Traveling with a baby can be hard work, so you might as well do whatever you can to make it as easy for yourself as possible.
1. Time difference
When it comes to babies it’s pretty much all about the sleep. And depending on how far you want to travel, you might want to take the time difference into consideration. Our experience is that you should travel towards east. By that I mean; if eg. your baby normally goed to bed at 18.00 and you travel to a country where 18.00 is 23.00. You can easily maintain you baby’s schedule, because you can just let the baby be a part of the evening and tug him/her in after dinner. It’s really a win-win; because if your baby sleeps for around 11 hours, he/she will actually sleep in while at holiday. But if you travel towards west on the other hand and the it’s 14.00 o’clock (when in your home country it’s 18.00), you have to change baby’s routine… Unless you want your baby to sleep during the day and wake up in the middle of the night.
2. Extra seat or not
This is a tip that really comes down to money! But to say it short, extra space is super valuable when it comes to flying with a small child. I’m so lucky to have tried both business and economy class with our baby.
Obviously business class is amazing because you have so much more space, but let’s face it… It’s also f***ing expensive. So, unless you’re loaded or just really lucky and gets an upgrade, you’re probably gonna fly monkey-class like the rest of us. But don’t worry; there are still some ways to approach that shitty situations it is to fly with a baby, which it is no matter what. If you’re in for a long flight, consider to buy an extra seat. Especially if your baby is close to being a toddler (they are everywhere no matter how hard the parents work). You might be lucky, that the plane isn’t fully booked which means you can offer the person next to you, that it might be nicest for him to move. That might give you the extra seat for free.Whether you fly business class, have extra seat or not you should under all circumstances book the seats closest to the aisle. Changing diapers, walking the baby to sleep, whatever it is – you end up getting up quite a lot. And it’s definitely nicest and the most relaxing if you don’t have to make that person in the aisle seat get up as well.Finally consider what kind of toys to bring. My tip is books, games on your smartphone/tablet and make sure to have some movies downloaded as well. In my opinion, being captured in the air with hundreds of other people is not the time to define how you want to raise you baby – it’s about survival.
3. Bring it or buy it
Once I felt that traveling when having my period was really annoying because of all the space tampons took; I got wiser! Oh my God, you bring a lot of sh*t when traveling with a baby. So consider what you’ll be able to buy on location. Eg. Our son pees a lot at night, therefor we use what we could night diapers (extra good, but extra expensive ones). These we bring on our vacation, to make sure we don’t any wet sheets at night time. But normal diapers that are more or less the same we buy on location. They take up so much space and can easily be bought. (That being said, we do bring extra normal diapers just in case we don’t have the opportunity or energy to go shopping the first day).
4. Perfume, parabens and other (nasty) stuff
In a addition to point 3, we have a lot of regulations in Denmark regarding the ingredients in our sunscreens. That means when I buy sunscreen in Denmark, I’m sure that the ingredients are okay for my son. But I don’t know other contries’ regulations and therefor we always bring sunscreen, bodylotion and wet wipes. The latter can most likely be bought at your travel destination but no matter the brand they are full of perfume, and neither my husband or I can stand the smell. Hence, we bring it.
5. Passport and legal documents
Depending on where you’re going, there might be a minimum demand to how long the passport has been issued for. Some countries want at least 2 months. That means you can’t just make the passport some weeks before departure date; the passport should at least be 2 months old. The same goes with the experience date, so find your country at GOV.UK and see the entry requirements, etc.