Baby Takes Flight

America, meet Benjamin!

carefully chosen flight wardrobe

I was pretty stressed about this trip. We'd been sleeping a solid 8 hours every night for about a month, with a nap schedule that worked, and I was not looking forward to messing that up. Ben also hates long car rides and usually goes between sleeping and screaming whenever he's strapped into his car seat. The thought of 11 hours on a plane did not sound fun to me.

Well, it turns out all the stress was for nothing (as usual), because traveling with baby was actually no big deal. It was almost easier than flying without him. Yep, I said that.

I know I'm not the first to write about this, but there were a few things that I was so glad I did to prepare for this trip!

Don't Lap-Child
If your flight is just a few hours, that's fine. Otherwise, if you can in any way afford it, buy a seat for baby. If nothing else, you will have alllll the leg room and not worry about disturbing the person next to you, especially if your baby is at an age where he/she needs to move around.

Leave Early
Like I said, baby hates the car seat, and we live 3+ hours from the airport with a border crossing on the way. I gave him a bottle while we drove, but we still ended up having to stop to change a messy diaper. Of course we still got the airport before our check-in counter was open, so maybe we left a little too early, but I felt better not being pressed for time. Babies and traffic are so unpredictable!

Make Baby Visible
It turns out that having a baby lets you skip a lot of lines, because getting babies settled in as quickly as possible makes things easier for planes to leave on time. In Budapest they sent us to a separate security line and helped us get our stuff on the conveyor belt, and we were the first to board every flight. Don't be shy, stick that stroller out there for everybody to see it! On our last flight, I even cut to the front of the bathroom line because a lady had seen me with the baby. Nice.


Travel at Bedtime
Our first flight was in the afternoon, which coincided with a nap, so I just nursed and he went to sleep. We had a two-hour layover, then our next flight (the long one) was just before bedtime. After we ate our airplane dinner, I changed him on the minuscule changing table in the bathroom and put him to sleep. The noise of the plane was perfect white noise and he slept for five hours. We did pretty much the same thing flying back, and it worked again.

Buy an Easy Stroller
You definitely want a stroller in the airport! I knew when I was pregnant that travel would be at least a yearly thing for us, so I chose a stroller that folds and unfolds quickly so we don't make a scene at the door of the plane. It has a little strap in the seat that you pull and it literally folds itself. Our car seat snaps onto the stroller, which also makes things simpler, and it's approved for airline travel. I will get a stroller bag of some kind next time because it got kind of dirty. (The stroller and car seat are the Joie Litetrax and Gemm, if you're in Europe looking for a great travel system that's affordable! We love them both!)

Diaper-Change Kit
I think I saw this on one of the many blogs I read before our trip, so I can't take credit, but it was a game-changer. I took a gallon-size ziploc bag and filled it with a disposable changing pad, a diaper, a small pack of wipes, and a change of clothes. This made diaper changes so easy, because there is no extra space in an airplane bathroom for a huge diaper bag. Once we got back to our seat I would just replace the diaper from a stash in the diaper bag. Fortunately, I didn't need the clean clothes while we were flying, but the whole kit saved the day on our way to the mountains a few weeks later! I threw away the explosive diaper and the changing pad, and put the messy clothes in the bag so they didn't stink up the car. The changing pad also provided a clean surface for him to stretch out his legs on, and I tried to let him spend a minute or two on his tummy after diaper changes. I think changing positions, even just for a minute, helped his patience.

Secret Weapon
The most useful thing I had was a bottle of Nuby teething tablets. Fussy in the car seat on the way to the airport? Gave him a tablet and he instantly fell asleep. Crazy Italian lady blaring weird club music through her headphones so the whole plane can hear it? Teething tablet = baby sleeping pill.

Honestly, that's it. Nothing really special or complicated, just some forethought. We had our regularly stocked diaper bag and a few toys that he didn't really play with (he was more interested in the pink tag the airline put on his car seat). I made sure the passports and tickets were in a pocket that was easy to get to but wouldn't let them get lost. I wore my comfy sweatshirt with a nursing tank underneath. Even jet lag wasn't that bad. I tried to stick to his normal nap time during the day, and within a week we were back to sleeping all night.

So that was flying with a baby. Our next trip will probably be when he's older, which will be a whole new adventure. He has travel in his blood, so I'm sure we'll be just fine!