Before my European summer trip with my 5-month old baby, I was a nerve wreck. Questions started rushing through my brain: How will I pull this off by myself? How will the baby adjust to the new time change? Will she be jet-lagged? Will she scream the entire flight? What if she gets sick in a foreign country?
These fears started weeks before my departure date and did not stop until the moment we took off. The anticipation of the trip was so stressful that I almost canceled the trip, however, I am glad I didn’t because it was the best trip of my life.
This trip was a great way to master the art of international travel with a baby, and will hopefully help you master it as well.
Find below the 9 steps that helped make my trip a success:
The day before my 11-hour flight, I changed my baby’s schedule slightly to prepare her for the time difference. My flight was at 4:00pm and I was going to be landing at 6:00am the following day. I wanted the flight time to be turned into her bedtime so by the time we landed it would essentially be her wake-up time. I was traveling to the South of France and the time difference was 6 hours. This is how I did it:
A) I put her to bed around 4:00pm and woke her up at 4:00am (10am in the South of France) in order to ease her into the new schedule.
B) I fed her breakfast at 4:00am so by 4:00pm she could have her dinner and sleep during the flight. This worked wonders! By the time we landed, she had slept 10 hours and was ready to go.
Since dinners usually tend to be later in Europe, I decided to change her 6:00pm-6:00am sleep schedule to 12:00am-12:00pm. This was a great idea because we both slept in until noon every day and would go to sleep until midnight, meaning we didn’t miss any of the fun dinners, and the best part? Both my baby and I were well rested every “morning”. *This sleep schedule was also ideal because in theory her bedtime didn’t change at all, 6:00pm in Dallas was 12:00am in St Tropez.
The amount of gear you need to travel with when you have a baby multiplies x 10. Since I was traveling alone and I had rented a house on Airbnb, it meant I had to take everything myself. I sadly didn’t have a hotel concierge to get things ready for me in advance. However, I decided to be practical and shipped everything to the apartment before my arrival.
First off, I purchased a cheap assembled crib and sent it to the apartment. I rented a car with a car seat, I shipped via Amazon a baby bathtub, a bouncer and diapers. This ended up being about $300 total, but it was well worth it. It saved my back from carrying four suitcases across Europe.
I am all about aesthetics, which means an umbrella stroller was not going to cut it for me. I wanted to buy a light stroller I could check at the gate, but a durable and pretty one as well. As I usually do, I did my 27-hour research and found that Bugaboo Bee was the best and most stylish option out there for traveling. It folds with one click and it has a big basket for all your shopping bags and purse.
Up until recently if you were traveling with an infant and you were not seated in a bassinet friendly seat, or purchased a seat for your baby, it meant you had to basically hold your baby in YOUR LAP for 10 hours. However, this is no longer true, you just need to have a seat in front of you for Flye Baby to work. This amazing travel baby gear (although not FAA approved yet) is a sort of a hammock that ties to the front seat all the way down to your waist, creating a little cocoon for your baby to sleep in. The use during take off and landing is prohibited.
Some moms might think this is bribery in it’s purest from, which it is, and it actually works wonders for toddlers. My sister-in-law used to do this with her twin girls every flight, and I now live by it. Buy cheap toys and healthy sweets. Wrap each of them individually with a LOT of tape and a bow. Every 30-minutes give them one and let them unwrap it, they will LOVE IT. Kids will be so entertained that the flight will fly by, and you will be landing before you know it.
Want to entertain a child for 10 straight hours? Give them a full stack of post-it and colors. This might seem like nothing special to adults, but kids LOVE this. They might have 350 post-it all around their seat by the time you land, but it is a great way to entertain them and easy for the parents to clean up.
This has to be the best advice I have received from new mommies. Make in advance little Sorry Bags and bring them with you to the flight. Write a note inside apologizing for the loud noises your baby might make, together with cheap headphones, chocolates and other goodies that you might think people would appreciate. Once people take their seats, start handing them out to the passengers in front, next to and behind you. This way hopefully no one will give you evil eyes if your little angel throws a fit. You will quickly realize that when traveling with an infant the personnel at the airports are always super helpful, while your fellow passengers are usually your enemies. Some passengers tend to forget they were kids once.
Make sure you pack Infant Tylenol, a thermometer, extra diapers and a extra change of clothes in case of an accident.
*Last but not least, pray that your baby doesn’t decide to throw a fit out of the blue.