5 Tips for Travelling with Baby

Bringing your baby on holiday can be a stressful and anxious affair without proper planning. By Sally Gallagher

Planes, trains and automobiles!  With the summer holidays booked, travelling with younger children always require planning and a whole lot of distraction! As the aim is to get to our holiday destination sane and happy and ready to enjoy the break as a family, it’s important that the journey and adventure is well planned so it can go as smoothly as possible, making a huge difference for everyone.

1 Infants are naturally land-based mammals. If you can, choose holidays that are a few hours drive away, in a lovely, self-catering, family friendly resort, you’ll save yourself a lot of money and stress!

2 If traveling is absolutely necessary, the later the flight, the better. Sleepy babies tend to enjoy the hum of the engine, and with a cuddle from mummy, they can fall asleep in your arms, leaving you to relax with your traveling buddy spooning you your meals for the rest of the journey.

3 You can buy a separate seat for your baby, but this can work out to be expensive. If you’re bringing your own car seat for the hired car, you can take a chance and ask when checking in if the flight is full. They might be kind enough to let you bring the car seat on, so baby has some space all to himself. If the child is under two, they generally cannot have a separate seat without a car seat, so make sure to check with your airline first.

4 Bring plenty of compact toys for the journey. Make sure you introduce the toys gradually, so there’s something new to play with every so often. Singing and simple dances also help. Get practicing.

5 Be as friendly as possible to your flight neighbours when you get on board. If you chat to them and introduce them to your cute darling(s), their hearts will melt and might turn out to be helpful allies, even if it means playing peek-a-boo to calm a restless tantrum. You will get the odd grumpy person who might have a little snipe, but it is generally best to smile, say you’re doing the best that you can, and hope in a few years they’ll be juggling a little one on their lap at some stage and realise what it’s like.