Tips for traveling with baby

There were many good ideas that I came across and implemented in my vacation last October with my six month old. I think the best idea was to bring a sling or carrier with you. It was so nice not to have bring a big stroller or car seat to carry the baby in at the airport and when going sight seeing. We brought my homemade Moby sling. It is just a long piece of fabric so it was light weight and folded up fairly small. My son loves being carried in his sling above all else so it worked very well for us. He has a habit of losing his socks and slippers when we go places so when we were at the airport, he was in full footsie pjs. This way, there were no extra pieces to fall off and get lost.

We stayed with my grandma for the first half of the trip. She does not have any baby items at her house so we were worried that our baby might have to sleep in bed with us. He does not like to be touched when he is sleeping and wakes up if you even get up to go to the bathroom, so I really did not want to have to do that. Luckily my grandma lives in Sun City. They have a free service to rent baby items for up to a week at a time. They had a very nice, clean Pack N Play for us to use during our trip. So before hauling along things like play pens, check to see if the people you are staying with can borrow some items for you. If you are staying in a hotel, you can just ask if they have certain items. They will most likely have a portable crib available to use. I did bring along our Bumbo, which we got at a used baby stuff store for $20. We used it as a high chair and a place for our son to sit when we went out to eat. It is light weight and fit in to our suit case. He can’t sit on his own so the Bumbo was very helpful.

We cloth diaper our son so we just brought the diapers with us. It was cheaper then buying a week and a halfs worth of paper diapers. We just washed them every three days like we do at home and kept the dirties in a trash bag near where he was changed. We were staying with relatives so this was easy to do. I did not bring any jarred baby food because it costs money and he was not eating much solids at the time. When we got to my grandma’s, I found a sweet potato in her fridge and just cooked it up and fed it to him. When we went to my sister in laws, I cooked up some carrots to feed him. It did not cost us a thing. Over all we had a very pleasant trip and can’t wait to go again next year.

Traveling with baby

Traveling with children, especially infants can be very stressful, but with a little planning and a lot of luck, you can have a pleasant trip. We just got back from our first out of state trip with our 6 month old. I have to say it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. All together we had five plane trips and many long car rides. Our son was great on the planes but not so good during to car rides. He is also teething right now so he did not do so well with sleeping away from home. At home he went from waking up once a night to four times a night. During vacation, he would not go to sleep with out a fight and then woke up every two hours after that. Needless to say, sleep was not something we got much of on our vacation.

To save money, we used an employee pass to go to Phoenix. My husband’s dad works for Alaska Airlines so we were able to do this. It only cost about 10% of the going rate for a ticket. The catch is that you are flying stand-by. I have flow stand-by before and my best advice is to get the first flight out or the last flight out. Those are going to give you the best chances of getting on right away. For our flight, we arrived two hours earlier of the last flight and got right on. There was a woman sitting near us that had been waiting all day to fly stand-by. She could have saved herself a lot of grief if she knew that it is not worth trying for middle of the day flights when you fly stand-by. The only exception to this is if you are an airline employee with a good deal of seniority.

We flew two different airlines to visit all of the family we wanted to see. One was Alaska and the other was Delta. I love Alaska. Very good service, free bags to go over the car seat and Jones soda on the plane. They let families with small children pre-board and don’t mind helping you with your child on the plane. Delta on the other hand was a pain. They charge $5 for a bag (a clear trash bag) to go over your car seat, don’t let families pre-board and are just rather rude over all. After flying with them four times, in four different planes with four different crews, I feel that I can say it was not just someone having a bad day. The worst part about Delta is that they do not let you keep your baby in a sling or carrier when taking off and landing. You have to hold the baby in your arms. I fail to see much difference in the two but I will tell you that I have strict rules against waking sleeping babies. I also have been blessed with the only baby in the world that does not want to sleep in my arms but will sleep in the sling. I was lucky that those flights were not ones that my son wanted to sleep on. Now I know, just stick with the best. Alaska is normally cheaper anyways but we were flying in to a very small airport that Alaska did not fly to.