Can You Travel With a Baby?
Traveling with kids is tough. We’ve probably all heard that a dozen times. I don’t claim to be a professional, but my husband and I just got back from a one-week trip to a cabin resort on a lake, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned about traveling with a baby. We’ve also taken a few shorter trips to stay with family members, but this was the first trip that involved us having to bring everything because we weren’t staying in someone else’s home stocked with the basics.
For reference, our baby is currently 6 months old, so our recommendations take that into account. We aren’t including detailed recommendations for toys or food for older children, though most of the same general principles apply. We also are talking primarily about trips involving car travel, as we haven’t yet traveled by airplane with our daughter. Again, you can use many (if not most) of the same tips if you’re planning on flying somewhere with your baby— just take what works for you and leave the rest!
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Before You Commit, Ask Yourself:
When you’re considering taking your baby on a trip, there are a handful of things to consider first.
Do you have to (or want to) take the baby along? Would it be easier to leave the baby with a caregiver (even if that means pumping to compensate for missed nursing sessions)?
How long will the trip be? This affects how much you have to pack, how many days your routine will be different, whether or not your little one will have enough time to acclimate to a new environment, and whether it’s feasible to take that length of trip.
What kind of accommodations are there? If you know that there is a crib, you save yourself from having to pack a safe sleeping space. The same goes for a high chair or any other specialized baby equipment. Are you tent camping? Then you have to take into consideration the lack of electricity and possibly running water.
Will you be moving around a lot or staying in one place? This affects the number of times you’ll have to pack everything up and unpack it again. It’s not particularly convenient to pack and repack baby items, so if you’re not keen on that idea, consider staying in one place rather than moving from one to the next.
Who else is going? Are there going to be other people with kids who will empathize and help out? Will you be the only ones with kids, stressed because you’re the odd ones out who need to feed, change, and allow a baby to nap on a specific schedule? Will there be grandparents or other adults to help take care of the baby? It can be stressful (and therefore not feel like much of a vacation at all) if you’re the only people taking care of a little one and “missing out” on the activities that everyone else is doing. Take into consideration whether anyone else will be available to help you out so you can rest during your trip.
How long is the travel expected to be? Does your baby enjoy (or even tolerate) being in the car for long stretches? Have you been on an airplane with your baby? Does your baby get overwhelmed or bored easily? Those things can easily happen when they’re surrounded by people in an airport or on a plane or cooped up in a car for too long.
For example, we canceled a camping trip that would have happened when our baby was about 4 1/2 months old. Some people would have no problem with that, but it wasn’t going to work for us for a number of reasons. I was pumping multiple times a day to get my milk supply back up, and the idea of trying to clean pump parts that often with potentially sketchy water (there’s only a single spring-fed faucet in the park, and it has once in the past few years been deemed undrinkable; so we would have to bring distilled water to be safe) wasn’t appealing. There’s also very little grass in the camp sites; it’s mostly dirt and gravel— not ideal for trying to set down a baby (even on a blanket) for tummy time and play time. She also started aging out of the ability to take contact naps (while being held or in a baby carrier), and still needed to nap every 1 1/2 to 2 hours, so we wouldn’t be able to do much like go for a long hike with those constraints. And we could do very little to control the environment, particularly for naps. Our little one sleeps in her room, where it’s pretty dark and mostly quiet except for a sound machine. The tent would let in a lot of light during the day, and our experience told us that would lead to pretty crappy naps and a crabby baby. With all of those things stacked against us, we made the disappointing decision to cancel our trip. We’re hoping to go next spring when she’s over a year old, so fingers crossed!
We did go to my aunt and uncle’s house for a day trip and my brother- and sister-in-law’s house for a weekend trip with our baby, both of which required packing a decent amount of supplies and taking the time to prepare everything. But there we were staying with family, accompanied by people who were eager to help, and equipped with the basics (running water, electricity, proximity to stores if we needed anything, a dark room and bed for the baby, etc). We also just returned from a trip to a cabin resort that had similar accommodations.
All vacation decisions are personal, and I offer these experiences of ours not to tell you which kinds of trips to take and which to skip but to show you the thought process behind our family’s decisions so that you can think about what will work best for your family.
Pack Intentionally
Bring everything you think you’ll need and then some extras. This is not a time to try to pare down what you use or strive to be a light packer. You can pack as sparely as you’d like for yourself, but I recommend not cheating yourself out of things your baby might want or need. They aren’t able to understand why you didn’t bring more clothes or toys for them.
Each baby will differ in specifics (favorite toys, clothes for the specific season, etc), but there are some general guidelines you can follow to ensure you don’t forget anything critical. We’ve all forgotten things for ourselves when we’ve traveled, and while it can be stressful, we survived it. But it’s a different level of strain when you forget something for a tiny human who can’t process what’s happening and wants his or her favorite toy NOW or needs a change of clothes 5 minutes ago only to discover it’s not there.
This is a guideline. If you want a comprehensive check-off list (complete with math to help you figure out quantities) you can print, you can get that by filling out the form below.
Clothes: pajamas, pants, shirts, socks, etc.
Toys
Books
Bed/pack ‘n’ play, etc.
Food if necessary
Bottles/formula/expressed breast milk if necessary
Diapers and wipes
Swaddle, sound machine, blackout shade, lovey (any bedtime essentials)
Bathtime essentials
Stroller
Baby monitor
Time your departures well
If possible, time your departure from home and your departure from your destination around a nap time. We’ve found that if we aim to get in the car 15 minutes before a normal nap time, it gives our daughter enough time to get acquainted with the car and settle down for a nap close to her usual time. If we get in right at nap time, she’ll fall asleep late; if we get in too early, she’ll get antsy because she wants to play and isn’t tired at all.
It can be tricky to entertain children in the car. Toys are easily dropped, they get bored, and they feel restricted in their car seats. This is one reason we like to time our travels around nap times when possible. All of those problems are avoided if the child is asleep! However, that’s not always possible. We keep certain toys chained (with these links) to our baby’s car seat so they’re special travel-only toys. They have crinkly bits, rattles, and teethers to keep her interested (of course, older children would likely need different toys suited to their developmental stage).
You also will benefit from feeding your child before putting him or her into the car. A hungry baby is a cranky baby, and do you know what’s worse than hearing your baby fuss and cry at home? Hearing them fuss and cry in the confined space of a car or airplane (with other passengers), knowing there’s little you can do about it. For this reason, we like to feed our baby right before putting her in her car seat whenever possible. This way, between being full and approaching her regular nap time, she’s as content as she’s going to be and highly likely to fall asleep once we get going.
Give yourself grace
Your trip will likely take longer. Your baby may take a shorter nap than usual (this seems to always happen for us). You might need to stop the car more often (I’ve heard experts recommend every 2-3 hours, which should time out well for feeding younger babies and changing diapers, anyway). You might have to listen to your baby fuss in the backseat and simply remind him or her that you hear them. You might have to miss things because of ill-timed feedings or naps that require your hands-on participation. Recognize that it’s a bummer to miss out, but be grateful for the things you can be present for and rejoice when your little one is asleep and giving you a little bit of well-deserved freedom!
Note what works well and what doesn’t. Everything about parenting is trial-and-error, truly an experiment to see how things go. Pay attention to how your baby responds and adjust as you can on this trip or the next one.
Bottom line: don’t let babies stop you from traveling. Consider your options: can you leave the baby with trusted babysitters or family members? Can you adjust the trip to be more baby-friendly? What can you bring with you that will make it easier? And know that at the end, you’ll get back home and get back into regular routine no matter how the trip went.
Have you traveled with a baby? Let me know what you learned from the process in the comments!
