not provide bassinets, infant seat belts or baby food on many of its planes (we would not fly with them again unless it was unavoidable – not even for platinum flyer status, sorry George Clooney!)
Was the trip unsettling for the baby?
Yes. But he adjusted within a day or two after each leg.
Long haul flying has to be one of the most unnatural ways to move about the planet. It is unsettling for babies and adults. However, our son had very little jet lag, and his day-time sleeping was almost unaffected. His night time sleeping was pretty bad – but that was going on before we started travelling!
Was it fun?
Was it what!! We had a tremendous time on the trip. Challenging, exciting, relaxing and everything you’d expect from a long, mostly summer, holiday! If we could have changed anything it would have been our son’s night time sleeping – but any parent who’s child wakes every 2 hours at night would say the same thing, no matter where they are in the world!
Next time… what’s in the baby’s travel bag, using taxis overseas, and dealing with jet lag…
