Babies are a good thing to keep in one place. It’s definitely easier when they are in their comfort zone, with everything they need close to hand.
But when you have family spread all over the country and all over the globe you have to cover a lot of ground in order for them to marvel at your new little wonder, so you’ll find yourself with a packing list as long as your arm and a passport with the world’s cutest photo and your bub’s name on it.
Happy travelling with babies…
Rafferty, Garrett and I are nearly at the end of three weeks in Canada, a trip involving a fourteen hour flight and two eight hour days in the car. From this experience, I have come up with some brilliant tips on how to have a chaotic, disorganized time while hauling an eight month old around the planet.
Pack one less nappy than you need for the flight
Despite the fact that your child hasn’t had a number two for three days, err on the side of minimal for the long haul plane flight, and take a ‘that’ll do’ amount of nappies on board. That way, with eight hours to go you will realize you only have two left. Every mother knows you can get away with two nappies in eight hours…. IF there is no more poo about to be unleashed. Hooray – you get to spend eight hours scheming about how to construct a makeshift nappy using paper towels and an aeroplane blanket.
Take a huge bag on the plane and throw everything in there willy nilly
Change of clothes, bottles, baby food, toys, wipes, socks, books – grab the biggest sack you can get away with as carry-on and just chuck it all in. Definitely don’t do anything smart like put the clothes in an easy to identify smaller bag and the spoons in the same section as the food. That would make things easy to locate, and where’s the fun in that?
Once you’re off the plane and going from hotel to hotel, never have any consistency with your packing
After you’ve rummaged through two suitcases, a couple of shopping bags and all the hand luggage looking for the teething rusks, don’t mindfully put them back in a place that you’ll remember for next time. It’s so much more interesting to dig through layers of clothes and souvenirs in a mad panic looking for what you want!
Leave doing laundry and stocking up on supplies until you have completely run out of clean clothes and wipes
Why on earth would you plan ahead and do laundry at any time before the last minute? Baby can just wear the dirty clothes he already threw up on while you wait for the machine to be done. It’s just as ridiculous to buy baby wipes because it might be the last time you’re within cooee of a supermarket for a couple of days. Half a packet is plenty right? Right???
If heading off on a day trip, even though you’re not sure what time you’ll be back, don’t take enough food for the baby for the whole day
Sitting in the back seat of your brother-in-law’s car with the setting sun hitting your baby right in the eyes as he screams for dinner is every traveller’s idea of a great time. You can try to distract him with songs and toys, but in the end is it really that much trouble to do an in-car breastfeed, with you half out of your seat and leaning at an awkward angle so that you don’t have to endanger the baby by unclipping him from his seatbelt? Of course not! Plus all that screaming means a good night’s sleep for baby and it really keeps the shareholders of headache tablet companies happy.
Drag the baby from pillar to post and expose him to as many faces and places as you can for as many consecutive days as you can
Overstimulation?? Pah!! Babies just love a huge range of new sights and sensations coming at them non stop. It helps them settle easily at night time. Mums don’t need any downtime either – peace and quiet is for the weak.
Suppress the emotions that come with the exhaustion of being in unfamiliar territory, visiting family and killing yourself to keep your baby happy and comfortable and let them out right at the end of the holiday in one utterly irrational outburst completely directed at your husband, who will have no idea what you’re going on about.
I don’t think this needs expanding on.
Happy travels!!
Do you have any other tips for being on the road with babies?
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